Pre Primaries
October 27 1950: Todd Robinson is born in Saint Louis Minnesota
November 1952: Dwight Eisenhower defeats Adlai Stevenson for the presidency, ending 20 years of democrats
July 1956: Adlai Stevenson gets nominated a second time
November 1956: Adlai Stevenson defeated a second time
November 1958: Democrats win in their midterms
November 1958: George Wallace defeated for governor
January 3 1959: Richard Nixon announces candidacy for president
April 19 1959: John F Kennedy announces run for president
May 12 1959: LBJ declares candidacy for president
May 29 1959: George Wallace announces run for president
June 18 1959: Hubert Humphrey announces run for president
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Republican Primaries
Nixon: I have helped Eisenhower have a successful term as president. We have for the last eight years had a very popular president, and I will continue the things he tried to set forward when I am in office. I understand how the presidential office works, and I am ready to take the office of the presidency. I hope the american people will be able to recognize that I am the most ready person in the country to take the office next. If it turns out I don't do a good job, you can vote me out in four years, but until then, you should just stay safe with me. You never know what the other democrats have to offer.
In July 25 1960, Nixon easily got the nomination and he picked Henry Lodge to be his running mate
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In Saint Louis Minnesota:
Todd Robinson, a nine year old boy who had been hearing all of these political discussions from his parents and teachers, would sit down and listen to his parents talk about each candidate for hours on end in his room. He was a student who never liked to do his homework, so he would place it off as long as possible on any case.
His first conversation he had politically was in early 1960 when he was talking with his father about it. The debate started simple enough. "Dad, who are you going to vote for?" That was his first political question, and the one that would slowly kick start his entire career in the decades to come.
"I don't know who I will vote for. If Humphrey wins the nomination, I will probably vote for him. If not, I might vote for Nixon. He was a great vice president, maybe I should vote for him as a thank you for his service." With that, his father was going back to his morning news paper while drinking his two hour old coffee.
"Who would you want me to vote for?" Todd asked as his father peaked up for a second.
"You need to make that choice yourself. Besides, you have to be 21 to vote." With that, the young boy was thinking about the years to go before he can cast his vote in a presidential election.
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Wallace Campaign
The Wallace campaign proved to be the ultimate sign of how not to run for president. When he started his race, many people were at first unsure of him with how he lost the race to be governor, but he said that his lack of political office was a blessing in disguise as it made him raw in the political field and made him be seen as a effective outsider. He talked about the issues. He talked about bringing back advanced schools, integration with humans and androids, and he was talking about his desire to expand the power of the country out to different countries. He said that it was also time to focus on the debt of the country, saying now was the time more than ever to get into the working of the economy. There was also his expressed wishes of bringing an end to corruption and how only he can do that. He was in the lead for a while and in February 1960 had led the four people with 34 percent of the vote, to 33 for Kennedy, to 27 for Johnson, and 6 for Humphrey. Then Wallace dropped out in early March of 1960, saying that there was people out to kill everybody he ever cared about and that this was what he got for fighting the establishment, even though polls said he would have won in a Nixon to Wallace race. People called him the "Quitter" for a good week or so after he dropped out. In May 3 1960, just days before the primary voting, Wallace suddenly re-entered the race, just two days before the debate which would lead to the voting another four days after that. On the day of the debate, he was a respectable fourth with 14 percent, Humphrey at 19 percent, Johnson at 30 percent, and Kennedy at 37 percent. Despite his strong showing, he is projected to not win a single state in the primary voting, as a result of how he disenfranchised people after dropping out.
