A blast from the past, the 1952 brokered Democratic convention:
"essentially what happened was:
In 1952 Truman was the sitting president. We had just passed the amendment limiting president term limits to 2, but the amendment had an asterisk in it specifically exempting Truman (mind you Truman was never actually ELECTED twice, but he completed FDR's last term and then was elected once on his own merit).
So Truman has the option to run as the Democratic incumbent in 1952.
However, Truman was plagued with scandals/controversies during his 4 year term and when the primaries came around he was pushing for Adlai Stevenson to run instead of him; but Stevenson turned him down.
So Truman didn't openly or actively campaign, but he still allowed his supporters to put his name on the ballot in NH, where Kefauver destroyed him. Shortly after getting killed in NH, he announced he would NOT be running for president.
Now, Kefauver, happened to be the guy in Congress who was responsible for leading multiple investigations into Truman's administration and was the cause of much of Truman's unpopularity. So as you can imagine, Truman did not like the guy.
Fast forward through the primary - Kefauver wins a plurality of delegates but fails to secure a majority needed for the nomination.
Dem party bosses start this "Draft Stevenson" movement to get him to enter the race at the convention largely because of Truman but there was also some legitimate concern about Kefauver's electability because he was a Tennessee senator which still upheld Jim Crow laws and because Kefauver himself was resistant to the Civil Rights Movement.
So Truman has Stevenson give the opening speech at the convention (knowing Stevenson was an exception speaker) and basically from Stevenson's opening speech to the gathered delegates, he started gaining support with most of the party bosses working the various other factions to drop out and coalesce around Stevenson."
