Give Peace Another Chance: The Presidency of Eugene McCarthy

[Kennedy Forever]

Having read this I kind of wish Johnson had picked Mccarthy as Vice President. The idea of that sounds interesting to me

 

[The Lethargic Lett]

The 1968 Democratic Primaries Results Breakdown

New Hampshire

Lyndon Johnson - 27,520 (49.6%)
Eugene McCarthy - 23,263 (41.9%)

What began as President Lyndon Johnson's mosey to renomination instantly derailed with the New Hampshire primary. McCarthy famously exceeded all expectations by winning forty-two percent of the vote next to Johnson's fifty percent. Including write-ins by Republican primary voters, McCarthy came within less than one percent of beating Johnson. Relying almost entirely on his local organization, McCarthy emphasized the cost of the war to appeal to the fiscally conservative voters of New Hampshire, and gained significant support from the anti-Johnson vote, most of whom actually wanted a more aggressive stance on the Vietnam War. McCarthy performed best in the suburban areas, with his best results being in Grafton County (54.67% or 1639 votes). McCarthy came within less than half a percent of also winning Cheshire County. His worst result in New Hampshire's urban centre, Hillsborough County (34.1% or 7684 votes). Johnson got most of his votes from Manchester, the largest city in New Hampshire, and located in Hillsborough County.

McCarthy also placed third in the Republican primary, entirely through write-ins, getting five percent of the vote, next to Nelson Rockefeller's ten percent and Richard Nixon's seventy-eight percent.

Wisconsin

Eugene McCarthy - 412,160 (56.2%)
Lyndon Johnson - 253,696 (34.6%)

Held shortly after Johnson announced that he would not be seeking a second term, McCarthy trounced the President in the Wisconsin primary, winning all but Milwaukee County. The results were actually on the lower end of the expected results; if Johnson had stayed in the race, McCarthy was expected to get as high as sixty-six percent of the vote. While a blowout victory, Wisconsin still showed that McCarthy performed the worst in large cities, where his weakest demographics, black and unionized voters, lived in the largest numbers. McCarthy remained strongest in suburban counties, such as Kewaunee County, where he got over seventy percent of the vote. McCarthy's weakest showing was in the incredibly sparsely populated Menominee County, getting seventy-five votes total in the county, which equated to thirty-eight percent, rounded up. His low margin was due to Bobby Kennedy receiving fifty-six votes, which equated to twenty-eight percent in the county. McCarthy received an outright majority in nearly every county he won, with the exception being a handful of low-population rural counties where even a mild concentration of Kennedy write-ins could greatly affect the percentages, just like in Menominee County.

While Vice President Hubert Humphrey announced his candidacy after the Wisconsin primary but before the next primary in Indiana, he decided to not compete in any of the primary states. In Indiana, Ohio, Florida, and California, favourite son candidates acted as stand-ins for him.

Indiana

Robert Kennedy - 328,118 (42.3%)
Roger Branigin - 238,700 (30.7%)
Eugene McCarthy - 209,695 (27.0%)

In the first primary where McCarthy was running against active candidates, he placed a dismal third. McCarthy's Indiana plan had been called the 'Rural Strategy' by his campaign. The plan was that McCarthy would focus on racking up his margins in rural counties, leaving Kennedy and Indiana's governor and favourite son, Roger Branigin, to compete in the major cities. This strategy backfired, as a bitter internal rivalry between McCarthy's national campaign and Indiana campaign left the candidate's schedule completely unplanned. Many times, McCarthy could only put together a crowd of a few hundred, or even a few dozen people, as his appearance had not been advertised to wherever he went on any given day. McCarthy barely won in Adams and Wells counties, nearly losing to Kennedy. His best result was in Monroe County, where the college town of Bloomington was located. Many of the subrurban voters around Indianapolis who might otherwise have voted for him instead went to Branigin. There is some disagreement on who would have won if Branigin had not been a candidate. Exit polling indicated that in a race between just Kennedy and McCarthy, Kennedy would have won with around sixty percent. Veterans of the McCarthy campaign in Indiana have argued that that number is not accurate, as they would have used a different strategy focused on suburban voters if Branigin had not been a candidate.

Oregon

Eugene McCarthy - 163,990 (44.0%)
Robert Kennedy - 141,631 (38.0%)

Following another defeat to Kennedy in the Nebraska primary, McCarthy restructured his campaign for the West Coast. Under the command of his new campaign coordinator, Tom Finney, McCarthy began adopting populist rhetoric, and finally decided on a theme for his campaign, titled New Politics. Demographically speaking, Oregon was ideal for McCarthy, being one of the most suburban states in America and with one of the lowest black populations. This was something frequently lamented by Kennedy and his team during their time in the state. Appropriately enough, McCarthy did exceptionally well in the college town of Eugene, in Lane County. For the first time in the year's primaries, McCarthy won the most populous city in a state. In this case, Portland.

The 1968 Oregon Democratic primary was the first election ever lost by a Kennedy. Lyndon Johnson remained on the ballot in Oregon, and placed third with twelve percent of the vote.

California

Eugene McCarthy - 1,624,316 (48.6%)
Robert Kennedy - 1,428,903 (42.8%)
Thomas Lynch - 227,177 (6.8%)

California was the culmination of the Democratic primaries; it was considered the most important by both the McCarthy and Kennedy campaigns, and Kennedy had pledged to drop out of the race if he lost there. Despite entering the state with a lead in the polls, Kennedy also agreed to a debate with McCarthy, something he had been actively avoiding up until that point. In California, McCarthy turned to his preferred campaigning medium of television to do most of the work for him, while Kennedy prioritized in-person campaign rallies. Kennedy rested his hopes on racial and ethnic minority voters to carry him forward, particularly with blacks and Latinos. However, Kennedy's affinity for black and Latino voters caused a white backlash against his candidacy to begin to stir. Polling remained inconclusive with less than a week until voting day, but the debate proved decisive. McCarthy's clear victory over Kennedy in the debate triggered the feared white backlash. Turnout was somewhat higher than expected in McCarthy's favour. Likewise, many voters would otherwise have voted for Humphrey's surrogate, California Attorney General Thomas Lynch, instead voted for McCarthy. The impact of the anti-Kennedy surge was most strongly felt in the Central Valley region, where closer-than-expected margins in counties Kennedy won, and a few upset wins for McCarthy in counties expected to go to Kennedy, such as Fresno, signified the broader McCarthy victory elsewhere in the state.

Spoiler: OTL California Results

California

Robert Kennedy - 1,472,166 (46.3%)
Eugene McCarthy - 1,329,301 (41.8%)
Thomas Lynch - 380,286 (12.0%)

 

[CountDVB]

Looking quite fascinating thus far

 

[The Lethargic Lett]

Two - what if he had been VP? Have had idea of VP openly challenging President but refusing to resign.

While doing some further reading, I found that McCarthy actually commented on this. He said that if he was in Humphrey's position he would have refused to comment in favour of the war, and then would have quietly retired in 1968. Of course, him saying that off-hand isn't necessarily the same as him doing it if he had been in that position, but that was his take.

 

[Kennedy Forever]

While doing some further reading, I found that McCarthy actually commented on this. He said that if he was in Humphrey's position he would have refused to comment in favour of the war, and then would have quietly retired in 1968. Of course, him saying that off-hand isn't necessarily the same as him doing it if he had been in that position, but that was his take.

Certainly interesting to think about

 

[The Lethargic Lett]

Chapter Four - Don't Stop the Carnival

Following Eugene McCarthy’s victory in the California primary, the assassination attempt that incapacitated Bobby Kennedy, and his ensuing endorsement of McCarthy, the last primary, held in Illinois, felt like an anti-climax. With voting held on June 11th, McCarthy trounced Hubert Humphrey with nearly sixty percent of the vote. This was in spite of the fact that he had not canvassed the state once, with his and Humphrey’s campaigns postponed out of respect for Bobby Kennedy’s tenuous condition: the surgeons were able to stop most of the internal bleeding, but he was under constant watch, and it was unclear if he would ever be able to walk again [1]. Despite McCarthy’s commanding margin of victory in the primary, the Illinois delegation remained in the iron grip of Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, who would be hosting the Democratic National Convention in the coming months.

