God discovers alcohol.
The problem is the insurmountable odds that Goldwater was facing. He was not the favorite of his own party, let alone the nation. He endorsed policies and ideology that was politically toxic in the age of the Liberal Consensus. The Right Wing existed in the 1960s, and were ... rambunctious, but they more or less kept to their own groups (some may say breathing their own air) without having much in the way of the mainstream. You could say they were like Tea Partiers in terms of their grassroots campaigning, and vitriol against Liberalism. There's a lot to compare between the Birchers and Conservatives and John Kennedy, and the Tea Party and Obama. At the same time, unlike the Tea Party, it needs to be reiterated that they were nowhere near the mainstream. That came to roost in 1964.
The problem is, how can you have a President Goldwater with the weight of the world against him. You're going to need everything that can go wrong to go wrong, and to go wrong for the Democrats, and for absolute perfection on the Republican side. But how? Kennedy's infidelities won't be reported, nor his health. For one reason, the media didn't act that way. For another, Kennedy was good at hiding it all. For another, likely most politicians and lobbyists in Washington were having affairs in the 1960s. Kennedy is considered so big because we found out about it circa 1968, before we found out about everyone else. And for another reason, John Kennedy was one of Barry Goldwater's best friends. Johnson won't be taken down by the Bobby Baker scandal. Goldwater tried. No one wanted to hear it about a sitting president.