DBWI: How would the South respond to a Humphrey Presidency in '68?

1968 was very close. If just California (which was within a percentage point) had gone for Humphrey instead of Nixon, he would have broken 270 electoral votes and become President, avoiding the whole Corrupt Bargain between Wallace and Nixon altogether.

I know this has been discussed many times before, with the assumption being that the United States, as unstable as it was, would have still been as polarized as it became under Nixon thanks to the War in Vietnam and the huge issue of Civil Rights. But what I'm looking for is this: How would the Southern States in particular have reacted to Humphrey, a Liberal, non-Southerner, like McGovern 8 years later, becoming President?

Would he have been tolerated as an essential continuation of LBJ's policies, or would any move he made be met with resistance and force, like many Southern historians seem to suggest? And would they be more apt to trust the White House without 6/11?

I'm working on a TL that has an intact and dominant United States of America lasting up until the present day, so any help would be greatly appreciated.:)

OOC: I've mentioned several potential PoDs and Butterflies, but that doesn't mean their alone. Remember that just because I specified 1968, that DOES NOT mean that has to be where the PoD lies.
 
The same way they (we) to George McGovern in '72. Not a single EV south of the Mason-Dixon line. More old confederacy states go Wallace.

I am from a moderate Southern state (TN) in a moderate part of that state (east), such as we had no problems with intergration. But, unless you're from a certain place and a certain age you don't remember. Because of the way the last civil war ended, we were fighting a second. "Blue collar" whites were having real problems. Their society was going to hell. George Wallace had a lot of appeal. LBJ was seen as a traitor. No way some yankee liberal who was his VP was getting jack from us. I was born in '72, but I grew up around these people. My father's people were country club Republicans. My mother's whole family voted Wallace.

Nixon's law and order approach ( a dog whistle for sure ), and silent majority ( in case you did not hear the first.) Was why Nixon carried the "moderate" states voted for Nixon. If HH wins in '68, I think you see a much more rapid Southern "white flight" to the Republicans. Reagan Democrats start in '72 or '76. The reason we became Republicans are strictly social, why else would we vote against a party that represents us economicaly?

A HH Presidency just makes it that much worse. When I say we I mean my mother's people. Her brother in Vietnam in the infantry, blue collar jobs it etc... not my father. I was lucky he came from a good family and family were liberal Republicans. The funny thing is my fathers people would be Dems, and my mothers Reps. HH continues the whole yankee liberals telling us what to do theme.
 
There was one interesting timeline in which Nixon continued to criticize courts and busing in public, while at the same time privately directing his justice department to work towards a more limited desegregation.

Maybe if Nixon had won outright in the electoral college and there had been no need for that classic Corrupt Bargain.
 
The same way they (we) to George McGovern in '72. Not a single EV south of the Mason-Dixon line. More old confederacy states go Wallace.

I am from a moderate Southern state (TN) in a moderate part of that state (east), such as we had no problems with intergration. But, unless you're from a certain place and a certain age you don't remember. Because of the way the last civil war ended, we were fighting a second. "Blue collar" whites were having real problems. Their society was going to hell. George Wallace had a lot of appeal. LBJ was seen as a traitor. No way some yankee liberal who was his VP was getting jack from us. I was born in '72, but I grew up around these people. My father's people were country club Republicans. My mother's whole family voted Wallace.

Nixon's law and order approach ( a dog whistle for sure ), and silent majority ( in case you did not hear the first.) Was why Nixon carried the "moderate" states voted for Nixon. If HH wins in '68, I think you see a much more rapid Southern "white flight" to the Republicans. Reagan Democrats start in '72 or '76. The reason we became Republicans are strictly social, why else would we vote against a party that represents us economicaly?

A HH Presidency just makes it that much worse. When I say we I mean my mother's people. Her brother in Vietnam in the infantry, blue collar jobs it etc... not my father. I was lucky he came from a good family and family were liberal Republicans. The funny thing is my fathers people would be Dems, and my mothers Reps. HH continues the whole yankee liberals telling us what to do theme.
Thanks for the reply, it helps to look at things from a different perspective.

So Humphrey would have been far worse for the South? I mean, he couldn't have been much worse than McGovern, and he would have basically been a continuation of Johnson's policies.

Personally, I thought what really hurt the country was a swing in radicalism. Up until '69, integration was moving along quickly- and then under Nixon things moved sharply rightward and all of a sudden people who had tasted what integration may have been like had it taken away. Then in 77, when everyone had adjusted to the new status quo, everything changed again, with the government forcing integration and a hundred other causes way TOO aggressively. This left people confused, anxious, and blaming the other side.

Without those shifts back and forth, it seems things could have continued a lot smother, grumbling accounted for. Of course, Humphrey would have then probably only have had one term....
 
Thanks for the reply, it helps to look at things from a different perspective.

So Humphrey would have been far worse for the South? I mean, he couldn't have been much worse than McGovern, and he would have basically been a continuation of Johnson's policies.

Personally, I thought what really hurt the country was a swing in radicalism. Up until '69, integration was moving along quickly- and then under Nixon things moved sharply rightward and all of a sudden people who had tasted what integration may have been like had it taken away. Then in 77, when everyone had adjusted to the new status quo, everything changed again, with the government forcing integration and a hundred other causes way TOO aggressively. This left people confused, anxious, and blaming the other side.

Without those shifts back and forth, it seems things could have continued a lot smother, grumbling accounted for. Of course, Humphrey would have then probably only have had one term....

And that anger and confusion of the '70s would, sadly, eventually lead to much of the major extreme right-wing domestic terrorism problem that we had in the '80s and '90s-one of my first memories(I was born in June '91) was looking at the smoking remains of the Lyndon Johnson Federal Building in Houston, Texas being broadcast on my TV in our little house in Santa Clara, California, and President Biden vowing to bring the perpetrators to justice(his handling of the Houston incident was credited for helping him gain a second term by a comfortable margin in '96)-Nov. 27, 1994 might well be the day when my childhood innocence took that first crack.
 
And that anger and confusion of the '70s would, sadly, eventually lead to much of the major extreme right-wing domestic terrorism problem that we had in the '80s and '90s-one of my first memories(I was born in June '91) was looking at the smoking remains of the Lyndon Johnson Federal Building in Houston, Texas being broadcast on my TV in our little house in Santa Clara, California, and President Biden vowing to bring the perpetrators to justice(his handling of the Houston incident was credited for helping him gain a second term by a comfortable margin in '96)-Nov. 27, 1994 might well be the day when my childhood innocence took that first crack.

Stay on topic, please.

So what could have caused Humphrey to carry California? I understand McCarthy's endorsement speech have Humphrey a huge bump, so maybe if he had done it earlier there would have been no lingering hatred in student's minds?
 
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