"NY Teacher" <dakacbellis@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
news:ctltk.4089$Jb.1687@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
:
>
> "Nauvoo Expositor" <johnil_33@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
> news:796cc205-ecdb-4808-8489-3cbc02d3d089@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Aug 26, 9:30?pm, Nauvoo Expositor <johnil...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> On September 21, 1947 John F. Kennedy collapsed in Claridge's, a
>> London hotel. ?A friend, Pamela Digby Churchill, took him to a clinic
>> and sent for Dr. Daniel Davies. ?Davies examined him and found he had
>> Addison's Disease, an autoimmune destruction of the adrenal gland. ?He
>> declared that Kennedy had less than a year to live.
>> What would have happened if Kennedy had died around that time? ?Who
>> would have gotten the nomination for president in 1980?
>
> Correction: I meant 1960.
>
>
> Richard Nixon
>
>
My guess is that somone like Symington or LBJ would actually have an
easier time beating Nixon than JFK did. (Liberals might grumble about LBJ
but they would be mollified by someone like Humphrey as his running mate,
and by a reminder that the only alternative to LBJ was Nixon.) IMO JFK's
Catholicism hurt him much more than it helped him. Yes, he did win the
great majority of the Catholic vote, but so did the Baptist Harry Truman
in 1948; Eisenhower's strength with Catholic voters was mainly personal,
not party-based, and probably any Democratic candidate other than
Stevenson could have won back most of the Catholic "Eisenhower Democrats"
in 1960. Many of the things that would later alienate Catholic voters
from the Democratic Party--abortion, busing, rising crime rates, urban
riots, affirmative action, gay rights, etc.--were not yet political issues
at the time. It is true that as long as JFK was a candidate, any rival
Democrat who beat him for the nomination might face a Catholic backlash.
But in this TL, without JFK or any other significant Catholic candidate--I
don't think Mike Di Salle or Pat Brown had any serious chance--a
Protestant Democratic nominee like Symington or LBJ should have little
difficulty winning the Catholic vote.
OTOH, JFK's religion undoubtedly hurt him not only in the South and border
states but in places like California's Central Valley (with its large
population of transplanted Texans and Oklahomans) and southern Ohio.
By most indicators, 1960 should have been a Democratic year. The nation
was in a recession (the second in three years), the Democrats had won
overwhelming control of Congress in 1958, foreign policy wasn't going too
well (the U-2, the rise of Castro), etc. Even Eisenhower--whose
popularity in any event could not easily be transferred to Nxon--was not
as popular as he had been; in mid-July 1960, his Gallup poll approval
ratings went done to 49 percent, good enough for many presidents but
unprecedently low for Ike. See "Presidents' Low Marks" at
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/11/14/bush.poll/
I think that JFK was
actually one of the weaker possible Democratic candidates for 1960, not
just because of his Catholicism but also to some extent because of his
youth--"can you trust him to stand up to Khrushchev?" etc.
(One complication: If JFK died in 1947, probably Henry Cabot Lodge would
have been re-elected to the Senate from Massachusetts in 1952--maybe even
in the Democratic year of 1958 as well. JFK was undoubtedly the strongest
possible Democratic candidate against him in 1952, and even so, Lodge only
lost narrowly. If Lodge had remained Senator from Massachusetts I doubt
that he would have been on the GOP ticket in 1960. He was chosen that
year largely because his denunciations of the Soviets at the UN had won
him much favorable publicity. Since Lodge was rather ineffective as a
running mate, having another vice-presidential candidate might help Nixon
marginally. Another consequence of Lodge being re-elected in 1952 is
that the Democrats would not have gotten a majority in the Senate until
1958--instead of 1954 as in OTL--so LBJ would not have had as much of a
record as *Majority* Leader.)
--
David Tenner
dtenner@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
|