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Humphrey Campaign
Hubert Humphrey had a feeling that he was not going to win the nomination outright, and as a result he started to play the rough game. Especially when Wallace came in and seemingly took the world by storm. Humphrey started to get into calls with people in the middle of the night trying to get them to put up ads for him, as well as he looking at how he could convince some people to vote for him with some rewards, like paying them under the table. Despite going in the primaries with noble intentions, his desires to win were eating at him, and eventually he started to become the exact same person that Wallace tried to campaign against. Despite playing the rough game, it did work out to some extent, as he was polling at 19 percent by the debate, and he was polling ahead of Wallace, and he was polling first in four states. Despite it not being revealed at the time, he was indeed the man that had helped pay some people to get into the Wallace campaign to threaten his family which was what caused his at the moment drop out. Humphrey also met up with Wallace the night before he returned to the race, convincing Wallace that the people in the south loved segregation, and that instead of fighting for human and android integration, he should spread the message of black and white segregation and that nobody cared about breaking the establishment or stupid things like the debt. Wallace believed him, and eventually, after the primaries, and starting his 1962 governor race, Wallace started portraying a message of segregation. One could say Humphrey took immense joy killing Wallace's career without killing him as a human being.
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Kennedy Campaign
JFK was seen as the front runner in those few weeks after Wallace had dropped out, something he was thankful for in hindsight. JFK thought that he could capture the whole new deal coalition once more, by getting some of the southern states and the northeast. Despite what he was hoping would happen, some people were worried about his age and others were worried about his civil rights stances in the south. While he was polling extremely well in the north east and was projected to win those electoral votes in a landslide against Nixon, many people were not really wanting to sacrifice the much more electoral rich southern states anymore. These couple of things, plus Johnson giving off more of a presentable feeling when he was talking about actual politics made Johnson quickly catch up to him in the polls, and people knew that whoever won the debates was going to be the winner of the primaries. But in the back ground, both Kennedy and Johnson agreed the night before the debate, that whoever wins was going to capture the opposite one as their running mate, to have them both get the maximum electoral votes possible.
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Johnson Campaign
When Lyndon Johnson announced his campaign for president, many people outside of the south were unsure of this idea. On one hand, he was a very popular southern democrat and would essentially guarantee those electoral votes in his favor, but at the same time they thought that his campaign would be basically dead outside of the south. But he did a good job talking about Wallace being inexperienced, Kennedy being young, and Humphrey only knowing about what a certain set of people wanted as he tried to capture himself as the best candidate. Eventually, as he was making these messages public, the three opponents he had slowly were finding themselves unable to defend the attacks, and he quickly came in second in the polls, and has been keeping Kennedy within five points. People know that if he wins the debate, he will be getting the nomination, so the debates were watched with great interest to see if Johnson or Kennedy would come up on top. On the early May debate, the broadcast ended up being one of the most viewed broadcasts of the year.
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In Saint Louis Minnesota:
Todd was home that day and he was watching as the four democratic candidates were having their debates. He obviously had a biased towards Humphrey, that being his home state. Despite, he knew deep down that Johnson had won the debates. Many people would agree that out of the four main issues that were discussed, which was about pure economics, Wallace had won, but then in the debates of integration Kennedy won while Johnson won both matters on related to the cold war as well as the idea of how he was planning on defeating Nixon in the general election. Watching this debate made the young kid want to grow up and be like one of those people in the future. He thought about how much he wanted to be the most famous democratic senator in the nation, how much he was planning to get people to look at him as the hero of america. In the end, Johnson won 39 percent of the vote in the primaries, carrying a commanding 9 states. Kennedy won 5 states and 37 percent of the vote. Wallace won 19 percent of the vote, but no states but he did finish second in Florida and Wisconsin. Humphrey only won 5 percent of the vote, but did win South Dakota, giving him some delegates. Wallace had the highest percentage for a candidate who never won a state in a primary, while Humphrey had the lowest who did win at least one state.
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The convention
The democratic convention was one that was to be expected. The democratic party nominated Lyndon Johnson to be their nominee, and later that night, Johnson announced that he was going to have John Kennedy as his vice president. The convention took place over the course of a couple of days, but once he was nominated, Johnson went right in the campaign trail. Johnson started to go in the southern states, thinking that he has a good chance of winning the southern states against Nixon, and he had Kennedy start to campaign in states like New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and California for large electoral vote numbered states. Throughout much of the post convention campaign, Nixon was shown to be leading in the popular by about one percent or so, while Johnson was shown to have a slight lead in the electoral college due to the southern states.
