RFK is slightly more worried about assassination threats as regards JFK (he reads an ATL threatening letter, sometime in the summer of '60). Although this doesn't change anything until JFK is actually killed, RFK then spends a few weeks with the FBI learning a little about assassins.
As such RFK reacts a touch faster in the ballroom in 1968 and survives despite being wounded. He takes the '68 nomination (partially on sympathy) and chooses Yarborough as his VP.
RFK then beats Nixon.
After that Yarborough can be President anytime. RFK dies or Yarborough successfully wins a term in '76. He'd be 73 but given that he lived until 1996 OTL he was clearly in great health.
Given RFK's Southern problems, I really don't think choosing a man who they viewed as a traitor to their region would help. But for OP purposes, whatev.
RFK is slightly more worried about assassination threats as regards JFK (he reads an ATL threatening letter, sometime in the summer of '60). Although this doesn't change anything until JFK is actually killed, RFK then spends a few weeks with the FBI learning a little about assassins.
As such RFK reacts a touch faster in the ballroom in 1968 and survives despite being wounded. He takes the '68 nomination (partially on sympathy) and chooses Yarborough as his VP.
RFK then beats Nixon.
After that Yarborough can be President anytime. RFK dies or Yarborough successfully wins a term in '76. He'd be 73 but given that he lived until 1996 OTL he was clearly in great health.
RFK couldn't compete in the Deep South and therefore needed to win a major state (Texas or Florida). Daley, Reuthers, et al would insist on a major figure (not a nobody Governor) as the worry RFK would be killed was high before the assassination (attempt, ITTL) which meant a Senator not up for re-election.
Therefore we have Yarborough (TX), George Smathers (FL), and then maybe Hartke (IN) although Hartke both looked elitist and probably couldn't carry Indiana. Plus a few dark horses if RFK could find a major figure that wasn't a Senator, or perhaps convince a Senator to give up on his re-election campaign.
Yarborough's New Deal Democrat/prairie liberalism would have been a major plus to RFK in Texas, the Border States, the Mid Atlantic, and the Midwest. I'm not sure you realize just how popular Yarborough was (think Southern accent Bernie Sanders but even more so) outside the racist voters that only cared about Civil Rights—a large but not that large bloc.
That's exactly what Mitchell J. Freedman thought when he was writing A Disturbance of Fate!!
The further the book goes after the '68 election the worse it gets.
I agree with Freedman's essay, “How Bobby Kennedy Wins the 1968 Election” (and have, if you do a search on the board, referenced it a number of times), but I've also read pretty much every 1968 election book ever written. Which is more or less the same set of sources as Freedman uses and at least for the '68 convention we come to the same conclusion. What RFK would do in office? Violent disagreement.
On the other hand, would he really be likely to win in 1976 after four straight terms of Democratic administrations?
What parts of an RFK Presidency in the book do you believe could happen in real life, and what parts couldn't?