Hardly.
Humphrey lost mainly because of his reputation as LBJ’s Veep & his support of the war.
RFK had a very enthusiastic following [especially among the young] & saw no reason to vote for HH vs Nixon. It was kinda like Bernie Bros, except much more so.
Nixon, of course lied about his ‘secret plan to end the war’, & should have been prosecuted for treason for scuttling the ongoing peace talks.
Just imagine if Nixon had never been POTUS…
No Reagan. No Bush [any of 'em]. No Gulf War[s], no generational occupations… etc, etc.
What a fucked up year that was… MLK & RFK gunned down, Nixon in the WH…
Rob is joking, but it has not gone down well. You can tell he’s joking because of the pixels… no, you can tell he’s joking because he says if Nixon had won it would have forever changed American political life. But Nixon did win, so a victory would not have changed anything. Plus I know because I have read Rob Beschizza for more than a decade and he has never proven to be a dipshit before now.
But Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” was already underway at the time of RFK’s assassination and would have remained a viable election strategy even if RFK had won.
It’s not like Nixon losing in ‘68 would have forever ended the racist/conservative mindset that made it possible for politicians like Reagan or the Bushes to win office. All the same voters were still there.
I do think it would have made them less relevant perhaps? I think part of the reason why later politicians had embraced the southern strategy was because it worked. That seems less likely if he had lost to RFK. We would have had 2 terms (maybe) of RFK, a more progressive set of policies, probably still an end to Vietnam, etc… who knows what else.
I’m no fan of Nixon but recall he WAS the one who ultimately ordered American troops to withdraw from Vietnam, while RFK’s brother was the one who sent 16,000 American “military advisors” there in the first place.
I think some folks may be romanticizing exactly how progressive a Robert F. Kennedy administration would have been.
I know, but he was explicitly running on an anti-war platform.
Let’s not forget how much of a disaster Vietnamization was for the Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians… There is a direct line between the Nixon administrations policies and the Cambodian genocide. A negotiated settlement with all players at the table would have been preferable.
That’s true, but I suspect that much of the liberal policies we got with Nixon would have been there with RFK, plus some more. He didn’t run as JFK 2.0, but as a candidate further to the left. And of course, it’s a counterfactual, and we can’t know for sure, but his campaign was anti-war and pro-civil rights.
I think it’s an outrageously long time in jail unless you have strong continued reasons to keep him there. I really don’t understand the US system. In Ireland you have an automatic life sentence for murder. That said you are almost invariably released, but it’s creeping up for no discernible reason. Now you have to serve 12 years (law this year) rather than seven and the average is now 18 years. It was probably in the early tens 30 years ago.
As the sentence is life you fuck around and commit a crime that makes your release seem unsafe you’re back in. It’s a very, very low rate of recidivism. Unlike most things.
If RFK hadn’t been assassinated, Nixon’s Gun Control Act might never have been passed. The sudden implementation of the Gun Control Act, which banned mail order sales of guns and introduced more stringent licensing of dealers, among other things, was a catalyst for the NRA to become a political lobbying organization. Prior to that, they were just a boring club of hunters and sport shooters who taught safety classes and ran shooting competitions with surplus ammo from the armed forces. They were blindsided, and realized they needed a seat at the table in Washington.
who knows what else.