McCarthy, with his new detail of secret service bodyguards in tow [2], reopened his campaign on June 12th. His address was held in the Senate Caucus Room, where both he and Kennedy had announced their candidacies. He began by recounting the events that had happened throughout the campaign: Johnson dropping out, the opening of negotiations with North Vietnam, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the ensuing riots, and the attempted assassination of Bobby Kennedy. McCarthy expressed that the crisis of American society had grown even deeper and more intense, and that, “We call for change in America because without change we fear for our nation’s future.” McCarthy claimed that the peace negotiations in Paris were making no progress because the Johnson Administration was afraid of change, and overly dismissive of the concerns of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He then pivoted to a moral-philosophical analysis of urban despair, lecturing that, “Discontent in America grows as much from a sense of powerlessness as from as from poverty. It is a discontent with the present state of our democracy [3].” McCarthy’s speech was well received by the assembled journalists, but his usual glib style of answering questions soured the mood somewhat. When asked if he would be willing to debate Humphrey, McCarthy replied, “If at some point he feels the positions I am taking ought to be challenged, why, we will then have to decide how best to present the difference, or to receive his challenge, to the public for their judgement.” When asked to present his argument for why delegates should vote for him rather than Humphrey at the convention, he said, “I don’t think I will make that argument to them. I simply ask them to be responsible delegates and to make the judgement that has to be made in August, which is a question of what issues the Democratic Party is going to support at that time; and then to ask the question as to which candidate is likely best to carry those issues to the country. I just ask them for a reserved judgement [4].”

And with that, the McCarthy campaign resumed.

McCarthy at a rally in the latter days of his primary campaign.
​

With the primaries over, McCarthy entered Humphrey’s domain of party bosses, backroom backslapping, entrenched political machinery, and prior commitments. In other words, it was everything McCarthy hated about politics and everything he refused to participate in, considering it degrading and demagogic showmanship.

While McCarthy and Kennedy had been competing in the primaries, Humphrey had been quietly gathering support in the non-primary states, which controlled the majority of the delegates who would be going to the convention, and who would decide the Democratic nominee. Humphrey had been too late to enter most of the primaries, and had chosen to work the delegate system instead; Kennedy had entered in the primaries in the belief that by winning in every one he competed in, he would be able to present himself to the delegates as the most likely to win in the general election; McCarthy had entered the primaries as the only way to challenge President Johnson, and, refusing to concede anything to a Kennedy, continued on after Bobby had entered. Left unopposed in the non-primary delegate hunt, Humphrey had obtained the firm support of the Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Maryland, Delaware, Montana, and Utah delegations, as well as the tacit support of nearly every other state in the union. However, outside these core states, loyalty to Humphrey was a varied and fragile thing. In New England and the west, McCarthy had some of his greatest support, and his volunteers threatened to take control of the delegate slates. In the South, McCarthy had some of his most enthusiastic supporters, but they had failed to penetrate the political machinery. Despite this, the Southern party bosses were particularly sceptical of Humphrey, and expected to be appeased if they were to support him.

McCarthy’s next challenge represented a transition from the primary states to the non-primary states, in the form of New York’s delegate primaries.

New York did not have a presidential preference primary, but a primary had been introduced to allow voters to directly elect many of the delegates who would go to the convention. One hundred and twenty-three delegates were chosen in the primaries by the voters. The primaries were divided by House district, with the voters in each House district having to choose among various candidates to fill three delegate spots, as well as three alternate delegate spots. There was no indication on the ballots which delegate candidate supported which presidential candidate, with it being left up to the campaigns to try and communicate to the voters which delegates candidate supported their preferred presidential candidate. However, there was no rule stopping a delegate identified with one candidate to ultimately vote for another candidate at the convention. Because of this complicated system, each presidential campaign had to effectively run an separate delegate campaign in each of New York’s forty-one House districts. On top of all that, a further sixty-five ‘at-large’ delegates were appointed directly by the state party’s committee, and an extra two delegate spots were reserved for the chairman and chairwoman. The state committee could appoint the at-large delegates to whichever candidate they wanted, and had no legal obligation to appoint them in proportion to the popular vote. In New York, the party chairman was John J. Burns, a Kennedy loyalist who was more interested in appeasing the rest of the committee than guaranteeing a proportionate division of at-large delegates.

Cutting through the byzantine labyrinth of New York politics was the Coalition for a Democratic Alternative (CDA). Along with Allard Lowenstein’s Conference of Concerned Democrats (CCD), the New York-based CDA had been one of the most prominent Dump Johnson groups in America. Headed by Sarah Kovner, Harold M. Ickes [5], and Eleanor French, the CDA had pledged to give total access to their organization (and, more importantly, their organization’s sizable budget) to whoever decided to run against Johnson, and had federated into the McCarthy campaign once he had declared his candidacy in the autumn of 1967. But, their enthusiasm quickly turned to bemusement, when no one in the national headquarters bothered to contact them. Left to their own devices, the CDA insulated their resources from the national effort, and began acting as an autonomous, Mid-Atlantic arm of the McCarthy campaign. Fearing that time, money, and volunteers would be squandered by the anarchic national headquarters, the CDA had sent aide to the primary states without any consultation from the national headquarters, while at the same time preparing for their own state’s delegate primaries. By the time McCarthy arrived in New York to campaign, the CDA had already recruited and registered one hundred and twenty-three pro-McCarthy delegate candidates, as well as s slate of potential at-large candidates. Working with other McCarthy supporters in the state , the CDA had prepared high-profile primary challenges for the Democratic Senate nomination, and for the New York’s fifth congressional district. In the former, Paul O’Dwyer, the New York City Councilman representing Manhattan, would be running against Nassau County Executive Eugene Nickerson (a Kennedy supporter and the choice of the state party bosses), and Representative Joseph Resnick (an ostensible Humphrey supporter who was advocating for the renomination of President Johnson). In the latter, Allard Lowenstein himself would be running against Albert Vorspan, a more moderate anti-war candidate supported by the state party bosses.

McCarthy began his campaigning in New York as one would expect: with an address to the Community Council of Greater New York where he discussed the history of poverty in Ancient Greece and Rome, and a description of welfare as it was practiced by medieval monasteries. Kovner, Ickes, and French had not even spoken to McCarthy up to that point, but Tom Finney, vindicated as the new campaign coordinator after the primary victories in Oregon and California, encouraged him into making appearances with his delegate candidates. Despite Finney’s insistence, McCarthy continued to run a lax schedule, only appearing with delegate candidates in a handful of swing districts [6]. Meanwhile, his ever-growing entourage of journalists, authors, academics, and poets had mutated into a horde of sycophantic flatterers, who restricted the campaign team’s access to the candidate and gave incredibly overly-optimistic advice, with McCarthy engaging in a series of blunders: he remarked that most Americans were ready to embrace unilateral withdrawal from Vietnam (but hastened to add that he did not support it), and breached diplomatic decorum by mulling over the idea of going to visit the peace negotiations while they were still in progress. When asked about his stance on gun control in the wake of Kennedy’s shooting, McCarthy opined that, “It’s something that I think ought to be thoroughly and calmly discussed in the Senate [7].” He also remained aloof to black voters, only visiting the Pittsburgh ghetto, and allowing his bodyguards to veto events planned in the ghettos of Newark, Detroit, and Los Angeles, among others. Despite this, polling indicated that McCarthy’s support among black voters was skyrocketing following Kennedy’s incapacitation and endorsement, but his core demographic remained white, middle class suburbanites [8].

Despite these gaffes, when the votes were counted on June 18th, it was clear that McCarthy – or at least the CDA – had walloped the competition. Out of the one hundred and twenty-three spots, over seventy McCarthy delegates had been elected, with Kennedy delegates coming in second in the high twenties. Uncommitted delegates placed in the high teens, while Humphrey barely got over ten. In an upset, O’Dwyer narrowly won the Senate nomination despite many expecting him to come in third, while Lowenstein handily won his primary in the fifth district. Despite these accomplishments, it was a bittersweet victory. Out of the sixty-five at-large delegates, McCarthy was granted only fifteen and a half of them, and of those, only seven were confirmed to be McCarthy supporters who could be expected to vote for him at the convention. The rest were officially uncommitted, but were made up entirely of known Humphrey supporters. Expecting sixty percent of the at-large delegates to proportionately reflect the results of the primaries but willing to compromise at forty percent, the CDA had instead only been given ten percent as reliable votes. The committee’s ruling resulted in a walkout by McCarthy supporters, and a disastrous split in the state party which lasted for the rest of the year [9].

After the New York primaries, McCarthy began to see old victories slip out of his grasp as well. While the New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Oregon, and California delegations were legally bound to him, he suffered greatly in the states where no such laws were in place; in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Illinois, the party bosses, who had retained control of their delegations, completely ignored their states’ primaries, and appointed overwhelmingly pro-Humphrey slates. McCarthy was further pummeled by the fact that, of Kennedy’s three-hundred and one delegates, only about a third had officially switched allegiances to McCarthy. The majority had declared that they were supporting Humphrey, while a minority group declared itself uncommitted, in the hopes that Ted Kennedy could be drafted if the convention were to become deadlocked [10].

