Land of my Fathers (1968-Sometime in the near future TL)

Land of my Fathers

A Kennedy family timeline to the future

NBC election coverage 1968

The Democratic National Convention opened in a shocked moment for the party. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, effectively the President's 3rd term and Senator Robert Kennedy, brother of late President John Kennedy, had entered in the convention in a deadlocked race, and the first ballot showed a tie. The second day featured the prominent rise of a young democrat from Hawaii in Daniel Inouye as the keynote speaker. While behind the scenes, Kennedy worked magic and made deals to key party officials, and he won the nomination on the 3rd ballot over Vice-President Humphrey, and the question then became who would Kennedy ask to be his runningmate. He had just under 24 hours to decide. Eventually the next day he chose former Florida Governor William Haydon Burns as his runningmate, and they were nominated together on the last night of the convention. The Republican National Convention was not nearly as classy, as New York Governor Nelson Rockfeller won the nomination and the convention was rather boring. Rockefeller defeated former Vice-President and 1960 Presidential candidate Richard Nixon and California Governor Ronald Reagan, but won with ease. But the big news was that Rockefeller named Jim Rhodes the former Governor of Ohio as his runningmate. The two tickets looked to be superb and the battle launched in late August.

As of today, September 28th, Senator Kennedy trails Governor Rockefeller by 2 point nationally. Interesting though, Kennedy leads in their mutual home state of New York by 5 points! The race is becoming a dead heat though, as Kennedy has gained 2 points this week alone. The first Presidential debate was seen as a tie, they'll have their second and final one on October 21st, while the Vice-Presidential debate is to be held on October 6th. Both Governor Burns and Rhodes have been playing the attack dog role well sometimes even hitting each other rather than their opponents top of the ticket.

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"This race is as fiery as ever. You have Rockefeller over there, trying to drag his party away from the right and he's hitting me hard as he's being an independent non-partisan candidate, in contrast to my passionate liberal Kennedyism I inherited from our brother. I can't help what John stood for, but I am my own man god damnit! I will not be seen as his clone through and through. This is a chance for us to take this forward again, beyond the legacy of FDR, Truman, and John, and create a new future for the new democratic party, and a new future of a new country. I honestly wish I could've chosen you Teddy. Burns is a new-dealer, sure so he locks down that part of the vote, but he's just so moderate and almost everything else and he doesn't have a position on the rest of the things. It's a tough call on what's going to happen with this race, our debate was a draw, with each of us gaining one point from the undecided votes now we're at 46-44, which that just brings him closer to the 50% mark. Will has got to win in his debate, and I've got to crush Nelly if I want to put this race in the bag. The race will be tight, but I've just got this felling Teddy, this feeling like we're gonna get it done."

Senator Robert Kennedy speaking with his brother Teddy Kennedy

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Assuming that George Wallace is running his third party campaign, I think he would poll much better in the South ITTL. Rockefeller and RFK are seen as the Antichrist in the land of Dixie.
 
ooc: true, I forgot about Wallace ;) but that's part of the reason I feel Kennedy would have picked a southern candidate for VP. He would have wanted a draw on the ticket to keep people from voting for Wallace.

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Kennedy - 273 electoral votes
Rockefeller - 212 electoral votes
Wallace - 53 electoral votes


"We did it! Tonight the ingenuity of the American people shined through and radiated upon on country. We have chosen to accept a new path for the country and a new path that America will take on the national scene. No longer shall our country intervene in areas around the world where we are not needed, we won't send our soldiers to foreign lands to fight for things that are not our business. We have accepted that this country will move forward into the transition for the America of the 21st century, for the future that our founding father's had dreamed for us. We will move past the parties of Hoover and Roosevelt, beyond Eisenhower and Truman, to become the new democratic party, and the new republican party. To an era where no matter what party you come from, no matter which end of the political spectrum you come from, we, as americans, can come together to achieve progress. You have the answer tonight, spoken by millions of Americans. Young and old, rich and poor, democrat and republican, disabled, not disabled, all who seek to have a better future for themselves and their children. There is no longer a white america and a black america, there is no liberal and conservative america, there is only one: The United States of America. We're going to Washington to ensure the promise that was made tonight of this very future we all dream of, becomes a reality. Thank you, god bless you all, and god bless the United States of America!!!"

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Robert Kennedy giving his election night victory speech.

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"Tonight, America has made it's choice, and all I can do as a servant of the people, is stand aside. To Mr. Kennedy, I wish him the best of luck in the years ahead, and to this country that we both love so much, I say full steam ahead!" - Nelson Rockefeller conceding the race to Robert Kennedy

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Rockefeller being informer of his election night loss


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Robert Kennedy at his inauguration

"Teddy, I can't believe we're here again... It feels like just yesterday we entered the building with John, and yet we're back once more. We've got a second chance, and a chance to do things right. I want to immediately begin getting out of Vietnam so that we can heal the economy, then we can turn to finishing off Lyndon's so-called "Great Society." He's a great man, it's a shame that he had to be such a Hawk on foreign policy, he could have done a great deal more of good without it. Out of all of his programs, I want to finish up the War on Poverty strongly, and turn our heads to other matters later. But the war and the economy come first, then we can turn our heads to the other issues. - President Robert Kennedy speaking to his brother Senator Teddy Kennedy about the beginning of his Presidency, January 22nd, 1969.[/font]
 
A good start, but I don't think RFK would've chosen a defeated Governor who represented the conservative wing of the Democratic party. Burns had race-baited in the 1966 primary. RFK would most likely have chosen a progressive Southerner like Ralph Yarborough or Carl Sanders (as in TID).

