If he doesn't run at all (never enters), does McCarthy fare any better at the convention, does Bobby make a go at it in '72 or '76? Maybe even '80 (ironically enough). What happens?
WI: Bobby Kennedy doesn't run in '68?
- Thread starter 20thCenturyBoy
- Start date
Assuming RFK doesn't create massive butterflies and the Nixon Presidency goes roughly the same as OTL, a 1976 RFK Presidential run seems likely. If for some reason he didn't run, or doesn't fight Carter's early primary strategy (which actually seems kind of likely) and gets beat out for the nomination (less likely) he'd only be 55 in 1980.
RFK in this period would be interesting from a policy standpoint. Domestically, he wasn't much more conservative than Ted, but he was way closer to what we'd consider a 'New Democrat'. He was in favor of spending more domestically, but wanted to devolve a lot the authority on implementing that funding to the states and kind of flatten out the government hierarchy. There's also a ton of quotes from his 1968 run about breaking the cycle of dependency in welfare, which sounds wayyyyy more 1990s Democratic sound-biteish than the era he was running in.
[EDIT: Oh man, I completely forgot about Ted walking away from the Nixon healthcare plan in the final days of the Nixon admin. Disregard what I said about not creating massive butterflies. I know Ted was seen by his peers as a much better legislator than JFK and RFK, but I wonder if RFK would have been more amenable to the Nixon healthcare plan, and been able to convince Ted to come to the table.]
RFK in this period would be interesting from a policy standpoint. Domestically, he wasn't much more conservative than Ted, but he was way closer to what we'd consider a 'New Democrat'. He was in favor of spending more domestically, but wanted to devolve a lot the authority on implementing that funding to the states and kind of flatten out the government hierarchy. There's also a ton of quotes from his 1968 run about breaking the cycle of dependency in welfare, which sounds wayyyyy more 1990s Democratic sound-biteish than the era he was running in.
[EDIT: Oh man, I completely forgot about Ted walking away from the Nixon healthcare plan in the final days of the Nixon admin. Disregard what I said about not creating massive butterflies. I know Ted was seen by his peers as a much better legislator than JFK and RFK, but I wonder if RFK would have been more amenable to the Nixon healthcare plan, and been able to convince Ted to come to the table.]
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This one opens up a LOT of butterflies.
Well, to begin with, LBJ may not drop out of the 1968 race if RFK doesn't run. So it's LBJ and McCarthy. Does LBJ win the nomination? Probably; this was before the open primary process that started in 1972 and the insiders hated McCarthy. So, you have an LBJ-Nixon race in the fall with ending Vietnam probably LBJ's only path to winning. I suspect LBJ would have done anything to win and be the second longest serving President after his hero FDR. So we might get a late October ending of the war surprise and an LBJ win. OTL, LBJ died just a few days after Nixon's second inauguration. Another term probably would have killed him earlier than that, so we have President Humphrey in, say, 1971. At this point, all bets are off as we are in a totally different world. There's no Watergate, no prolonging of the war by Nixon and another 4 years of Democratic rule by two men who were very liberal on domestic issues. You might have even seen the King assassination butterflied away here since it is quite possible King never would have been on that Lorraine Motel balcony at the same time. So the year of trauma that was 1968 largely goes away and what's remembered is the year ending in great hope with the war ended and Apollo 8 still making its Christmas broadcast. The Democratic party probably escapes the split which bedevils it to this day; LBJ hangs on to the blue collar vote for the most part. The great antiwar protests of the late 60s and early 70s don't happen; years of stress and strain go away. One can imagine darker scenarios, like LBJ blundering into a nuclear war in 1969 during the Sino-Soviet border conflict.
I think it's too late to stop the protests in the sixties, they were already happening.
I'm not sure LBJ would- could- have defeated Nixon in 1968. For one thing, IOTL
he was utterly detested by many(some even
called him the most hated man in the world)
in 1968. Many people wanted a change.
Another thing, what about the anti-war democrats? I doubt ITTL they would have
supported LBJ, thus splitting the Democrats.
Maybe, as you say Apollo 20, he would
have found a way to end the war in Oct.
1968 & I would really like to agree with you
here! But what if the Vietnamese decide
they can get better terms from Nixon &
refuse to play ball with LBJ? No October
surprise, no ending of the war- & just as
IOTL, Nixon wins.
P.S. Do like the idea of a President Humphrey very much!
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'76 was definitely an outsiders year, and I wouldn't assume that the brother of a President and Senator and son of a political power broker is going to walk to the nomination against someone running on the outsider mantle, especially considering what happened to the Democratic Party post-Watergate. The party on a rank and file level got more conservative, actually, as some of the people that Nixon pulled over in '72 went back to the Democrats in disgust over Watergate. The Republican Party as an institution was about as unpopular as it could possibly be in the run up to the '76 election. Primary voters in the Democratic party were more conservative in '76 than in '72 (and that is saying something considering how well Wallace was doing before he got shot).
Yeah this idea that if Vietnam was won that everyone would love LBJ is ridiculous. People didn't trust him and for good reason. That doesn't disappear just because he negotiated some shaky peace. LBJ would lose worse than Humphrey in my opinion.