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In Saint Louis Minnesota
It was early August when Todd was buying his school supplies for the next school year. "Mom, why do I need to go to school?"
His mother looked at him. "You need to go to school because it is the best place to teach you things in the country."
Todd thought about it and then he asked "Did Nixon ever go to school?"
"Oh yeah he did. He went to school for many years. He went to college. Many people would argue he is one of the smartest politicians in the country."
"So if I want to be smart like him, I need to go to school?" Todd asked and his mother nodded.
"I think you will be as smart as him one day, but you need to go through the rest of the school system before you get there." His mother said and the rest of the shopping trip continued.
At the end of the shopping trip, as Todd and his mother were putting groceries away, there was a guy in a black jacket walking by that bumped into the kid. Todd felt a moment of pain as the guy looked back and stared at him and then walked off. The guy looked like he hadn't slept and eaten in days. Right away, he felt his pocket was a tad heavier than normal. Once he returned home, he took out what was in his pocket and found that the guy had placed a pocket knife in there. He hid the knife under the bed, wondering if he needed to use it someday.
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Fall Campaign
The fall campaign was covered pretty much every single day on the media. The media was covering how each candidate can reach the electoral votes needed. Nixon had been pulling off a strategy of going to every single state in the union to try and win them all or at the very least pull up as many votes as he can in each of the states, to make them more competitive. Johnson campaigned extensively in the south, trying to win all their states, while also going to the border states and Oklahoma as well. He also dropped by Minnesota a couple of times to talk with Humphrey and pull his numbers there as well. Kennedy did the campaigning that Johnson wanted him to do in order to get the votes of the big states, and after he started to show some leads in there, Kennedy started to try going to places like Ohio and Illinois. Johnson knew he had no appeal in a lot of the middle states of the union, so he did not even bother going there at all.
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In Saint Louis Minnesota
Todd was starting to get much more interested in the political season coming up. Every week on Friday, he would make a electoral map with his updated predictions, having blue represent the states that Nixon was probably going to win, and red representing the states that Johnson was probably going to win as well. It was a small and fun weekly exercise that he did in order to get himself more excited for the election coming up. Despite that though, there was a girl who thought he was a bit of a strange guy for this reason and would make fun of him for it. Her name was Joy, and she was a grade higher than him. Every time she would make fun of him, Todd would go home and hide under his blankets and call her the mean girl. Todd was just hoping that once the election was over, and once there was none of these electoral maps being made anymore, that she was going to leave him alone from that point forward. His father told him to not worry about things and just to ignore the girl every time she would make fun of him, which was obviously easier said than done.
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Debates
The presidential debates were held in later September of 1960, and it was sort of a toss up. People felt that as if Nixon had won the debate on a general likability level and easy to relate to way, but that Johnson had won the debate when it came down to a bit more of the issues that were actually needing to be discussed. Despite that though, and the debates honestly having no real affect on the polls, there was no real debate that Kennedy had actually won the vice presidential debate over Lodge in a pretty hefty margin. Even Lodge had to admit that he had lost the debate. The debate was the most viewed television program of the entire year, and it seemed as if hundreds of thousands of people had tuned onto their television just to watch this one debate. People were now more politically active than ever, and most of the people in the country were voicing their opinions on who they were going to vote for. People were expecting voter turn out to be in the mid to higher fifties.
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In Saint Louis Minnesota
At school, the picking on Joy gave Todd got worse over time. But by the seventh or eighth week or the school year, he was used to it, and he decided that he didn't really want to try and defend himself anymore. Although he wasn't just doing it to him, and she had started to pick on everybody. She eventually was starting to become known as one of the meanest people in school. Despite having every excuse to ignore her on her birthday, Todd decided to be the nice guy. He wished her happy birthday on her 10th birthday, which was October 19. When he had done that, she looked at him and realized he was the only person who wished her happy birthday that year, despite being the guy he picked on the most. She smiled as he did so and was walking away, her feelings of anger slowly fading away at him, and she was wondering if perhaps the two can start to become friends as a result of this. On his tenth birthday in October 27th, she wished him happy birthday as well and she even wrote him an apology letter for how she had behaved in the past and she thanked him for thanking her a happy birthday. This made the two start to think that perhaps they can get a fresh start as friends.
