JFK dies pre-1960 convention - who gets the nod?

Let's say that JFK is assassinated three years early - by a mentally disturbed person, just a few weeks priors to the Democratic Convention. Two questions:

1. Who gets the nod? LBJ? Adlai? Humphrey? Symington
2. Does this person have a shot against Nixon? I'd imagine the sympathy vote would help somewhat.

Thoughts?
 
I think Humphrey would be the most likely candidate provided he puts his hat back in the ring (as he had officially dropped out by then). He ran in the primaries IOTL when both Stevenson and LBJ waited until the convention. He's likely to pick up most of those delegates, and he is known to be popular outside his own state. Neither Symington, LBJ, or Brown have that. While Stevenson is popular with liberals, he already ran and lost twice. Humphrey is a good choice for the liberal wing. LBJ is likely to be supported only by southern delegates. He might become Humphrey's VP pick.

I don't think there would be any sympathy vote for the Democratic candidate. But whoever he is, he won't have the negative of being Catholic (which wasn't enough to defeat JFK, but was still an issue for some voters). I think a Humphrey-Johnson ticket would be very strong, popular with both northern liberals and southerners, and could very well win in 1960 by a much stronger margin than JFK did.
 
Nixon easily defeats Stevenson by rolling up the South and parts of the Rust Belt.

I think you may well be right about the first part, but what's in bold is certainly food for thought. In 1956 the south, or at least a large part of it, thanks to its solidly democratic nature, was the place where Adlai Stevenson had the most support. Indeed, all the states he won in that election, can be viewed as southern states.

It's hard to imagine Nixon doing better against Stevenson than General Eisenhower. True, Stevenson is something of a political has been by this point, but still.

If I had to make a vague prediction, I would say I expect Nixon to win. At the same time, since Eisenhower seems to have been so much more popular than Nixon at the time, I would expect the Democrats to do better than they had in the last two elections, which admittedly isn't saying much.
 
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