We've done the RFK threads many many many times (and I disagree with you to a limited extent on the book: much of the early stuff was well done, aside from the USSR's peaceful collapse and too idealistic Viet Nam… but the later stuff was batshit insane, to be sure.)
Institutional Memory (just a couple, of many):
Would Robert F. Kennedy have become President?
RFK survives
Anyway, McCarthy is screwed. He does have an outside chance at winning New York, but probably RFK will crush him. Furthermore as much as he hates RFK, his delegates are anti-war…*not so much pro-McCarthy (and, of course, by this point his own campaign doesn't think he should be elected President).
So RFK wins California, wins New York, and the head-to-heads show RFK ahead of Humphrey (as Rockefeller, on the Republican side, was relying on for their convention). Meanwhile Humphrey hasn't won a primary contest, McCarthy stalled at 200ish delegates, and only RFK is making headway—the press spin it as a horse race.
RFK & McCarthy can prevent Humphrey from a first ballot victory, at which point the convention becomes nuts. Mayor Daley will almost certainly back RFK, simply because he can't have LBJ and doesn't believe Humphrey measures up.
Whether or not RFK wins is pretty much up in the air. I'd say 50/50, or perhaps less, and your "informed sources" are in reality bitterly divided: all kinds of people say he'd win, all kinds of people say he'd lose.
Interestingly if RFK survives, Reagan receives a large boost at the GOP convention: lots of people were quite certain that Nixon would lose to a Kennedy for the second time. It might well be enough to prevent Nixon from a first ballot victory as well—in which case Reagan will win.
Now if RFK loses, the 1972 nomination is his…*if he wants it. RFK's movement, his political coalition (the "everybody currently screwed in America" coalition of poor, lower middle class, minorities, and so forth—similar to Wallace's appeal actually…*at least on the white side of things) was basically unique and probably won't last past a theoretical RFK lives and fights the 1968 general election.
Honestly? 1972 is too late. RFK might go for it anyway, but his potential impact on America is rather limited. Nixon has broken the Democratic Party, conservatives are in charge and although Nixon doesn't have coattails I doubt RFK in '72 would have them either (unless he was elected in '68).
He could probably get the Nixon offered stuff through like national health insurance and a guaranteed annual income (negative income tax) if he wanted, and one would hope the withdrawal from Viet Nam wouldn't be quite as messy as OTL but….
1968 is the last point before, well, now, when one could see an American liberal government truly do things. The conservatives took over Congress in 1966, Nixon broke the Democratic Party after his election, and that was it for the Democrats.
(Note, of course, the two Democrats that did manage to get elected, Southern governors both: Carter crashed and burned; Clinton never got through much of his agenda besides budgets, welfare, and so forth).
It's clearly possible that RFK's political coalition could get through meaningful social democratic reform (and, of course, he might have failed) but it's unlikely any other Democrat and even a 1972 RFK could do so.
Interesting ideas, indeed a relatively left-leaning RFK Presidency could suffer badly as the world shifts from Bretton Woods to Hard Market economics.
Hard Market economics? I assume you mean the 1980s shift into neoliberal economics because of stagflation (and in the USA it was mostly deregulation by Carter/Reagan and the eventual Reagan tax cuts, the government wasn't actually reduced).
Anyway, one could easily come up with a raft of ways to apply social democratic thinking in a free market framework; one could even come up with quite a lot of social democratic projects that would help business (healthcare, for instance) that would still be big government ideas.
Jape;1767668Was Reagen a particularly strong said:
Reagan was the man. After 1968 to 1980 there is not any other Republican likely to get win a Republican nomination without extraordinary circumstances in his favour (i.e. Ford). If Nixon had lost in 1968, Reagan would have been the Republican nominee in '72. No Watergate? Reagan is the Republican nominee in 1976. Ford wins in 1976? Reagan is the 1980 nominee. And so forth: the GOP, after 1968, would not elect anyone other than Reagan (and even 1968 was very close) as their standard bearer without either a sitting President being in the way, or if Reagan killed his wife or something.
Anyway, where's Electric Monk? He'll have some good ideas.
Yo.
I won't rehash your approach since I agree with much of it (although I doubt Scoop in 1980). I will note that in 1976 the economy is not quite as dead as it will be in 1980, and that butterflies give RFK something of a shot to change things.
Also, obviously, the Democrats end the Viet Nam war ITTL and probably not nearly as messily as post-Nixon. It's also entirely possible that RFK, like Nixon, gets everybody out but keeps South Vietnam with enough support that it's still surviving in 1976.
Say RFK does keep his political coalition because it sees him as responsive (he certainly would have tried to do something for black people / inner cities, healthcare is a pretty big support for working class white folks, RFK simply isn't the "elitist" looking Democrat like McCarthy, and isn't a New Deal liberal like Humphrey/Mondale) I figure that can see win again in 1976.
After all Reagan beat Carter. A man with limited political skills, a man whose campaign staff was only good at primaries, and he did it in a "change" year, he did it with a noticeably worse than 1976 economy (as opposed to 1972 versus 1976), and up until the last week when the undecided broke for him he didn't have the election in the bag.
(It would be an amazing contest to watch. Both talented politicians, both appeal to a very large chunk of the same people—"Reagan Democrats" aka working class whites—both with topflight campaign staff, and both with vast monetary resources as there are no Watergate reforms.)
RFK is perhaps the only politician of his era who could toe-to-toe with Reagan and beat him, RFK has a fantastic political campaign team, and of course 1976 was two years before the beginning of the anti-tax revolt (and supply-side economics)… Reagan will have the usual, and usual failure, of the Midwest conservative "balance the budget" economics instead of the magical "spend more, tax less and the budget balances" supply-side that he used later on.
Finally, despite Viet Nam, RFK is firmly of the liberal anti-communist tradition (albeit one who is dedicated as well to combating the "generals" because he saw how they almost screwed JFK in the Cuban Missile Crisis). Reagan can be right-ward of him on foreign policy, but the gap is not Carter failing the Iranian Hostage Crisis but rather details.
All of that said, elected first in 1972 RFK could easily fail… in which case Reagan would likely find fairly easy pickings.
Quite alot of food for thouht there, cheers