POLITICS: Front and Center for George McGovern

SUDDENLY, in what once had seemed a cut-and-dried contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, all bets were off. On the morrow of the Massachusetts and Pennsylvania primaries last week, it was a new race. In Pennsylvania, Hubert Humphrey won the first state primary of his career. George McGovern swept to a lopsided victory in Massachusetts and finished close behind George Wallace in Pennsylvania, where Edmund Muskie ended up an embarrassing fourth—and quite literally out of the money. As the candidates went into Ohio and Indiana this week, the committed delegate count stood: McGovern, 231½; Muskie, 124½; Wallace, 77; Humphrey, 76; Shirley Chisholm, 5; Wilbur Mills, I. A Who's Where of the principal candidates:

MUSKIE took himself out of active contention with considerable dignity. The fault, he said, was that he had spread himself too thin, entering every primary, draining his resources. But he had also seemed fuzzy on the issues as he tried to be a consensus candidate, and he was disorganized and indecisive. Most important of all, perhaps, was that the unpredictable 1972 electorate was unmoved, even dissuaded, by Muskie's reliance on the endorsements and the organizations of the regular politicians. So, he said, he would no longer run, but would remain available if a deadlocked convention wanted him.

HUMPHREY may well benefit more than McGovern from Muskie's abdication, since they were both fighting for what Humphrey likes to call "the vital progressive center" of the Democratic Party—including organized labor and the border South. A TIME/Yankelvich survey of Pennsylvania voters, interviewed as they left the polls, found that

Humphrey's victory was built on a "somewhat frail reproduction" of the traditional Democratic coalition—the poor, the minorities, the aged and the ethnic blue-collar workers. Of Muskie's supporters, 55% named Humphrey their second choice v. only 29% for McGovern. For the Ohio primary this week, the polls had Humphrey about a 10% favorite over McGovern.

WALLACE will meet Humphrey head-on in Indiana this week, and again in one-to-one primaries in Maryland and West Virginia. Wallace remains a force to be reckoned with, though some observers think that he merely wants to be the Democrats' Strom Thurmond —without real power, but able to boast of his influence in high places. Feeling his oats, he joked with reporters last week about his plans as President: "We just may have a lot of press censorship —but maybe I can get you boys a job in the basement or something. That be all right with you?"

MCGOVERN plans to do well where he thinks he can—Ohio, Michigan, Nebraska—and play a dramatic end game with victories in Oregon, California and New York. "It's the classic underdog strategy," says Ted Van Dyk, a former Humphrey aide who is now a McGovern adviser. "It's also General Giap's battle plan. You concentrate your forces at the point of the enemy's weakness. You pick your battlegrounds." That has led him, wisely and conveniently, to stay out of Southern contests that could have set him back.