Meanwhile, in many of the non-primary states, party regulars manipulated the rules of their convoluted systems to try and minimize the influence of McCarthy’s – often more numerous, but always less political experienced – grassroots supporters. In the non-primary states, delegates were determined at the state convention by the state delegates. The state delegates were in turn chosen through county caucuses, district conventions, and committee meetings. Tactics that a McCarthy supporter could be expected to face included, but were not limited to: district and caucus chairmen (almost always pro-Humphrey) illegally leaving the voting rolls open for several days past voting, without telling the McCarthy supporters, in order to search for more Humphrey voters to add to the roster, then being absolved by the pro-Humphrey state committee for doing so; stacking the county credentials committees with pro-Humphrey supporters, then scouring the county records for pedantic reasons to disqualify McCarthy voters; seating McCarthy supporters at the back of meeting halls and refusing to supply microphones, so that the pro-Humphrey chair could have plausible deniability to ignore their requests for recognition, and weakening their strength in voice votes; confiscation of pro-McCarthy campaign materials in meeting halls while not equally enforcing confiscation against Humphrey material; and, most commonly amending the delegate selection rules to weight counties differently to give preference to small rural counties likely to vote for Humphrey, using the weighted advantage to achieve a majority at the state convention, the use the pro-Humphrey artificial majority to appoint nearly one hundred percent of the at-large delegate positions to fellow pro-Humphrey delegate candidates, then appoint a negligible number of McCarthy supporters as token representation (usually between two to six out of several dozen), who could then be forced to vote for Humphrey anyway through the pro-Humphrey majority invoking the unit rule [11].

It was clear that if McCarthy was to win the nomination, he would have to rely on more than the party bosses' sense of fairness.

McCarthy with Paul O'Dwyer, one of his political protégés and the 1968 Democratic nominee for the Senate in New York.​

Following the New York delegate primaries, McCarthy prepared to spend the rest of June crossing the nation to attend various Democratic state conventions. Two different strategies were presented to him by his advisors. Stephen A. Mitchell, the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee under Adlai Stevenson, proposed a massive grassroots effort to be controlled by Curtis Gans. Gans would direct McCarthy’s supporters in targeted mass demonstrations, to pressure delegates into thinking that McCarthy had the best chance of winning in the general election. The demonstrations would be accompanied by a mass media campaign, that could be financed by consolidating the dozens of bank accounts where the Stevensonian Wall Street money sat inert. This would culminate in them challenging every single motion and rule at the national convention, followed by recommending a more democratic alternative. This would force the party bosses to either publicly support an undemocratic rule set, or force them to concede and leave themselves vulnerable to the chaos of democracy. Tom Finney argued that that would only antagonize the delegates, and that McCarthy should instead work the system behind the scenes, just like Humphrey was. Finney wanted to convince the party bosses and regulars that, despite his challenge against Johnson, McCarthy had been a loyal party man for twenty years who knew how to cooperate and play along. McCarthy never clearly approved of either plan, and they were both half-implemented going forward, without any clear direction or chain of command.

McCarthy began his convention tour starting in Idaho before making his way east. He stopped in Arizona, New Mexico, and the District of Columbia, before through most of the Midwestern states. After resting for a few days in Minnesota, McCarthy returned west, attending the conventions in Washington, Colorado, and Utah, before visiting Pennsylvania, and then heading South. McCarthy notably drew larger crowds in Virginia than any other candidate, but the delegates there were well beyond his grasp. McCarthy made no particular appeal to the delegates at the state conventions; he opened with the same anti-war message he had been using sine New Hampshire, evoked his popular support and Kennedy’s endorsement, and then spent the rest of his time not discussing his candidacy. Rather, he focused on the nature of the Democratic Party, and how it had failed in its goals of international peace and domestic prosperity that it had laid out for itself at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Humphrey was frequently at the state conventions as well, but no debates were held, and the two men completely ignored each other. In his speeches, Humphrey emphasized what he called “participation politics,” and encouraged the average American citizen to become more involved in the political process. McCarthy’s chief speech-writer, Jeremy Larner, remarked that Humphrey was a hypocrite for calling for participation politics when, in his name, “party regulars were closing caucuses, stealing delegations, and ignoring primaries…” and that whenever McCarthy discussed an issue, “the next day Humphrey would say the same thing, and twice as sincerely, just as if he were not party of the government whose inaction he deplored.” But, despite the fact that Larner and the speech-writing team had prepared an entire booklet of Humphrey’s weak points, McCarthy refused to use it. He claimed that if he went after Humphrey, and if Humphrey then went on to win the nomination but lose the general election, that he would be blamed. Finney suspected that the excuse of party unity was to cover for the fact that, despite their rocky relationship, McCarthy believed that Humphrey was the only other candidate in 1968 who had the potential of being a better president than himself.

As McCarthy continued his tour, the grassroots fight continued. The greatest success for McCarthy’s volunteers was in the western states, where the party regulars were not as firmly entrenched. In Colorado, McCarthy did not have an official organization. Rather, his supporters composed half of the Coalition for an Alternative Candidate (CAC). Formed in January of 1968, the anti-war CAC supported McCarthy by default, but amicably split into two groups when Kennedy entered the race. With Kennedy’s withdrawal and endorsement of McCarthy, the two halves just as amicably reunited, and together obtained a narrow majority of their states’ delegates. In North Dakota, McCarthy supporters had failed to set up an effective campaign anywhere but the city of Fargo, but there they received landslide numbers. At the North Dakota convention, the McCarthy supporters were in a minority, but were at least granted a number of delegates proportionate to their numbers. In New Mexico, McCarthy supporters were led by Sterling Black, a state senator and the son of Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. Fighting through the dirty tricks of the party regulars and allying with the Kennedy supporters in the state, Black was able to pass a proportional vote proposal that gave the combined anti-war delegates a slim majority. Despite these gains, McCarthy was still clearly outmatched in the great delegate hunt, and his tour was turning into a disaster: in Oklahoma, he argued that he should only receive one or two delegates when they were prepared to give him six, and in Michigan, he refused to pledge that he would unconditionally endorse the Democratic nominee regardless of who it was, and mused that he would support the Republican Nelson Rockefeller under certain conditions [12].

The pre-convention grassroots effort culminated in ‘McCarthy Day,’ held on August 15th. In thirty major cities across the nation, massive rallies were held in support of McCarthy. The candidate himself appeared at a Madison Square Garden rally that sold out completely and packed the venue. However, much of the goodwill that might have come with McCarthy Day was squandered by his reaction to the Warsaw Pact’s Invasion of Czechoslovakia shortly after, remarking, “I do not see this as a major world crisis. It is likely to have more serious consequences for the Communist Party in Russia than in Czechoslovakia. I saw no need for a midnight meeting of the U.S. National Security Council.” While McCarthy may have been technically correct that the invasion was an internal crisis of the Soviet bloc, his failure to clearly condemn it, or treat it with any sort of gravity, severely alienated him from ethnically Eastern European delegates, and those who were wavering between Humphrey and McCarthy.

And it was in this atmosphere that the prelude to the Democratic National Convention began.

"Don't make no waves, don't back no losers." Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago with a large number of his supporters.
​

In the week leading up to the convention, the political forces that would come to a head were represented by seven men:

President Lyndon Johnson. The President now regretted his previous declaration that he would not seek a second term. Uncertain of how to proceed, Johnson would watch the convention from his Texas ranch, and would wait for an opportunity to whip up an artificial draft movement that could secure his renomination. Despite his physical absence, Johnson still controlled the proceedings of the convention to the most minute detail. Men loyal to him were chairing the three pre-convention committees, chairing the convention itself, and hosting the convention. Even the seating, the order and length of speeches, and the daily agendas had been drawn up to Johnson’s specifications. If all went well, Johnson would arrive on the second day of the convention – his birthday – where he would show a documentary film listing all of his accomplishments [13], make a speech to the convention making himself available as a draft candidate, then have a birthday party. At that point, if all went well, he would be renominated by the party bosses, win re-election, end the war with honour, and save America. If all went well.

Mayor Richard Daley. The archetype of big city party bosses everywhere, Mayor Daley was as effective a politician as he was intolerant of protestors; anti-war groups had been blocked from obtaining permits for public demonstration, and military-grade defences had been set up around the convention hall, the International Amphitheatre, in anticipation of violence. While Daley promised Johnson that he had the clout to whip up a draft movement, the President was not his first choice as the Democratic nominee. Daley was privately opposed to the Vietnam War, but considered McCarthy’s upheaval of the established order of things disqualifying as a candidate. If given the opportunity, Daley would try to deadlock the convention and put forward Ted Kennedy as a compromise candidate. Daley considered Humphrey a pushover, and the weakest of all the possible candidates, and would only support him as a last resort.

