He may have been better received than he was IOTL. The Netflix docuseries "Bobby Kennedy for President" shows pretty clearly that a lot of people thought he was just an opportunist, getting in McCarthy's way when it proved to be convenient. Other than that, i'm not too sure how much would've actually changed. I imagine McCarthy would've stayed out of the race, or at least not done as well as he did. I'm not sure what LBJ would've done, whether he'd have dropped out sooner or stayed in longer to stick it to RFK; depends on how New Hampshire goes with Kennedy in the mix. Since a big part of McCarthy's support came from college kids, and he managed to take 42% of the vote, I could see RFK doing even better and maybe even winning the NH primary. The biggest question is, if RFK is the immediate front-runner with only minimal competition, and still gets shot, who replaces him? Still Hubert Humphrey?