To be honest, LBJ only passed that act BECAUSE Kennedy died. Otherwise, that would become a different story. So, to be honest, not even a watered-down version would work. And he still escalates Vietnam in ATL, just not to OTL levels. And honestly, the death of JFK also provided a basis for that case to occur in the first place, meaning that it would have gone the other way in the event Kennedy survived. Hence why the American Civil Rights movement will either take longer to achieve its goals or fall apart after a period of time.
(1) I was deliberately trying to avoid the endless controversy on whether JFK would have escalated the war in Vietnam; my point (or rather the point of Greenfield with whom I agree on this) is that *even if he didn't* this would not necessarily stop the development of the counterculture and the backlash to it.
(2) I don't see how some people jump to the conclusion that JFK could not have gotten *any* civil rights legislation passed in 1964 (I agree that it might not have been as strong as that passed in OTL--but if, as I think, he would have easily defeated Goldwater, it could have been strengthened in the more liberal 89th Congress). As Jeff Shesol pointed out in *Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud That Defined a Decade*:
"Robert Kennedy's blood boiled at comments like this. And he was right to protest: JFK had not been destined for defeat, and LBJ was not the first president to woo members of Congress. In late November 1963, after weeks of lobbying and only days before the assassination, President Kennedy persuaded House Minority Leader Charlie Halleck to support the bil. This was the crucial advance. The Senate would remain an obstacle, but with Halleck's sanction would sail smootherly through the House. And since the brutality of Birmingham and other Southern cities had imbued the issue with motal urgency, it was safe to assume that, if John Kennedy had lived, months of struggle and compromise woukld have produced some sort of civil rights act.
"Johnson's singular achievement was to pass a bill, as he pledged in January, without compromise. He refused to trade away the equal employment clause (which JFK might well have bewn forced to abandon), and it was more than Bobby's 'fuss' that saved it. Whatever the recommendations of Humphrey and Mansfield, Johnson would cut no deals. As a Southerner, he could not afford to; lacking his predeecessor's credibility as a civil rights president, LBJ knew he had to out-Kennedy Kennedy..."
https://books.google.com/books?id=bVrRvYV7i78C&pg=PA164
The really hard-core anti-civil-rights senators (almosr all from the South except for a handful of ultraconservative Republicans) would not have been enough to prevent cloture as long as Dirksen (who, one should remember, rather liked Kennedy) was amenable to compromise. And there is no reason to think that JFK and Dirksen could not have reached *some* kind of deal on civil rights. Dirksen was neither a doctirnaire conservative (he was no more conservative than Halleck, who backed the bill) nor a block-anything-JFK-wants-to-pass partisan (he supported JFK on the atmospheric test-ban treaty for example). One should also remember that almost every northern state had a public accomodations law, so a federal law would hardly be seen as revolutionary there. Fair employment laws were rather more controversial and fair housing laws (which the 1964 Act did not contain) the most controverisal of all. But as I noted even if Congress *never* passed legislation on such subjects (and I think it would have, especially after JFK deferated Goldwater) the Suprme Court as in OTL would have used the civil rights act of 1866 as a weapon against private discrimination.