Could Estes Kefauver have won the Presidency?

Could Estes Kefauver (TN) have been elected President?

  • No, he'd have done worse than Stevenson each time

    Votes: 7 15.6%
  • he'd have done as well as Stevenson each time

    Votes: 6 13.3%
  • He stood a fair chance of winning with the right VP if Ike doesn't run in '56, not in '52

    Votes: 18 40.0%
  • He stood a fair chance of winning with the right ticket in '52 or '56

    Votes: 14 31.1%

  • Total voters
    45
Estes Kefauver was way more popular than Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and again somewhat more so in '56 - at least at the start. His loss each tiem is a great example of party politics.

However, even if he had wont he nomination, could he have won a general election?

It was 90 years after the Civil War, and tennessee was - while a Jim Crow state - not as far south as a Georgia or Texas, the latter of which I've read that Lyndon Johnson couldn't have won from.

In addition, like Johnson, Kefauver was quite moderate on Civil Rights, though he wasn't liberal enough to push actively for them like Johnson, he refused to sign the Southern Manifesto.

Of course, i don't expect he could have won against Eisenhower - I'm just looking at it from the standpoint of him running in general, and had he had the support he might have tried in 1960.
 
I think he could have. He earned some serious credibility during the Kefauver hearings that revealed large areas of the mob previously unknown.
 
Kefeauver's popularity has to be understood in the context of '50s mass media not yet having overthrown the existing US political campaign order; sure, he was popularly seen as a fearless anti-crime crusader, but that didn't change the fact his primary victories didn't stop Stevenson winning the nomination.

Indeed, the combination of his highlighting urban crime in Northern Democratic strongholds, and him using his Tennessee senate seat against the Southern caucus, this makes it more unlikely he can ever win the nomination. Stevenson was the better choice as a national political blank slate in '52, and in '56 he's the man who'd already proven he could thread the needle of having run with Sparkman and won over the ADA liberal grassroots last time around.

Anyway, yeah, if Ike doesn't run Kefauver could win a general election, but the problem is he's got too much baggage to be Dem nominee, sort of like Humphrey in 1960. And he isn't going to live long enough to overcome those deficits.
 
Depends on the circumstances

If Ike declines to run in '52 Kefauver could very easily win the Presidency because the GOP was pretty weak at the time and had lost five straight Presidential elections, but he's never coming close to beating Ike
 

Japhy

Banned
Kefeauver's popularity has to be understood in the context of '50s mass media not yet having overthrown the existing US political campaign order; sure, he was popularly seen as a fearless anti-crime crusader, but that didn't change the fact his primary victories didn't stop Stevenson winning the nomination.

Indeed, the combination of his highlighting urban crime in Northern Democratic strongholds, and him using his Tennessee senate seat against the Southern caucus, this makes it more unlikely he can ever win the nomination. Stevenson was the better choice as a national political blank slate in '52, and in '56 he's the man who'd already proven he could thread the needle of having run with Sparkman and won over the ADA liberal grassroots last time around.

Anyway, yeah, if Ike doesn't run Kefauver could win a general election, but the problem is he's got too much baggage to be Dem nominee, sort of like Humphrey in 1960. And he isn't going to live long enough to overcome those deficits.

All of this with the added bonus that it was a public secret that the fellow had a drinking problem which made his cances even slimmer.
 
How do you pronounce his name anyway? My English isn't too bad, but I would stumble over it. Would Americans have problems with the name too?
 
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