DBWI: Coke Stevenson loses Senate race in 1948

In one of the most controversial Senate primary races in Texas history, former Governor Coke Stevenson eked out a 50 vote margin of victory in the Democratic primary runoff over Rep Lyndon B. Johnson in 1948.

Stevenson would go on to serve two terms before becoming the first Southern Senator to switch to the Republican party in 1960. Vice President Richard Nixon picked Stevenson as his running mate and they defeated the Kennedy-Symington ticket.

However, Nixon's term in office was bogged down by the war in Cuba after the successful Bay of Pigs invasion and he was defeated for reelection in 1964 by Hubert Humphrey. Stevenson would win the GOP nomination for President in 1968 but lost that November to the popular Humphrey. It did not help matters that Stevenson picked Barry Goldwater as his running mate.

What if it was Lyndon Johnson who was elected to the Senate instead of Stevenson. Would Johnson have been as effective, and would he have been Presidential material?
 
I think he would have been just as effective as when he became Speaker of the House after Rayburn's death in '61. He would definitely have become Majority Leader, and might have even been picked by JFK in 1960, which would have swung the election for the Dems.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Johnson was as corrupt as they come. For god's sake, back when he was in college he stole a student election at his alma mater of Southwest Texas! To think that he nearly got away with his illegal activities in the 1948 election boggles the mind. He would have just used his Senate seat to line his own pocket and turn it into a private fiefdom, just like most Senators at the time did, only he would have done so much more effectively.
 
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