Nation: DEMOCRATS: The Penultimate Round

IN the penultimate week before the opening of the Democratic Convention, Hubert Humphrey was glancing ahead, behind and sideways at the dangers besetting him.

Ahead lay Chicago, where the divided party faces explosive demonstrations outside the convention hall and bitter factional warfare within. From be hind came the clamorous forces of Eugene McCarthy, flanked by a much smaller band of partisans for South Dakota's Senator George McGovern.

From the party's Southern conservative wing emerged Lester Maddox, who waited until last week to join the field. In his nationally televised announcement, the former fried-chicken entrepreneur paraphrased the George Wallace platform, extolling private enterprise and attacking crime, big government, racial violence and the Supreme Court. The Georgian will likely cost Humphrey no more than a scattering of votes in the South. Since Maddox regards the three other Democratic candidates as socialists or worse, some Southerners speculated that he was running so that, when rejected, he would have an argument for bolting the party and supporting Wallace.

Humphrey's campaign manager, Larry O'Brien, still calculates that the Vice President will collect some 1,600 delegate votes on the first ballot—or nearly 300 more than the 1,312 he will need for nomination. Indeed, a TIME survey of the states' delegations indicated that, as of last week, Humphrey could count on 1,524 probable delegate votes. McCarthy, the survey suggested, would get 626, and McGovern somewhere around 45.

Disrupted Arithmetic. The Vice President's convention strength could be reckoned unbeatable, except that as many as 16 states face credentials challenges involving some 1,000 delegates—a record number in the party's history.

These are certain to disrupt the arithmetic. The challenges could, theoretically, leave some states without any delegate representation. Said Walter Posen, counsel to the party's credentials committee: "The credibility of the entire convention is at stake." The three issues in the challenges are: 1) whether delegates were selected in violation of the spirit of the Supreme Court's one-man, one-vote decision, 2) whether Negroes or other minorities are adequately represented in the delegate selection, and 3) whether delegates, chiefly McCarthy supporters, should be required to take a loyalty oath, promising to support the convention's nominee even if McCarthy loses. McCarthy's forces alone will challenge perhaps a dozen delegations.

They are also planning a strong assault on the platform committee in order to get an unequivocal antiwar plank calling for an end to the bombing of North Viet Nam and a repudiation of past U.S. war policy. The committee will conduct morning-to-midnight hearings for six days this week in an effort to write the party doctrine.