Governor John Connally. The Governor of Texas and Lyndon Johnson’s protégé, John Connally came to the convention with split allegiances. Connally was the de facto leader of all the Southern delegations, and they would do what he said, within reason. Using the threat of a Johnson draft, Connally attempted to squeeze as many concessions out of Humphrey as possible, and planned to actually draft Johnson when the opportunity arose. Beyond his support for Johnson, Connally’s ultimate loyalty was to himself, and he would abandon any other obligation if it meant securing the vice presidency. To that end, Connally expected Humphrey to choose him for the vice presidency. As for the policy concessions, the most important one for Connally and the South was the continuation of the unit rule, which allowed states to vote as a single bloc, and, given the South’s tendency to all support the same candidate, gave them greater influence over the convention. The Saturday before the convention, Richard Goodwin, once again working for McCarthy, held a meeting with Connally in order to negotiate a deal with the devil: in exchange for Southern support for McCarthy, Connally would be made the vice presidential nominee, would have a say in cabinet appointments, and would have McCarthy’s word that he would continue Johnson’s fight to make the two Southerners Abe Fortas and Homer Thornberry Supreme Court Chief Justice and Supreme Court Justice, respectively. Working to draft Johnson and distasteful of Humphrey, Connally did not refuse the offer outright, little did he know, Goodwin had come without McCarthy’s permission [14].

Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Having put aside his qualms with the Vietnam War for years in order to appease Johnson, the presidency itself was finally within Humphrey’s grasp. Rather than inspire any confidence, this resulted in a crippling political paralysis. The President demanded total loyalty, but his lukewarm support in return was the only thing that gave Humphrey any chance of securing the nomination [15]. While Humphrey offered total loyalty, it made him unacceptable to McCarthy’s supporters, and while his instincts were anti-war, he had vociferously defended the Vietnam War since 1965, and continued to do so. Humphrey believed that if he could navigate the final hurdle that was the 1968 convention, that he could finally be his own man.

Senator Ted Kennedy. With Bobby Kennedy hospitalized, any hope that remains of having a Kennedy at the top of the ballot lied with Ted. However, the Kennedys were in an uncomfortable position: officially, they were supporting McCarthy, but they had put in very little effort to support him after California. Bobby was already beginning to regret his endorsement of McCarthy, but could not retract it without being politically pilloried, so the two brothers, one absent and one present, walked a political tightrope. Ted was content to support McCarthy, while Bobby and the rest of the family encouraged him to take advantage of McCarthy’s weakness to try and position himself as a compromise candidate. Many of McCarthy’s prominent convention supporters, such as Senator George McGovern of South Dakota [14], and Speaker of the California State Assembly Jesse Unruh, were more inclined toward the Kennedys to begin with, and could be relied upon to switch allegiances if Humphrey and McCarthy reached a stalemate. Kennedy had also received accolades for drafting the anti-war plank that would be proposed during the pre-convention committee hearings. However, despite all this, Ted would make no moves to intentionally undermine McCarthy. He would accept the nomination only if Humphrey and McCarthy were genuinely deadlocked.

Senator Eugene McCarthy. On the eve of the convention, McCarthy was the only other candidate with any chance of defeating Humphrey, and even then, it was an unlikely prospect. It was unclear if Humphrey would be able to win on the first ballot, but it seemed likely. McCarthy came to the convention with two goals in mind, those being to force the party to end its support of the Vietnam War – either by having them adopt a peace plank in the platform or by becoming the nominee himself – and to use his New Politics to reform the party and the political process in general. With slim odds before him, McCarthy took on a passive role, and made no further efforts on his own behalf. Like Adlai Stevenson before him, he waited for the nomination to come to him, and left his fate in the hands of his supporters and God. Namely, this meant his floor manager, Pat Lucey, and his special envoy, Richard Goodwin. After a long absence due to sickness, Abigail McCarthy was also on the campaign trail with her husband again, and remained the only person in the world who could force him to make a decision he did not want to make.

Lastly, Governor Lester Maddox. The Governor of Georgia and one of the various favourite son candidates running in the South, Maddox was a segregationist conservative Democrat who was treating his favourite son candidacy as a genuine effort to try and win the nomination. Maddox represented those reactionary Democrats who were beyond the control of even John Connally, and who would likely abandon the Democrats to support the third party efforts of the archsegregationist George Wallace in the general election.

With these forces in place, three-hundred and thirty delegates were split evenly between three committees to discuss rules, credentials, and the Democratic platform, before the convention began in earnest. The committees would discuss matters, present developed opposing viewpoints, then send them to the convention to be voted on by the delegates if an agreement could not be reached. It was here that Stephen A. Mitchell’s grassroots opposition plan made its debut.

Governor Lester Maddox of Georgia, making his policy positions quite clear. Maddox was a segregationist conservative Democrat who was a minor candidate at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. His Georgia delegation was the focal point of many fights between the delegates at the convention.
​

On the Rules Committee, the McCarthy forces advocated for the abolition of the unit rule, claiming that it was representative of the authoritarian bossism that controlled the party process. Humphrey had flip-flopped between his personal support of abolishing the unit rule, and his promises to the South that it would be kept. Left without clear instructions, the delegates loyal to Humphrey agreed with McCarthy’s delegates, and put forward a majority report in favour of abolishing the unit rule.

On the Credentials Committee, McCarthy supporters challenged the credentials of no less than fifteen state delegations, citing unfairness against them in the selection process, and attacking the undemocratic methods which had been used decide the delegates. Governor Richard Hughes of New Jersey, a Johnson loyalist and war supporter, oversaw the proceedings. Hearings started on Monday and lasted longer than a full business day, each day, until Friday. Using the precedence of the 1964 Democratic National Convention ruling that had banned racial discrimination in the delegate selection process, the McCarthy supporters were able to eject the all-white Mississippi delegation and replace it with a racially integrated one, and cut the numbers of the all-white Georgia delegation in half. The second half was granted to a pro-McCarthy slate headed by Julian Bond, a black civil rights activist and member of the Georgia House of Representatives. Trying to rally Southern support after his supporters had voted in favour of recommending the abolition of the unit rule, Humphrey helped protect the other Southern delegations, but also supported the removal of the Mississippi delegation and the division of the Georgia delegation. Humphrey’s middle stance pleased no one, and he received no credit in either camp. Hughes concluded the week-long hearings with a recommendation that the delegate-selection process be completely reformed by 1972, but he refused to rule on most of the credentials votes, instead deferring it to the convention to vote on.

The greatest battle was on the Platform Committee, where it was to be decided what the party’s official position on the Vietnam War would be. Once again, Humphrey was stuck between his loyalty to Johnson and his predisposition to supporting the peace plank: Johnson demanded that Humphrey could only support a Vietnam plank on the condition that it was approved by both Secretary of State Dean Rusk and National Security Advisor Walt Rostow. However, after hearing the peace plank, Humphrey believed he could reach a compromise based on it. The peace plank’s four main points were a bombing halt of North Vietnam while continuing to support South Vietnam, a phased mutual withdrawal of American and North Vietnamese forces, the unilateral beginning of military withdrawal, and a call for the South Vietnamese government to form a “broadly representative” government with the National Liberation Front. Humphrey negotiated with the McCarthy delegates to soften the language of their plank while keeping their policy proposals the same, and estimated they agreed on eighty percent of the proposals. He then contacted Rusk and Rostow, who both approved, as well as Connally and the Southern governors, who blandly replied that, “they could live with it.” Despite being on the verge of an agreement, Johnson sabotaged the whole affair. Meeting with the Platform Committee’s chair, House Majority Whip Hale Boggs of Louisiana, Johnson denounced the peace plank as unacceptable, and demanded that an administration plank in favour of his own exact policies be put forward as the majority position [16]. Phoning the President in a desperate attempt to clear up the matter, Humphrey confirmed he got Rusk and Rostow’s approval, to which Johnson replied, “Well, this plank just undercuts our whole policy, and, by God, the Democratic party ought not to be doing that to me and you ought not to be doing it; you’ve been a part of this policy.” Despite being warned that, “You must stay the course on Vietnam if you expect to be nominated,” Humphrey, for the first time in three years, trusted his own instincts and stood up to the President. Believing that the election would be unwinnable without the support of the united anti-war faction of the party, Humphrey thought that if he supported the peace plank but held a moderate position himself, that he could unify the party [17]. Despite this, Boggs narrowly forced through the administration plank as the majority position, although both planks would be presented to the convention to vote on.

Thus, the pre-convention committees concluded, having resolved very few of the disagreements that the convention itself would now have to face.