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Election Night, First Hour
On November 8 1960, the young political junkie was watching the election night coverage on television. The early reports came in right away, and he was surprised at how fast they were working on it already.
"Nixon is projected to win Indiana, Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire at this hour. This places him up at 33 electoral votes already. Meanwhile Johnson is expected to win Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Virginia, with Johnson having a early lead in Florida. This places Johnson at 59 electoral votes. It may look like Johnson is sweeping the map so far, but this is just the start of the election."
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Election Night, Second Hour
Each of the candidates had about four to five states under their belt so far, meaning that the general sections of land went to their respective candidate easily.
"Johnson is projected to win West Virginia as well as Alabama at this point, giving him 83 electoral votes so far...." With that there was a call the reporter got, and he listened for a few seconds as he said after the call was over "The 14 electoral votes of Florida are now going to Johnson, placing him at 97 electoral votes so far.
"Nixon is projected to win Ohio, placing him at 68 electoral votes. Upon votes coming in, and the state being about half way counted, Nixon is projected to win the 39 electoral votes of Illinois, placing him now at 107."
There was a few minutes of silence before a slew of Johnson had been called.
"Massachusetts, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Maryland, Louisiana, and New Jersey are now projected to go to Johnson. This places him at 224 electoral votes as of yet, making it look like he is well on his way to victory."
It was crazy to see the map get so favored one candidate right away. It looked like Johnson had swept the race at that moment, little did people know that Nixon would really catch up.
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Election Night, Third Hour
By this point in the night, the election was becoming much more in favor of the current vice president of the united states.
"In Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, North Dakota and South Dakota, Nixon will be projected to win all of these states. Nixon now has 138 electoral votes, still nearly a hundred votes behind Johnson, but still enough to make the race a bit more competitive." The reporter then announced the next states for Johnson, although none were a surprise.
"Texas will be bringing their 35 electoral votes to Lyndon Johnson, putting him at 259 as of yet. He is currently leading in New York, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota. He has a narrow lead in Wisconsin, although it is unsure if that will hold."
Watching the election already sort of be coming to a close made it feel a little bit anticlimactic, but it was still exciting to see and Todd was wishing to see if Johnson was actually going to win after all.
"The votes are now counted, and Johnson is going to maintain the 19 electoral votes of Missouri, to place him at 278 electoral votes, meaning he has only about a hundred or so more until he wins."
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Election Night Fourth Hour
"Montana, New Mexico, Iowa, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, and Colorado are all going to be called for the vice president Richard Nixon. He is now at 189 electoral votes. He is holding a small lead in Oregon, Washington and California. If he can win those, plus Alaska and Hawaii and win either New York or Pennsylvania, he will win the election. If this doesn't happen, he will lose the election despite probably winning the popular vote." The news reporter had stated, which gave Nixon and his campaign a short lived hope that they could indeed pull this off until around 10:46 pm when the following call was made.
"New York and their 65 electoral votes will be going to Johnson. It seems as if Kennedy going there did help Johnson out in the end. He is now at 343 electoral votes, within a small distance away from winning the election."
All hope for Nixon was over. President Johnson was now a reality. The first president since 1924 to lose the popular vote, and the first since 1896 to win less states than the loser. That was a reality that was now sinking into the countries masses.
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Election Night Fifth Hour
The next states coming up for Nixon were called. "In California, Oregon, Hawaii and Washington will all be going to Richard Nixon. This will bring him at 259 electoral votes right now. There are Michigan, Alaska, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that still need to be called. If my memory serves me correct, every other state has been called by now."
The path to a Nixon victory was impossible. He was leading in Michigan and Wisconsin, but Johnson leading in Pennsylvania ruined it. Nixon was watching this and he was feeling like it was about time for him to make the concession call. He stood up and went right to the phone and on the third ring Lyndon Johnson picked it up and heard Nixon congratulating Johnson on a victory earned, even if it made him sad.