Also, NM was more likely to go Dem than CO, and Rocky would've likely carried NH and ME: two states that were favorable to moderate Republicans. In exchange, RFK could've carried IL and NJ, but I can't see him carrying TX without Yarborough on the ticket. TX only went narrowly for HHH in OTL 1968, and LBJ and Connally wouldn't have done anything to help RFK in the Lone Star state.
 
Han is correct. Sanders is neither a Dixiecrat nor a progressive. Also, he's the same age as Kennedy. McKeithen is a possibility because he was a centrist rather than a New Dealer, plus appealing to HHH loyalists, but he would never run with Kennedy. Nor did Kennedy need an anti-Wallace buffer outside the Deep South, since IOTL he picked up Wallace voters rather easily on his own in the primaries. Many Kennedy blue-collar voters voted for Wallace, not Nixon in November. That's because they saw him as a tough antiestablishment Irish cop who would stick it to the big institutions, or otherwise a defender of working-class interests. If that sounds familiar, that's because a similar dynamic (as in many things) occurs with the Clintons.
 
I can't see RFK referring to his own politics as
my passionate liberal Kennedyism I inherited from our brother.
While JFK and RFK were by no means conservatives, they weren't passionate liberals either. The far-left hated RFK, and the New York Times criticized RFK for sounding like "a reconditioned Barry Goldwater plugging for law and order." In terms of economics, RFK was a Clintonesque DLC Democrat, far from a Great Society liberal.

Also, RFK hated LBJ's guts, and would never privately refer to LBJ as "[FONT=Times_New_Roman]a great man." [/FONT]
 
That's true about Burns, but I've got a story I plan to write with him. In case you're looking for a hint, look up "John Hoynes." :cool:

My thought process was that a conservative southerner would help Bobby pull back some of the Wallace supporters and give him a better shot at winning the south, or at least part of it. Rhodes on the GOP ticket would help in the Midwest. With no Nixon, there is no southern strategy, and no GOP dominance in the coming years... :)
 
That is not how Bobby talked at all. If you want to know, look up my own TL, The Impossible Dream. He never referred to his brother in public for a host of reasons, not just grief but because he wanted to be his own man and in a few ways didn't full come into his own until the '68 race. Referring to Johnson as a "great man" is downright ASB and out of character. More like "that lovely fellow in the White House"/sarc and quite a few very derogatory things. Surely you know of their legendary feud and mutual hatred dating back to 1960?

"Kennedyism", "my brother"? He never talked about ideology or his brother, only specific issues. Never once will you hear the word "centrist" "conservative" "liberal" progressive" or many isms come out of his mouth. Have you read any of his writing or listened to any print or electronic media? Ie interviews, speeches, the like? If not, then I will refrain from further comment.

The NYT hated Kennedy for years, constantly insinuating he was anti-Semitic. (Newsweek compared the intensity of RFK rallies to "... Hitler Jugend"- and they say Glenn Beck is a troll :rolleyes:) Few people know that the reason he donned that skullcap in Oregon (the sight of which allegedly triggered Sirhan to buy the ammo box) was to defuse snark from the media on his Israeli views. Which, BTW, were closer to GHWB's than Dubya's, contrary to popular myth.

Re economics: For those who mention closing the loopholes on the top bracket: that's precisely what Clinton did in 1993. I've said before that Clinton's domestic legislation would all have been signed by Kennedy as well. In addition to being his ideological avatar, Kennedy was Clinton's pollitical hero and he consciously modeled himself on Kennedy- going so far as to visit RFK's grave on inauguration eve 1993, tour the same native communities on his New Markets Initiative tour in 1999 that RFK visited in '68, and invoke his name at PRWO's (welfare reform- again, something which Bobby advocated as early as 1965) signing in 1996. All this is in Clinton's memoirs. You can have Kennedy be a Keynesian or a monetarist- it is easy because he never thought much about economics and was incredibly intellectually curious, constantly seeking to intellectually and physically self-improve. Not a perfectionist but a striver.
 
I admit myself not to be a Kennedy man (although I admired them all) I'm a Roosevelt democrat, through and through. So if my writing of him leans to the populist side, that's why. But I'll take a look at your TL. I know that he and LBJ disliked each other, but from what I know (again, not a Kennedy man) he didn't publically denounce the Great Society and anything about Johnson other than Vietnam.

Economically, I base my belief in his left-of-center new deal-esque stances in his simple answer to how he planned to pay for his reforms at a big group of rich, democratic donors. When asked, "Who's going to pay for all of this senator?" He answered simply, "You are." Otherwise, he's probably as you characterize him, but that for me signifies that he's not a perfect DLC/new dem model. I also admit, Teddy was my preferable Kennedy. That may or may not be in the cards for this TL. :D
 
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