Meanwhile, the New Left had arrived in Chicago to protest the Democratic National Convention, in significantly less numbers than they were hoping for. Under the auspices of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (the Mobe), David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, and Rennie Davis, were organized a protest they claimed would have three hundred thousand attendees. Privately, they expected around one hundred thousand, but in actuality, only five thousand initially came, and would peak at around ten thousand. Most were scared off by Mayor Daley’s refusal to grant demonstration permits, and his threats of a crackdown against any protest. The low numbers were also influenced, in part, by McCarthy’s insistence that his college corps stay at home. McCarthy did not want the New Left to take advantage of his supporters by seducing them to radicalism, so instead he had encouraged them to become involved in local political activism instead for the length of the convention. The New Left’s protests began on Friday, August 23rd, three days before the beginning of the convention. Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies arrived to nominate a pig named Pigasus for president, and demanded he be taken to Lyndon Johnson’s ranch to be given a policy briefing. At the same time, the Women Strike for Peace (WSP) held a picket of the Hilton Hotel across from the International Amphitheatre, where the convention delegates and candidates were staying. Lincoln Park became the unofficial headquarters of the protestors, gathering there each day, and being pushed out by a police-enforced curfew each night. The next day, the Yippies’ planned Festival of Life was dispersed by the police, leading to a street riot. The violence escalated from there, with some protestors throwing debris at the police – especially at night – and the police indiscriminately attacking protestors in return. Caught in the middle were the reporters and journalists covering the action, who were attacked by the police nearly as much as the protestors were. As the convention officially began, the violence in the streets only grew worse.

"Pigs with the pig." To the delight of the Yippies, Pigasus, their 'presidential candidate,' was arrested and hauled away by the police. A second pig was soon found to act as his replacement.​

Monday, August 26th. The convention opened at 7:31p.m. with a syncopated rock version of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” as sung by Aretha Franklin. Following Humphrey’s decision to support the peace plank during the Platform Committee hearings, Johnson had entirely abandoned his vice president. Likewise, Daley had put aside any thoughts of supporting Humphrey, and instead tried to organize a draft of Ted Kennedy, with a draft of the President being his back-up plan. Working behind the scenes, Stephen Smith, the Kennedys’ brother-in-law, privately met with Humphrey delegates to discuss the possibility of Ted Kennedy as a compromise candidate, and received encouraging support. Despite this, Kennedy refused to allow anyone to organize on his behalf until after the first ballot. Meeting with Smith, McCarthy conceded that he likely did not have the support to win, and would withdraw and support Kennedy if it comes to a second ballot. But, he gratuitously hastened to add, “While I’m doing this for Teddy, I never could have done it for Bobby [18].”

Serving as the chair of the convention was House Majority Leader Carl Albert. Seated closest to him were the pro-Johnson delegations, with Daley and the Illinois delegation being front and centre. The anti-war delegations had been seated in the back, with their microphones set on mute.

The first order of business was the majority report of the Rules Committee to abolish the unit rule. Southern delegates heckled and shouted down Humphrey delegates as sellouts for previously promising to maintain the unit rule. After a bitter floor fight between Southern and McCarthy delegates, the final vote was delayed. The Credentials Committee’s proposals were next. The McCarthy delegates initially demanded that Lester Maddox’s Georgia delegation be expelled entirely and replaced with Julian Bond’s, with the South demanding the opposite in return. Going even further, some more radical McCarthy delegates were demanded that all of Humphrey’s delegates should have been removed. A motion was put forward to split the Texas delegation much like Georgia’s. at 11:00p.m., another riot broke out in Lincoln Park, and the first day of the convention was adjourned at 3:00a.m., without any resolution on either the rules or credentials fights. Johnson was still awake, drafting his unfinished address to the convention, when the proceedings ended.

Tuesday, August 27th, Lyndon Johnson’s birthday. The President had a plane on stand-by to bring him to Chicago. Several more floor fights broke out over the previous day’s votes. Texas and the other Southern states survive their credentials challenges, leading to a walkout by many black delegates. Both the Maddox and Bond Georgia delegations are accepted as each representing half of their state. Daley contacted Ted Kennedy to tell him that he had enough support to guarantee a second ballot if they entered his name then and there, but Kennedy still refused. Johnson is still undecided on if he would come. With Daley still uncommitted, Connally believed he could force Humphrey’s hand. Meeting with the candidate, Connally and the Southern governors demanded that a Southerner be nominated as the vice president, with the obvious implication that it should be Connally. Seemingly oblivious to the Governor’s ambitions, Humphrey agreed, and declared that he would choose the liberal Senator Fred R. Harris of Oklahoma as his running mate. Stunned by the bizarre choice and his rejection, Connally instead suggested the former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Cyrus Vance of West Virginia [19]. Once Humphrey left the room, Connally discussed the possibility of drafting Johnson to the Southern governors, an idea which they unanimously rejected. Afraid that Johnson’s unpopularity would hurt their down ballot efforts, they refuse to support a draft. Johnson is informed of this, and a string of other catastrophes: the Texas delegation had been harassed and heckled for entire day, even when out on the streets, as a means to harass the President; a new poll came out indicating that Johnson would do no better as the Democratic than either Humphrey or McCarthy; Daley had called the President to warn him that there was not enough support among the party bosses to guarantee his renomination; his Secret Service bodyguards warned that they could not guarantee his safety, and that he would likely be physically attacked by protestors if spotted, and, worst of all, the unit rule had been abolished in a floor vote. Without the unit rule, Johnson would have to impress a majority of the delegates, rather than a handful of party bosses, in order to secure his renomination. Vacillating for the rest of the day, Johnson ultimately decided not to go, but also refused to support Humphrey for his impertinence in supporting the peace plank, leaving the Southern delegates rudderless [20].

As rowdy delegates were being dragged out of the convention hall, and as reporters were being pushed aside by Daley’s security guards, yet another riot broke out in in Lincoln Park. At 1:00a.m., Hale Boggs started reading the administration plank, but was drowned out by yelling from the anti-war delegations. Believing that the late reading was a plot to hide the plank from the public by intentionally voting on it late, the anti-war delegations demanded an adjournment, which was eventually granted after the yelling made continuing impossible. Gone for most of the evening to attend the wedding anniversary party of his son, Humphrey was unaware of exactly how close his massive lead was to total collapse.

Wednesday, August 28th. Humphrey was being stonewalled. Both Daley and Governor John McKeithen of Louisiana had cancelled their meetings with him. Humphrey was suspicious, and began making contingencies for a second ballot, but continued to believe that he was ultimately the only acceptable candidate to both Daley and the South. His only fear is that Ted Kennedy may be able to win if he cannot secure a quick majority. However, Humphrey does not have much time to think about his options as his staff, bloated with several decades’ worth of personal friends, advisors, and confidantes, have packed his schedule with relatively insignificant meetings.

On the floor, the vote on the party’s Vietnam policy is held. By the narrowest of margins, the minority plank won out; the administration plank was rejected, and the Democratic nominee would support a platform rejecting the policies of the previous Democratic nominee [21]. At the same time that McCarthy made his first appearance on the convention floor to celebrate the peace plank’s victory, and Humphrey was having an interview with Times-Life magazine to explain how his support for the peace plank was not a repudiation of the President, Connally was looking for Richard Goodwin. Having lost on the unit rule and the Vietnam platform, Johnson had realized that not only had he lost control of the party, but that every possible candidate was opposed to him on some level, and ironically, unlike four years earlier, McCarthy truly was shaping up to be everyone’s second choice. Consigning himself to political oblivion, Johnson gave Connally his blessing to take whatever course of action he thought was best, even if that meant an alliance with McCarthy [22]. With the plank battle over, a recess was called at 5:00p.m., with the convention to reconvene at 6:30p.m., to choose the Democratic nominee for president. As McCarthy and Connally held a meeting on the eve of the vote, and delegates prepared for the hours-long process of nominating and seconding speeches, ten thousand protestors had gathered at Grant Park, for one of the only protests that Daley had granted a permit for. An hour into the event, a protestor climbed a flagpole in the park in order to flip Old Glory upside-down, resulting in a group of police officers dragging him down and beating him senseless. Enraged, the protestors once again began throwing debris at the police, which trigged a harsh reprisal. Dave Dellinger began calling for a peaceful march on the International Amphitheatre, while Tom Hayden called for a guerilla war against the city, with Rennie Davis having been knocked out by the police. Those who stayed in the park were beaten, while those who tried to leave were also beaten, with it all being broadcast on live television. Eventually, the anti-war protestors were able to attach themselves to an unrelated, Poor People’s Campaign march which Daley had granted a permit to. Chanting “The Whole World is Watching,” the protestors made their way to the International Amphitheatre and the Hilton Hotel, only to be caught in a pincer maneuver by the police, in the most vicious incident of police violence of the whole convention. Above it all was Eugene McCarthy and John Connally. Having gotten back in touch with Goodwin, Connally agreed to the grand bargain, but only with the added condition that McCarthy would not actively support any challenges to the Southern delegations in 1972. Even with the agreement presented to him as a fait accompli, McCarthy balked. The final deciding factor was Abigail McCarthy’s insistence, and her unique ability to force Gene to make decisions. With the deal struck, McCarthy looked down at the protestors caught between two walls of police and national guard. At first, he compared it to the Battle of Cannae and the massacre of Native Americans during the Indian Wars, before his academic detachment turned to fury at the excesses of the Chicago police. McCarthy quickly had his volunteers open the hotel to give refuge to the protestors who came off the street, but he could not stay to help – he needed to get ready.