Vietnam was obviously a big issue for LBJ but really, support for the war wasn't nearly as dire as some have led us to believe and the antiwar movement really kind of peaked in '69 and then briefly came back to life for "days of rage" in '70-'71.
The far bigger issue confronting him were the constant riots and skyrocketing crime rates in urban America that were terrifying and angering suburban voters who had largely backed him as the choice of stability in '64. He was going to get massacred in the suburbs and was going to lose many rural areas who were Democrat leaning prior to the Civil Rights Act and the cultural changes during his Presidency. The Wallace vote probably isn't as bad as OTL for him (Humphrey was on the liberal wing of the party and had almost no ties to any southern Democrat organizations, not even southern labor groups), but he still is going to have to face down horrible margins in the suburbs and no real enthusiasm on the part of activists.
I wonder if maybe LBJ gets his peace deal and then it collapses within a few weeks, if that could spark off the anti war movement even earlier. It's usually when one has hope and that hope is dashed that one gets most angry.
All good points. What I was really trying to get at is that RFK not running sets off a lot of butterflies and you could be looking at a much different world.
But, I wouldn't count LBJ out of anything. Nobody would get a better deal than one would get from an LBJ trying to get reelected. And he had the power to make some genuine threats involving unusual sunrises. I get that LBJ was hated, but so was Nixon. LBJ was a politician of unusual skill, and I think beating Nixon by a margin greater than that of JFK might have been pretty motivating. And while I admire RFK a lot, I kind of liked being a contrarian ass putting forth a scenario where RFK not running made the world a better place.
This is seriously a good point about crime and the suburbs and it was the core of the Nixon strategy. Rick Perlstein's Nixonland is an excellent read on this.
I don't know about that. People really, really didn't like LBJ in 1968. In fact, part of the reason Humphrey did so poorly before his September 30th Speech but so much better afterwards was that he was seen as nothing more then a LBJ crony before the speech, but that changed after he broke from LBJ's Vietnam Policy in the speech.
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RFK was a glimmer of hope and getting back to the track the train had derailed from, with all the wrong that entails, when his brother was assassinated. A glimmer of possibility in the misery that had already marked 1968, and even 1967. His own assassination doubled down on what his candidacy looked like salvation from. There is not even that bit of salvation here. So that is an interesting national socio-political psychology thing.
All good points. What I was really trying to get at is that RFK not running sets off a lot of butterflies and you could be looking at a much different world.
But, I wouldn't count LBJ out of anything. Nobody would get a better deal than one would get from an LBJ trying to get reelected. And he had the power to make some genuine threats involving unusual sunrises. I get that LBJ was hated, but so was Nixon. LBJ was a politician of unusual skill, and I think beating Nixon by a margin greater than that of JFK might have been pretty motivating. And while I admire RFK a lot, I kind of liked being a contrarian ass putting forth a scenario where RFK not running made the world a better place.
And you've made some very good points
Apollo! I just want to say that while I men-
tioned LBJ haters in my post above, I myself
most certainly am NOT one. Lord knows the
man had his faults but he also did a LOT of
good(in fact if it wasn't for that dammed war
LBJ just might today be considered one of
our great Presidents). The noted novelist
Ralph(INVISIBLE MAN)Ellison made this
point better than I can: "When all the re-
turns are in, perhaps President Johnson will
have to settle for being recognized as the
greatest American President for the poor and
for the Negroes, but that , as I see it, is a very great honor indeed." (Quoted in David
Wallechinsky & Irving Wallace, THE PEOPLE'S
ALMANAC, 1975, p. 278).
I always felt Bobby made a mistake running in '68 given how unpopular LBJ was, given how much LBJ hated him and could really screw him in a Presidential run, and given the fact that the Democrats were so divided that year. Unlike all the Kennedy apologists and Camelot believers, I think Nixon would beat RFK just like he did Humphrey.
Seems a bit straw man-ish. Most on this board, including the OP, seem to generally assume RFK would fall short of the delegates to get the nomination. Now, there are a ton of RFK as President TLs, but they generally involve some butterfly that helps with RFK's delegate issue.
I wasn't necessarily targeting the board or the OP, but it seems like there's a general consensus among the general population that RFK would've been elected President in 1968 had he lived and I strongly disagree with it. I personally think he should've sat it out and let Johnson, Humphrey, McCarthy take the fall to Nixon and wait until 76, or if a Republican wins in 76, 1980, or if butterflies cause Nixon's term to be worse, 72.
It's an interesting discussion. I've always been in the 'hard to say' camp, since the OTL election came down to around 100,000 votes spread across a few close states, but I'm not as familiar with the campaign dynamics like I am the 1992-2012 races. What makes you think Nixon would win a landslide?
With Wallace in the race, I don't think Nixon wins in a landslide against any Democrat. I think Wallace was what kept Nixon from a decisive electoral win in 1968 OTL and that would be the case against any other northern Democratic nominee. I just think Nixon would win because 1968 was like 1980 and 2008 in a sense that it was an election year that was strongly against the incumbent party.