RB you might be right about RFK waiting until 1980. EMK did. The October suprise on finding out that Nixon was monkeying around with the peace treaty is something LBJ would not pass up. He was cold blooded in wanting to win. The fued between LBJ and RFK is real and deadly. But they both wanted to be President and Nixon was in the way. I read some where though that LBJ mellowed more on it than RFK did. Maybe the butterfly is LBJ accepting some of RFK's peace ideas in the winter of 68. But deep down inside did LBJ want to fight RFK for the nomination? Bobby was some one he could not bully or scare. Also a quick question, LBJ won a write in vote in NH. In todays world would that be seen has a losing effort?
Nothing and no one (except his family, who were his biggest backers) is going to persuade RFK to withdraw under anything resembling OTL circumstances. He had made his decision during the summer of '67 according to Ted's
True Compass account. LBJ is not going to accept any ideas from Kennedy, no matter how well intentioned.
Did LBJ want to fight that particular war: no. In any case, Kennedy would probably become POTUS at some point down the line if he's still alive, whether in '68 or '80.
Mellowing more: I know what you're thinking of- the conversations with his staff in April and May. Unfortunately, he didn't, otherwise he wouldn't have attempted to deny RFK burial in Arlington and later withhold the funding for a proper memorial. That funding was restored by Nixon via EO on his first day in office.
You're also spot-on about RFK being one of the handful of people whom LBJ could neither bully nor scare. To digress a bit, an overlooked aspect of their feud is that LBJ had an inferiority complex vis-a-vis RFK- details are in both DKG's LBJ books and
Mutual Contempt. Keeping it short, LBJ from childhood had a view that Real Men (TM) could be either nerds or jocks, i.e. athletes or intellectuals, but not both. So RFK was manlier than LBJ by LBJ's own criteria.