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Election finale
The rest of the election was expected. Michigan and Wisconsin went to Nixon by about two percent or so. Alaska eventually went to Nixon by a razor thin margin, bringing him up to 321 electoral votes.
Johnson had picked up Pennsylvania and Minnesota. This brought him up to 362 electoral votes.
Nixon had won 29 states, while Johnson only won 21, which many people feel like was probably the lowest a candidate can win in a modern day setting on a realistic level to win the over all election. In the popular vote, Nixon scored 50.1 percent, a bare majority, while Johnson scored 49.4 percent, which only about half a percent or so going to third parties. It was one of the smallest shares for third parties in the history of the united states.
When the electoral college came to vote in late December, Johnson had his victory made official, and there was nothing all the complainers could do about it anymore. One elector from Oklahoma voted for George Wallace instead of Johnson, which was the slow start to what would become the Wallace dynasty in the southern united states that would last the next sixteen years.
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In Saint Louis Minnesota
Todd Robinson had his first real sleep over on the winter break that year. He was spending the night at Joy's house. He had told his parents that this was just a friend he had made recently, and they believed him and left him alone. The entire time the sleep over was happening though, there was a strange feeling that he had. As if something was watching him. He felt like he was experiencing something of a horror movie when he was having these feelings. One time when he looked outside, he saw something that looked like outline of senator Humphrey right there. Robinson wondered why Humphrey would be there, but to not create a scene, he said nothing and went back to sleep.
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An after the election call
George Wallace was sitting inside of his office one day after he had found out that he earned one electoral vote from Oklahoma. There was a call that Hubert Humphrey gave him and he took the call. "It seems like you were right, as soon as I started talking about blacks, the south starts to make me popular. I wonder if I should just adopt this strategy now."
"Go ahead Wallace. You can become a real icon among the south if you do so. Don't say I didn't predict it."
Wallace took out a cigar and started to smoke it. "You were right. But I could be popular everywhere."
Humphrey laughed and said "You saw how that turned out. You don't have national appeal. You need to pick a section of the nation, and go with it." Humphrey made a good point and then Wallace sighed and accepted.
"I am going to run for governor again in Alabama. I will campaign on that issue, and maybe I will get elected. I just don't know if I will be ready to be the nations greatest enemy."
"The nation needs a common enemy to have them be united. If you are their enemy, both parties can be united against something."
"I guess yeah. Sure I will do it. But only because you are certain it will all work." Wallace said, ready to face the negative impacts of this deal.
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In Saint Louis Minnesota
A few weeks of school went by and Johnson had become president and everything seemed to go back to normal. By this point, Joy and Todd were fully friends, and they had any form of animosity gone by now. But something happened a few days after Johnson took office that changed everything. There was a robber that came to the school and was ready to steal some things from the school. Todd realized why he had gotten the knife. When the robber was not looking in his direction, Todd grabbed the knife from his pocket and he stabbed the robber right in the knee, preventing the robbery from happening and getting the guy locked up, but at the same time getting him in a lot of trouble and he was seen as a massive trouble maker for bringing a knife to school. He claimed he was doing it for the safety of the school and only a few believed and appreciated him for it. Only Joy remained his friend at the end of the year. By the end of the year, his parents decided to move him to a new school lower down in the state to have him start fresh. The day before he left, he bought a skateboard from the skating store and he kept his pocket knife secretly hidden in his pocket. The next day, he was at his car and Joy came along and kissed him in the lips. It was his first kiss. It was thanking him for remembering her birthday, being a friend, and most of all for saving her life and she told him to write to her when he was at his new "Crazy" school.
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Lyndon Johnson - 361 electoral votes / 49 percent popular vote
Richard Nixon - 321 electoral votes / 50 percent popular vote
George Wallace - 1 electoral vote / 16K write in votes
I feel like I made some mistakes on this map, and I would appreciate if somebody helped me out with it. I will credit you as a helper on this post for future readers
