AHC: President Hubert Humphrey...In 1960

Your challenge, should you accept it, is to get Hubert Horatio Humphrey elected president of the United States in 1960. IOTL, he ran for the nomination but when JFK beat him in Protestant states and won Protestant voters he quit and the establishment supported JFK. What if he'd won? How could he win the 1960 election? Try keep this plausible, so don't say JFK dies in a car crash or anything like that please. What would HHH do as President? Go ahead!
 
Your challenge, should you accept it, is to get Hubert Horatio Humphrey elected president of the United States in 1960. IOTL, he ran for the nomination but when JFK beat him in Protestant states and won Protestant voters he quit and the establishment supported JFK. What if he'd won? How could he win the 1960 election? Try keep this plausible, so don't say JFK dies in a car crash or anything like that please. What would HHH do as President? Go ahead!

I think your best bet is for Kennedy to actually secure his nomination as Vice President in 1956. The general election walloping would probably be a lot worse than OTL. Coming off such a large defeat, Kennedy would be fighting an uphill battle to gain the confidence of Democratic voters in 1960. Then, HHH must absolutely win the Wisconsin primary in order to build support. Of course, in this scenario the real danger is from Lyndon Johnson, a man known to play hardball.
 
I think your best bet is for Kennedy to actually secure his nomination as Vice President in 1956. The general election walloping would probably be a lot worse than OTL. Coming off such a large defeat, Kennedy would be fighting an uphill battle to gain the confidence of Democratic voters in 1960. Then, HHH must absolutely win the Wisconsin primary in order to build support. Of course, in this scenario the real danger is from Lyndon Johnson, a man known to play hardball.

I don't think the Dems' loss in '56 would be substantially worse than it was IOTL: a relatively young photogenic VP candidate would mitigate any lingering religion-based concerns to a large extent. But I digress.

What you outlined sounds to me like a tailor-made formula for a long, nasty, potentially deadlocked Dem convention in 1960. I could see Kennedy and Humphrey forming a loose stop-Johnson alliance, while Johnson called in every IOU, twisted every arm, etc. to get the necessary votes. In that case, Humphrey would have to go, essentially hat in hand, to Joe Kennedy and convince him that he, Humphrey, is the only candidate that could mean a Dem victory (the implication being that Johnson would be a hard pill to swallow in the north). He might have to go to the length of promising the old man a substantial cabinet post for his son: say, Attorney General. In turn that would carry the promise of a Kennedy candidacy in 1968, when Kennedy would be only 51--still relatively young.

Of course, even if all this plays out as described, Humphrey would have to scramble against Nixon. big time. True, there wouldn't be the religious factor but Nixon had the gravitas of eight years in the second office for openers. Add to that the way he was known to be able to handle Khrushchev and you have a substantial GOP advantage.

I'd suggest further that the debates--if they occurred--would be about a wash on TV. Humphrey's rapid-fire, almost nervous style would balance Nixon's somewhat grim appearance. Drop out that factor and those that listened on the radio might tilt the balance to a degree--and in OTL radio listeners judged Nixon the better of the two.

Long story short: going to be tough to get Humphrey in the White House in 1960.
 
I think a Humphrey/Johnson ticket is likely. The concern of the party leaders will be Humphrey losing the South; they'll want a Southerner on the ticket just like OTL.
 
I don't think the Dems' loss in '56 would be substantially worse than it was IOTL: a relatively young photogenic VP candidate would mitigate any lingering religion-based concerns to a large extent. But I digress.

What you outlined sounds to me like a tailor-made formula for a long, nasty, potentially deadlocked Dem convention in 1960. I could see Kennedy and Humphrey forming a loose stop-Johnson alliance, while Johnson called in every IOU, twisted every arm, etc. to get the necessary votes. In that case, Humphrey would have to go, essentially hat in hand, to Joe Kennedy and convince him that he, Humphrey, is the only candidate that could mean a Dem victory (the implication being that Johnson would be a hard pill to swallow in the north). He might have to go to the length of promising the old man a substantial cabinet post for his son: say, Attorney General. In turn that would carry the promise of a Kennedy candidacy in 1968, when Kennedy would be only 51--still relatively young.

Of course, even if all this plays out as described, Humphrey would have to scramble against Nixon. big time. True, there wouldn't be the religious factor but Nixon had the gravitas of eight years in the second office for openers. Add to that the way he was known to be able to handle Khrushchev and you have a substantial GOP advantage.

I'd suggest further that the debates--if they occurred--would be about a wash on TV. Humphrey's rapid-fire, almost nervous style would balance Nixon's somewhat grim appearance. Drop out that factor and those that listened on the radio might tilt the balance to a degree--and in OTL radio listeners judged Nixon the better of the two.

Long story short: going to be tough to get Humphrey in the White House in 1960.

Perhaps "a lot worse" was a bit hyperbolic because it's really just also losing Missouri and North Carolina. I do think you're scenario for 1960 is quite likely, though I think Nixon is a lot weaker than he'd seem. I think a generic Democrat would do a bit better than Kennedy because he was fighting the Catholic problem as well as campaigning. I think Humphrey probably wins the popular vote by a bit larger of a margin than Kennedy did, but without a running mate like Johnson the solid South isn't going to back him up.
 
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