Following his senate re-election victory, McGovern harbored thoughts of running in the 1976 presidential election, but given the magnitude of his presidential defeat, the Democratic Party wanted nothing to do with him then or later. Unfamiliar and uncomfortable with Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter, McGovern secretly voted for Ford instead. McGovern's view on intervention in Southeast Asia took a turn in 1978 in reaction to the ongoing Cambodian genocide. Noting that it affected a percentage of the population that made "Hitler's operation look tame", he advocated an international military intervention in Cambodia to put the Khmer Rouge regime out of power.