WI: Johnson vs Nixon, 1960

If not for JFK, who would win the 1960 election

  • Lyndon Baines Johnson

    Votes: 11 29.7%
  • Richard Milhous Nixon

    Votes: 26 70.3%

  • Total voters
    37
Despite being shown as a handsome, healthy man, John F Kennedy suffered from some serious health issues like Addison's Disease. Were he not killed there's a good chance he'd die in office anyway, and if people knew about his illnesses its unlikely he'd become president. So let's say people find out right as he's starting and loses his shot, and he's not settle for second banana. Instead Lyndon B Johnson gets the Democratic nomination

If LBJ is chosen, who do you think would be his running mate? And more importantly, who'd win in the 1960 election-him or Richard Nixon? And out of curiosity, do you think Oswald would assassinate either like he did with OTL JFK?
 
Hubert Humphrey still seems the likely choice for LBJ's running mate. They worked well together in the Senate and Johnson is going to need a northerner to balance the ticket.

As for who wins, I have to go with Nixon. Johnson lacks Kennedy's suave appeal, there isn't likely to be debates, and I just can't see (due to the butterflies) Nixon ending up in the hospital in TTL as he did during the OTL campaign, and all that works in his favor. It'll still be a close race, and a dirty one, but I think Nixon will pull it off.
 
Hubert Humphrey still seems the likely choice for LBJ's running mate. They worked well together in the Senate and Johnson is going to need a northerner to balance the ticket.

As for who wins, I have to go with Nixon. Johnson lacks Kennedy's suave appeal, there isn't likely to be debates, and I just can't see (due to the butterflies) Nixon ending up in the hospital in TTL as he did during the OTL campaign, and all that works in his favor. It'll still be a close race, and a dirty one, but I think Nixon will pull it off.

If neither Humphrey nor Johnson wants a re match in 1964, and if no Kennedy is in the running, then perhaps Pat Brown would be the leading Democratic candidate. Aside from him the Dems don't really have any serious candidate in this TL.
 
Regardless of who wins, this would be one dirty election.

Yes, and since his OTL paranoia wasn't nearly as developed in this situation, it seems reasonable that most of the dirt would come from Johnson.

Speaking as a lifelong old school northeastern Republican, there would be an irony: a presidential campaign in which Nixon (largely) takes the high road. That might bring Ike on board to make a more active case for Nixon: he had a good working relationship with Lyndon Johnson, and a muddy campaign against his vice president would be something of a betrayal, never mind the "it's business; not personal" slant. I think Nixon wins but not by much: perhaps by the same margin that he lost IOTL.
 
I am by no means certain that LBJ would get the nomination if JFK didn't run. Northern liberals, labor, and African Americans would be a problem--they were cool to him at best. OTOH, Humphrey was probably too liberal and Stevenson had lost twice to Ike. I think Symington would have a real chance if only he actually made an effort instead of doing what he did in OTL (laying back and hoping that a deadlocked convention would turn to him).

But if it is LBJ--he might carry a few southern and border states Nixon carried in OTL, but IL, MI, PA, NJ, and even NY would be at risk--maybe even MA (which gave Ike a higher-than-national-average landslide in 1956...).
 
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