Nixon Wins 1960, who does he face in 1964?

Nixon defeats Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election, who do the Democrats nominate in 64? I'm not sure if they'd nominate Kennedy (bad health) or Johnson (southerner) or they'd nominate someone who hasn't run before.
 
one could be Lyndon B. Johnson and Hubert H. Humphrey
other would be George Wallace and Robert F. Kennedy (JFK would not run again do loss of 1961 and his bad health condition in 1964)

one who could challenge Nixon at Republicans could be Barry Goldwater
 
I don't see how he wins the convention. If he does, then Nixon is gonna blow him out of the water and be the first Republican to carry Washington, D.C.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...s-katarn-edition.421710/page-15#post-15290679

[ the "Chicken Ranch" scandal in Texas erupts just a few weeks before the 1964 Democratic convention, causing Johnson to lose the nomination to Wallace. Nixon narrowly loses to Wallace in November because of the unpopular Cuba War. ]
 
Given that Nixon in 60 was basically Eisenhower, but more openly pro-Civil Rights?

George Wallace.


George Wallace isn’t getting the Democratic nomination in 1964, or any year. No Southern candidate* got a presidential nomination for a century after the Civil War, precisely because of racial/civil rights issues. Black people were just too important to the coalition, even then. Kefauver, a modestly pro-civil rights Southerner, couldn’t get nominated; Richard Russell, a staunchly anti-civil rights Southerner, couldn’t get nominated either. LBJ could only get the nomination after he was already president. And he was the second most pro-civil rights Southern senator of his time (behind only Ralph Yarborough). If Wallace was nominated, Black voters would abandon the party en masse, hurting the vote in Northern cities, and liberals would vote Nixon or simply not show up.

The Democrats of that era were well aware that having their nominee pegged as a “regional” or “sectional” candidate would be deadly, and they simply wouldn’t let it get to that. The party bosses would never allow it, for one thing.

It’s not like Goldwater. Goldwater could get nominated despite his extremist views and unpopular qualities because the conservative movement deliberately moved into the GOP in large numbers during the early ‘60s. But that just wouldn’t happen with the party of FDR, big government, and labor unions. The conservative Republicans disliked Rockefeller, but Walter Reuther might as well have been Stalin.

I won’t say it’s impossible — this is alternate history, anything is possible! — but your POD would have to either be further back than 1960, or something a lot bigger than Nixon winning, to get a President Wallace.

That’s my opinion at least.


*Woodrow Wilson was a Southerner by upbringing but by the time he entered politics he had long since left the South and come to represent New Jersey.
 
Wallace is not going to be the nominee. Period.

I think LBJ is the nominee by how strong his control of the party was.

He loses a close election, but not as close as 1960. Wallace runs 3rd party and wins a few southern states but doesn’t change the overall results.

I think Hubert Humphrey wins in 1968 out of republican fatigue over 16 years and the wars in Cuba and Vietnam
 
You know who could’ve been a likely contender you don’t see talked about too much? Scoop Jackson.

LBJ and HHH are definitely strong possibilities but Jackson might point in a different direction. I guess it depends on where Kennedy loses and why Kennedy is perceived as losing. IOTL, Kennedy narrowly lost several Western states to Nixon — California by less than one percent, Alaska by one, Washington by two percent, Montana by two and a half, Oregon by five — and a Western nominee like Jackson might be seen as very attractive.
 
One other thing - no Kennedy likely means no Vietnam beyond advisors.

Nixon being President does mean we probably invade Cuba though.
 
One other thing - no Kennedy likely means no Vietnam beyond advisors.

Nixon being President does mean we probably invade Cuba though.

Nixon advocated direct US military intervention in Vietnam as far back as 1954. If anything, he would be more hawkish on Vietnam than Kennedy.

As for Cuba, you're probably right. And the results of Nixon's decision will no doubt have an important role in the '64 election.
 
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Feb. 1962
 
Wallace doesn't have a chance in 1964.

But he might have a shot in 1968. Black voters are less important to the Democrats because Nixon is now the civil rights president. The sexual revolution happens on schedule (the Pill was invented before the POD and not enough justices change for Griswold to be reversed). No reason to believe that the Watts riots and other breakdowns of domestic social order would be butterflied. Nixon gets us into the same controversial war (and if not, he gets blamed for losing South Vietnam).

Wallace runs on a platform of law and order, anticommunist foreign policy, and economic populism. Abandons segregation as a lost cause in order to broaden his appeal.
 
George Wallace isn’t getting the Democratic nomination in 1964, or any year. No Southern candidate* got a presidential nomination for a century after the Civil War, precisely because of racial/civil rights issues.

*Woodrow Wilson was a Southerner by upbringing but by the time he entered politics he had long since left the South and come to represent New Jersey.

What you say is entirely true. However, it's equally true that Wilson's southern upbringing and consequential racial attitudes were always just below the surface at most. And don't overlook the fact that his cabinet was heavily southern.

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Now, getting back to the question of whom Nixon faces in '64: Kennedy will likely sit this one out (not necessarily because of health; he wouldn't have had the stresses of the presidency to aggravate his pre-existing conditions), as would Johnson (he's too astute a politician to try to upset an incumbent when the economy is going reasonably well, and there have been gains in civil rights, stemming or even partially reversing the flow of African-Americans to the Dems). I'd bet on Humphrey with a quasi-southerner (Gore? Kefauver?) as a running mate. It won't be a landslide re-election for Nixon, but it won't be all that close either.

Wallace is definitely the joker in the deck. In '64 he'd be remembered for his stand in the schoolhouse door. That would make him pretty much a regional candidate with zero hope at all should he decide to run. He might try a deal with the devil, so to speak, demanding a position of power in a Humphrey cabinet in return for support in the deep south.
 
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