"The Happy Warrior." Hubert Humphrey looks at the camera while Eugene McCarthy and his supporter, George McGovern, shake hands. The only debate held between the two candidates was in the days leading up to the Democratic National Convention, in front of the uncommitted Indiana delegation [23].
​

After a chaotic day of last minute meetings and extracting pledges of support, Hubert Humphrey sat down in his hotel room’s easy chair as the roll call began. Surrounded by reporters and supporters, Humphrey put on a faux-brave face. He had his felt pen, and he had his pad of stationary, marked “Office of the Vice-President of the United States.” It was a tense moment. He knew that Daley and the Southerners had been avoiding him, and he had heard the rumours that Daley would try to deadlock the convention and support Ted Kennedy, but surely they would all realize he was only the acceptable candidate. He had worked inside the system; he had been the team player; he had served faithfully and loyally for all those years; he had negotiated a compromise with McCarthy, and now he, Hubert Horatio Humphrey, would finally get his reward. He would finally be his own man.

The roll call began.

“Mister Chairman, Alaska passes.”

As he had been expecting. Alaska had planned to pass to avoid a confrontation within their delegation between pro-administration and pro-peace delegates. But, he also knew that he had seventeen out of Alaska’s twenty-two votes if they became necessary on a second ballot.

“Mister Chairman, Alabama casts twenty-two votes for Senator Eugene McCarthy–“

Oh.

"–three votes for Governor George Wallace–"

Oh.

–and two abstentions."

Oh no.

The 1968 Democratic Convention, with its presidential nomination roll call in progress.
​

All but the most in-the-know attendees were stunned. Alabama? For McCarthy!? But the voting continued in much the same way. McCarthy swept the entirety of the South, and gained enough defections from Humphrey to win in Iowa and Vermont. The western states that his volunteers had worked so hard for and the Kennedy endorsement had reinforced joined his column: Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota. The rest of the west remained with Humphrey, carried on by inertia despite losing the President’s support, with most of the powerful Midwestern delegations weighing in for him too. However, both Illinois and Indiana voted for Ted Kennedy, and by the time half the states had voted, it was clear it would be either McCarthy or a second ballot. And then, at Wisconsin, McCarthy finally, just barely, gained a majority.

In one of the most extravagant upsets in American political history, Senator Eugene McCarthy would be the Democratic nominee for president, and Governor John Connally of Texas would be his running mate.

The New Deal Coalition had survived, but as a changed, shattered reflection of what it had once been.

And from there, it was on to the general.

​

[1] IOTL, McCarthy got thirty-nine percent in the Illinois primary, with Ted Kennedy coming in second at thirty-four percent, and Humphrey at seventeen percent. All candidates’ names were written in in the Illinois primary.

[2] Coincidentally, four of McCarthy's bodyguards were also named Eugene. They also kept a dartboard with Humphrey's face on it.

[3] IOTL, McCarthy's speechwriters prepared this speech, to be given in the Senate Caucus Room. However, McCarthy cancelled it after all the reporters had already arrived, relocated to the much smaller Senate Agricultural Committee hearing room, and adlibbed a short statement while staring at his table and not using a microphone. In all likelihood, this was part of the extended nervous breakdown that he suffered through the latter half of 1968, which was triggered by the assassination of Kennedy.

[4] These are the same questions and answers that were given by McCarthy in his June 12 address as IOTL.

[5] Harold M. Ickes is the son of Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickes. IOTL, he would later serve in various other presidential campaigns, and as Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy for Bill Clinton.

[6] That is still better than IOTL, where he refused to make any appearances with his delegate candidates.

[7] Even this non-answer is much more generous to Kennedy than his reaction IOTL, in which he said, “It's been my experience in twenty years in Congress that you really ought not to put through legislation under panic conditions.” McCarthy's speechwriter, Jeremy Larner, later remarked that, “If he had thought it over long and hard, he could not have chosen anything better calculated to alienate Kennedy people.”

[8] Even IOTL, with the Kennedy-McCarthy feud unresolved, black support for McCarthy following Kennedy's assassination rose dramatically.

[9] McCarthy's margin is somewhat better ITTL, winning in the low seventies, while IOTL he won sixty-two delegates. The committee’s ruling, and its results, are the same as IOTL. Additionally, both O'Dwyer and Lowenstein won IOTL as well as ITTL. Journalists were particularly surprised by O'Dwyer's win, and many believed it indicated that McCarthy had the potential for massive coattails. As Theodore H. White put it, “He had scored astoundingly well in the New York Democratic primaries... his coattails had dragged in Paul O'Dwyer, one of the more meager political figures in the Empire State, to New York's Democratic Senatorial nomination.” Additionally, New York had one of the highest crossover rates from Kennedy supporters to McCarthy, with even Eugene Nickerson, the pro-Kennedy Senate candidate who lost to O'Dwyer, working for the McCarthy campaign after the primary.

[10] These numbers are similar to OTL, but more favourable for McCarthy with Kennedy's endorsement. IOTL, Kennedy had four hundred and seventy-five delegates, of which only seventy-five (or fifteen percent) went to McCarthy. Kennedy's smaller delegate count ITTL is due to McCarthy winning the California primary.

[11] The unit rule was originally designed to empower smaller states by allowing them to invoke a simple rule that allowed them to vote as one bloc. However, it was frequently used and abused to enforce majority's decision by effectively erasing the minority's votes.

[12] IOTL, after they had lost the Democratic and Republican nominations respectively, McCarthy was phoned by Nelson Rockefeller four times. McCarthy never bothered to return the calls, and it is unknown why exactly Rockefeller was calling. One could assume that Rockefeller wished to discuss the possibility of running a third party ticket, but McCarthy frequently stated that he would refuse to participate in any third party effort if he did not win the nomination.

[13] It is unclear how long Connally and Goodwin discussed this potential alliance. Connally claimed in his memoir they only talked very briefly, while other sources from McCarthy’s campaign claimed that they talked for about an hour, and that Connally was more interested in the proposal than he was later willing to admit.

[14] With Kennedy’s endorsement of McCarthy, George McGovern followed suit, and his late entry as a contender for the Democratic nomination has been butterflied away, thereby uniting the anti-war vote at the convention.

[15] Despite officially supporting his Vice President, Johnson never explicitly endorsed Humphrey, forbade anyone in the cabinet or executive office from helping him (or any other candidate), and frequently disparaged him to the press. When Johnson was asked by a journalist what he thought of his Vice President’s contributions to the administration, Johnson replied, “He cries too much.” When asked for further comment, he said, "That's it. He cries too much."

[16] Johnson’s opposition to the peace plank was so strong that he secretly phoned Richard Nixon, at that point the Republican nominee, to give him advice on how best to attack it.

[17] IOTL, Humphrey backed down, and the various anti-war factions on the committee dissolved into bickering, with the administration plank easily passing. ITTL, with greater pressure from the combined anti-war delegates, and by overestimating McCarthy’s control over them, Humphrey stood firm, and continued to support the peace plank, but was overruled by Johnson anyway. The administration plank, practically written by Johnson, read, “We reject as unacceptable a unilateral withdrawal… We strongly support the Paris talks and applaud the initiative of President Johnson which brought North Vietnam to the peace table.” It would only stop all bombing of North Vietnam, “when the action would not endanger the lives of our troops. This action should take into account the response from Hanoi.”

[18] McCarthy and Smith came to this same agreement IOTL, and McCarthy said these exact words.

[19] These were the same reasons as IOTL for why Johnson ultimately decided not to attend the 1968 Democratic National Convention. However, unlike IOTL, he has refused to support Humphrey over his impertinence on the peace plank.

[20] IOTL, Conally and the Southern governors did not confront Humphrey until after he had been nominated. Connally heavily implied that he should be the vice presidential nominee, which Humphrey evidently did not pick up on. He then told the Southerners that he would be nominating Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, to which Connally gave his stunned reaction that Cyrus Vance would be a better choice. ITTL, with Humphrey in a more precarious position, Connally attempted to confront him before the presidential nomination, which equally backfired as IOTL. Fred Harris was Humphrey’s top choice for vice president besides Muskie, but ultimately decided against him, feeling that he was too young, at thirty-eight.

