DB AHC: Could John F. Kennedy ever get elected POTUS?

It has been 30 years since John F. Kennedy (1917-1984) retired from the US Senate.

As a Senator, Kennedy co-wrote the 1963 Civil Rights Act, pushed for military reform in the Kennedy-Goldwater Act (1969) and became Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee after J. William Fulbright was defeated for reelection in 1974. He held that chair until his retirement in 1982.

Kennedy also ran for President three times: 1960, 1968 and 1972. But was unsuccessful each time.

His nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr was elected President in 2004 and is the only member of the family to reach the nation's highest office.

Is there any way that Jack Kennedy could have been elected President? And had he been so elected, would he have succeeded in getting his pet projects that he championed in the Senate passed? And would any other members of his family had a chance to get into the Oval Office?
 
It has been 30 years since John F. Kennedy (1917-1984) retired from the US Senate.

As a Senator, Kennedy co-wrote the 1963 Civil Rights Act, pushed for military reform in the Kennedy-Goldwater Act (1969) and became Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee after J. William Fulbright was defeated for reelection in 1974. He held that chair until his retirement in 1982.

Kennedy also ran for President three times: 1960, 1968 and 1972. But was unsuccessful each time.

His nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr was elected President in 2004 and is the only member of the family to reach the nation's highest office.

Is there any way that Jack Kennedy could have been elected President? And had he been so elected, would he have succeeded in getting his pet projects that he championed in the Senate passed? And would any other members of his family had a chance to get into the Oval Office?

He very well could have.
Truth is, the only reason that JFK lost to Lodge in 1960 was because of a very suspicious outcome that saw the States' Rights party win several of the Southern states by unusually large margins....many suspected election fraud even then, and only the assassination of Lodge in Denver in Sept. 1963 got people to stop talking about it for a while(I don't believe Lodge himself was involved in any scheming, though.).

Kennedy could have been Johnson's VP in '64, but he turned it down....probably not a bad decision, because Johnson exacerbated the quagmire in Vietnam just a year later.

And then former Vice President Nixon won in '68, again, partly thanks to the SRP, again denying Kennedy a shot at the White House.....and then again in '72, before they finally got kicked to the curb after massive amounts of corruption had been exposed under an investigation started under President Saltonstall(he had become President after Nixon and half his cabinet resigned in '74....Watergate really backfired on them. Saltonstall was President of the Senate Pro-Tem at the time.). What they uncovered practically destroyed the remnants of the pro-Segregation movement down there.....though most of the Dixiecrats had become Republicans anyhow by that point....(it became especially notable after Reagan won in '76.....and peaked under Howard Baker's term, '88-'92, even though he was a moderate.)


OOC: I would think a Kennedy loss might have to involve the butterflying of Nixon's term....he got kinda lucky IOTL, I think.
 
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