George McGovern passed away yesterday at 90. The man who ran against Richard Nixon in 1972 and lost every state but one and also winning the District of Columbia. The LA Times begins its story in characteristic media fashion:

Democrat George S. McGovern, a war hero who opposed the Vietnam War, was crushed by President Richard Nixon’s Watergate-tainted campaign. A die-hard idealist, McGovern inspired scores of budding politicians.

The story is not surprisingly to a large extent devoted to Nixon and to Watergate, not to the way in which McGovern was throttled in the election itself or the reasons why that was. It is the media reliving its glory days while once again raking over the Nixon coals. The most notable aspect of McGovern, however, is that he helped begin the descent of the Democrats into the party of the left that it has become. Without McGovern and the media there could be no Obama today.