[21] IOTL, the peace plank, was defeated in a vote of 1041¼ to 1567¾. ITTL, it narrowly passes, with the extra votes coming from McCarthy’s larger delegate count, Humphrey loyalists, and Humphrey delegates preparing to dump Humphrey for Kennedy on the second ballot.

[22] The idea of Johnson allowing an alliance between McCarthy and the South is not as preposterous as it would seem on face value, and, to be clear, Johnson would have had to at least tacitly approve for it to have succeeded. In fact, IOTL, Tom Finney specifically designed McCarthy's campaign strategy in the lead-up to the convention to try and drive a wedge between Johnson in Humphrey, under the belief that Johnson would rather allow McCarthy to win then either help a perceived traitor, or to fulfill his nightmare of being a place-holder between two Kennedys.

[23] IOTL, this debate was held between McCarthy, Humphrey, and McGovern in front of the uncommitted California delegation. ITTL, with California committed to McCarthy, it was held before the Indiana delegation instead.

 

[The Lethargic Lett]

This Fourth of July, enjoy the most infamous political convention of American history, made a bit less infamous, but much more famous.

 

[historybuff]

Just as insane as it was in our timeline, I see, though a bit less so.

 

[Kennedy Forever]

Talk about chaotic! Enjoyed the different political maneuvers that happened also like the idea of Connally as Vice President. Will you also show the Republican convention btw?

 

[The Lethargic Lett]

Talk about chaotic! Enjoyed the different political maneuvers that happened also like the idea of Connally as Vice President. Will you also show the Republican convention btw?

The Republican convention will definitely be covered, but I haven't decided to what extent yet. Later elections and conventions will receive equal coverage between the two parties.

 

[marktaha]

Southern conservative hawks supporting McCarthy? More likely some would have backed Maddox. And would McCarthy's liberal supporters have been willing to back him that far?
P

P
⁰

 

[The Lethargic Lett]

Southern conservative hawks supporting McCarthy? More likely some would have backed Maddox. And would McCarthy's liberal supporters have been willing to back him that far?
P

P
⁰

tl;dr, the Southern delegates who attended the 1968 convention came with certain objectives in mind that would still be fulfilled by backing McCarthy in how TTL's convention played out, and McCarthy's liberal supporters wouldn't have had much of a choice, since the vice president is nominated after the president, and McCarthy would have had to fulfill his side of the bargain.

Southern politics within the Democratic Party in the late 1960s was in a funky transitional period. By 1968, most die-hard 'massive resistance' Dixiecrats were no longer accepted within the party's upper infrastructural leadership, even on the state level in the South. Lester Maddox was very much one of the last of his kind in the party by 1968, with the rest of his ilk having either distanced themselves from the party (e.g. George Wallace), or switched parties entirely (e.g. Strom Thurmond). What was left, for the most part, were those who were considered 'moderate' on race issues, meaning they voted against civil rights at every opportunity, but didn't continue to frequently and vocally oppose them after they passed. John Sparkman was a good example. He signed the Southern Manifesto and voted against every piece of civil rights legislation in his forty-two years in elected politics, but was considered 'soft' on the 'race issue' by the mid-1960s, because he wasn't Wallace-level opposed to it. The racial 'moderates' didn't like the Maddox types, as they were considered a populist danger to the safety of their own positions as unopposed conservative Democrats who didn't need to say anything about race, except for a racist dog whistle or a denunciation of the federal government here or there.

These career-focused race 'moderates' were the kind of people who made up the majority of the Southern delegates in 1968, along with the nearly extinct, pure Dixiecrats, the New South actual moderates, and a small minority of genuine progressives. The racial 'moderates' came to the convention loyal to Johnson, but not so loyal they would renominate him; they would nominate who he wanted them to support, but in the absence of Johnson's direction, would have voted for whoever was the least unacceptable to the South. In fact, choosing the least unacceptable option, and then only mildly supporting the presidential candidate while at the same time being carried forward on the state level by the inertia of generational Democratic control, had been the Southern racial 'moderate''s chief tactic since 1932. And, as we can see from OTL, they were willing to let Humphrey support the peace plank until Johnson intervened, so there wasn't any great regional pressure to be hawkish or dovish either way on Vietnam. So, without Johnson's influence, at the end of the day their options were: Hubert Humphrey, who they considered a spineless wimp too closely tied to the civil rights movement, Ted Kennedy, who was immediately disqualified for being a Kennedy, and Eugene McCarthy, a guy who nobody knew much about, whose anti-war stance could be considered a political expediency, whose aloofness to black voters could easily be misconstrued as dog whistle racism, and who was known for willingly and frequently associating himself with Southerners. Despite the fact that McCarthy had a further left voting record than Humphrey, on perception alone he would have been the first choice of the South of the three, if, and only if, Humphrey didn't have Johnson's backing.

As for McCarthy's liberal supporters, they hated, hated John Connally, but there wouldn't be anything they could have done about his vice presidential nomination without also embarrassing their guy, who just pulled off one of the biggest convention upsets in American history. Anti-Connally sentiment is definitely something that will be covered in the coming chapters, but it was never so great that it could have prevented a McCarthy/Connally ticket.

 

[Electric Monk]

Ralph Yarborough is going to ask for something big that’s for sure—anything from jobs to Connolly’s friends not trying to take him out in 1970. I suspect Yarborough loses to Bush in the general anyway, but given OTL Bush campaign it’s possible he scraps by.

I love how granular this timeline is, that I’m learning new things about an election I’ve studied in depth is lovely

 

[The Lethargic Lett]

Ralph Yarborough is going to ask for something big that’s for sure—anything from jobs to Connolly’s friends not trying to take him out in 1970. I suspect Yarborough loses to Bush in the general anyway, but given OTL Bush campaign it’s possible he scraps by.

I love how granular this timeline is, that I’m learning new things about an election I’ve studied in depth is lovely

I feel bad for Ralph Yarborough ITTL. Imagine leading a righteously furious delegate challenge to try and remove John Connally from the convention in order to provide a pro-McCarthy delegate slate with proportional representation for black and Latino voters, only for McCarthy to make a backroom deal and pick Connally as vice president. That's the kind of thing that's going to rub his liberal supporters the wrong way in the coming chapters.

 

[historybuff]

Pitty about Ralph. Hope he gets a cabinet or White House staff position. From what I read about him, I rather liked him.

 

[The Lethargic Lett]

1968 Party Conventions Results Breakdown

The Republican Party

Richard Nixon - 1,679,443 (37.5%)
Nelson Rockefeller - 164,340 (3.7%)
Ronald Reagan - 1,696,632 (37.9%)
James Rhodes - 614,492 (13.7%)

The Republican primaries passed with little attention or fanfare next to the tumultuous battles of their Democratic counterparts [1]. Having been laying the groundwork for a second presidential bid since 1966, Richard Nixon emerged early on as the only declared candidate, besides Governor George Romney of Michigan. Romney was the choice of the party's moderate-liberal Eastern Establishment, and its leader, Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York. Rockefeller felt that a third presidential bid on his part would be unsuccessful, after a stillborn effort in 1960, and a bitter and ultimately unsuccessful primary battle against the ultraconservative Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964. However, by the sheer weight of his influence within the party, Rockefeller's endorsement of Romney both ensured that no other moderate-liberal candidate would run, and convinced many that Romney was nothing but a stalking horse for an inevitable Rockefeller candidacy. With Rockefeller seemingly waiting in the wings, the news media picked apart Romney's capabilities and policies, culminating in a flustered interview where Romney claimed he had been "brainwashed" into supporting the Vietnam War. His poor choice of words, along with an announcement from Rockefeller that he would accept a draft effort on his own behalf, led to Romney collapsing in the polls, and withdrawing before the primaries had even begun.

With no other announced candidate running against him, Nixon was able to run in most of the primaries unopposed. This played perfectly into his strategy to remove his association with being a loser by sweeping the primaries, as well as his strategy to appear as inoffensive as possible. The only bumps in the road were a successful write-in effort that won Massachusetts for Rockefeller, and the pro-Rockefeller Governor James Rhodes of Ohio's uncontested victory in his home state. As the primaries continued, Rockefeller disillusioned many of his supporters by declaring he would unequivocally not be a candidate for president, despite giving several indicators that he was about to announce his candidacy. This last minute change of mind embarrassed many of Rockefeller's supporters who had staked their reputations on his imminent candidacy, leaving him with a diminished pool of supporters when he ultimately did announce his candidacy shortly before the Republican National Convention.

As the primaries began to reach their conclusion, Governor Ronald Reagan of California, the ideological successor to Barry Goldwater, tried to position himself as a presidential contender while officially sticking to his position as a favourite son candidate, but, with Nixon's victory in neighbouring Oregon, Reagan's chances of nomination seemed slim. However, on the votes of California alone, Reagan was able to win a plurality of the popular vote in the primaries. Despite this, Reagan and Rockefeller came to an agreement that they would try and steal Nixon delegates from the ideological right and left of the party respectively, in the hopes that they could deprive him of a first ballot victory. They both hoped that with the party centrist Nixon out of the way, it would be down to the two of them, where they could compete in a clear confrontation of conservatives and liberals to decide the party's fate. As part of this strategy, Rockefeller encouraged governors loyal to him to run as favourite son candidates whose states' delegates would be bound to vote for, in order to prevent Nixon from getting them.

Richard Nixon - 692
Nelson Rockefeller - 277
Ronald Reagan - 182
James Rhodes - 55
George Romney - 50
Clifford Case - 22
Frank Carlson - 20
Winthrop Rockefeller - 18
Hiram Fong - 14
Harold Stassen - 2
John Lindsay - 1

Needing six hundred and sixty-six and a half delegates to win the nomination, Nixon pulled off a narrow victory on the first ballot. The key to his success had been in the South. Nixon had allied with the Dixiecrat-turned-Republican Strom Thurmond to rally the South to his cause, despite the majority of Southern delegates being more inclined to Reagan. Nixon positioned himself as conservative enough to be acceptable, while also using fears of Rockefeller potentially getting the nomination to discourage defections to Reagan. The rest of his margin came from Midwestern states without a favourite son candidate or strong Rockefeller support, and in most of the western interior states. Fearing the crippling infighting that had destroyed them in 1964, many delegates were willing to settle for the known quantity and loyal party man that was Richard Nixon.

Continuing his strategy of being as inoffensive as possible to the largest portion of the American electorate as possible, Nixon considered a long list of vice presidential nominees. Those clearly on the right or left of the party, such as Reagan or Mayor John Lindsay of New York City were eliminated. Nixon would have liked Lieutenant Governor Robert Finch of California, one of his closest friends and advisors, but Finch believed he did not have the profile for the vice presidency and that his selection would appear to be a case of nepotism, and removed himself from consideration. The final two contestants were Governor John Volpe of Massachusetts, and Governor Spiro Agnew of Maryland. Volpe was a Republican of the Eastern Establishment who was not clearly aligned with Rockefeller, but many Southern delegates were wary of him as being too liberal, so Nixon ultimately settled on Agnew. The Governor of Maryland had been one of those who had stacked his reputation on Rockefeller's announcement of his candidacy, and his incorrect prediction of Rockefeller's imminent announcement deeply embarrassed him in front of the media; Rockefeller had failed to notify Agnew that he had changed his mind, and Agnew had brought several reporters into his office to watch the announcement with him, expecting a positive declaration. Courted by Nixon afterward, Agnew had been able to shift most of Maryland's delegates in the former Vice President's favour, helping to guarantee his nomination. With a non-existent national profile and a moderate reputation, Nixon was content in the belief that Agnew would continue to be a non-entity on the national ticket, in order to sustain his 'inoffensive offensive.'

​

The Democratic Party

Eugene McCarthy - 3,217,594 (42.2%)
Robert Kennedy - 2,263,385 (29.7%)
Lyndon Johnson - 383,590 (5.0%)
Stephen Young - 549,140 (7.2%)
George Smathers - 236,242 (3.1%)

At first, Eugene McCarthy's decision to run in the Democratic primaries was a protest action against President Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War. Nearing the end of his political career and with no one, not even Johnson's nemesis Bobby Kennedy, willing to run against the President, McCarthy decided to do it himself. With little expectation of actually winning, McCarthy intended to spook the President into adopting a less hawkish position as the official plank of the upcoming Democratic National Convention. However, even McCarthy had underestimated the level of discontent that Johnson was facing. With the Tet Offensive undermining popular support for the Vietnam War, McCarthy was able to win a near-victory in the New Hampshire primary, with Bobby Kennedy entering the contest shortly after. Facing a bitter primary challenge and failing health, Johnson announced to a shocked nation that he would not seek, and would not accept his party's nomination for president. With Johnson stepping down, his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, declares his candidacy as well, but chose not to compete in the primaries.

McCarthy enjoyed a grace period where he ran unopposed in Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, before facing off against Kennedy in the Indiana primary. Chronically disorganized and failing to adapt to the changing political landscape, McCarthy placed third in Indiana behind Kennedy and the Governor of Indiana, Roger Branigin. McCarthy was similarly blown away in the Nebraska primary, before the candidates headed for the West Coast.

Hiring a new campaign coordinator, adopting populist rhetoric, and choosing the campaign theme of New Politics, McCarthy was able to lean into his strengths to win the Oregon primary, with Bobby suffering the first election defeat of a Kennedy in American political history. The final challenge came in California, with Kennedy declaring that he would withdraw his candidacy if he did not win in the the Golden State. In an intense period of campaigning, a debate between the two candidates went decisively in McCarthy's favour, winning him the primary. Shortly after declaring his withdrawal, Kennedy was shot several times by a would-be assassin named Sirhan Sirhan. In a near-death state, Kennedy endorsed McCarthy, uniting the anti-war faction of Democrats for the upcoming Democratic National Convention. Kennedy would eventually recover from his wounds, but a spinal injury from the shooting left him mostly paralyzed from the waist-down for the rest of his life.

In the non-primary states, McCarthy fared poorly against Humphrey, who had locked up enough delegates to theoretically win a commanding majority on the first ballot. However, Humphrey's refusal to support President Johnson's administration plank on the Vietnam War led to a quiet crumbling of his support of which McCarthy proved the benefactor.

Eugene McCarthy - >1311.5
Hubert Humphrey - <1311.5
Edward Kennedy - ≈180.25
Channing Phillips - ≈42.5
Daniel Moore - 19.5
James H. Gray Sr. - 16.5
George Wallace - 3
Abstain - 34

In one of the greatest upsets in American political history, Eugene McCarthy was able to secure the Democratic nomination on the first ballot [2], exceeding the required majority of one thousand three hundred eleven and a half votes. His success was due to an agreement that had been reached with Governor John Connally of Texas, the leader of the Southern delegates. In exchange for the vote of the South, McCarthy agreed to choose Connally as his running mate, to continue Johnson's ongoing battle to appoint Abe Fortas and Homer Thornberry to the Supreme Court, to allow Connally a say over cabinet picks, and to not actively support future challenges by his grassroots supporters against the Democratic Establishment in the South. Ironically, of the Southern states, McCarthy did the poorest in those whose credentials had been successfully challenged by his supporters; in the new Mississippi delegation there was significant support for Humphrey, and in Georgia, many of the white delegates instead voted for favourite son James H. Gray Sr. McCarthy also lost a sizable minority of North Carolina's delegates to favourite son Daniel Moore. Otherwise, his decades-long working relationship with senior Southern Democratic officials, mixed with the conformist mentality of many delegates, handed him a unanimous vote in many states. Outside of the South, most of McCarthy's support came from the West Coast, New England, and New York, along with pockets of support in the Midwest and the western interior states.

In the weeks following their nomination, the McCarthy/Connally ticket struggled to gain cohesion due to their stark ideological differences.

[1] Everything involving the Republican primaries and convention of 1968 are the same as IOTL.
[2] Throughout all my research, I was not able to find the exact delegate count in the states after Pennsylvania (the state which, IOTL, put Humphrey over the top). Because of this, I am not able to give an exact number to McCarthy's delegate vote ITTL's first ballot. States which I had not been able to find the exact delegate count for have been left intentionally blank, with their colour indicating who won in that state.

 

[historybuff]

Let's see how Tricky Dick does against McCarthy.

 

[Qaz_plm]

right of left

Do you mean 'right or left"?

 

[Kennedy Forever]

Let's see how Tricky Dick does against McCarthy.

Same can't wait to see Nixon and Mccarthy go up against each other

 

[Electric Monk]

Another solid update !

[2] Throughout all my research, I was not able to find the exact delegate count in the states after Pennsylvania (the state which, IOTL, put Humphrey over the top). Because of this, I am not able to give an exact number to McCarthy's delegate vote ITTL's first ballot. States which I had not been able to find the exact delegate count for have been left intentionally blank, with their colour indicating who won in that state.

I did a ton of research on this a decade ago, it’s in a game file I have somewhere (or if anyone has President Forever and my 1968 scenario open it up lol). If I can find it I’ll send you the delegate totals—but even with a couple books and NYTimes archives I had to guess a few states IIRC.