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Wes Riddle:
RFK was going to take the 68 election and LBJ knew it. In addition, Bobby was going to go after LBJ with everything he had including his own personal investigation of the assassination. Check! RFK was shot in Los Angeles Checkmate.
But RFK entered the race in '68 too late; he needed to garner support starting in late 1967 in those states that weren't having primaries. At the time he won in California (one of only 13 states holding Democratic primaries that year; by contrast, all states now hold primaries), Bobby was behind in convention delegate support.
TIME magazine, in its June 7, 1968 issue published before the assassination, reported:
'Oregon is haven to the maverick and uplifter of the underdog. In last week's primary. Oregon Democrats allowed Eugene McCarthy to check Robert Kennedy's drive, while the Republicans gave new velocity to Richard Nixon's bid for the nomination. By so doing, Oregonians made it more likely than ever that the post-convention contest would be between Nixon and Hubert Humphrey, the two ostensible traditionalists in the crowd.
Regardless of the personalities and vintages of the probable candidates, however, the second half of the campaign year will doubtless be as unorthodox as the first. Kennedy and McCarthy may eventually succeed only in canceling each other out...
By virtue of his expertise, diligence and money, and buoyed by a string of primary victories, Kennedy came into Oregon the odds-on favorite. His overconfidence was so manifest that he had come to regard McCarthy as merely a foil for his own continued success. "I'd be in real trouble'" Kennedy told a TIME correspondent after Nebraska "if he got out." And the week before Oregon Kennedy was so sure of himself that he said publicly: "If I get beaten in a primary, then I'm not a very viable candidate."...
Pennsylvania Pressure.
While the vote was certainly a moral victory for the durable Minnesotan, few powers in the party yet view him as a serious possibility for the nomination. By slowing Kennedy, he increased Humphrey's already strong pulling power in the tug of war for convention delegates. The Vice President was adding to his long lead even before Oregon's votes were counted. In Florida, a slate of delegates pledged to Senator George Smathers as a favorite son, but favorable to Humphrey, captured 55 of the state's 63 convention votes.
Members of Pennsylvania's 130-vote delegation met for the first time and, ignoring pleas from Kennedy backers to remain uncommitted, gave Humphrey about 100 of their votes. In Missouri, Kennedy and McCarthy forces defeated a move to give Humphrey all 60 votes under a unit rule, but the Vice President was the heavy favorite at the state convention. Delegates in many states now regarded as strong for Humphrey will be under no compulsion to remain loyal until the national convention, but for the time being, Humphrey's advantage seems unassailable.'
From TIME's June 14, 1968 issue:
'Ironically, however, the assassination probably will have the effect of clarifying rather than obfuscating the prospects of the campaign year. As a result, most politicians agree, Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon, even more than before, seem destined to capture their parties' nominations and meet in November.
Pockets of Strength.
Even before last week, Humphrey's forces had quietly marshaled sufficient delegate strength to put him within clear marching distance of a convention victory; Kennedy's death put him even closer. In his eleven-week campaign, R.F.K. had amassed more than 300 convention-delegate votes, including the 172 he won in California last Tuesday.'
In a 1996 article for 'The New York Times', Presidential historian Michael R. Beschloss said of the 1968 Democratic nomination campaign:
'The convention showed that although Robert Kennedy won every primary he entered, save Oregon, he still would have been stymied, had he lived, in winning the nomination. The prize went easily to Hubert Humphrey, who had stayed out of the primaries.
Even the antiwar plank presented by Kennedy's supporters was rejected. Insurgent Democrats considered these results an insult to democracy, especially when they realized that about a third of the delegates had been chosen by local party organizations before the primaries had even begun.'
RFK might have been hoping to be a running mate, or maybe influence the party's platform, or be there ready if Humphrey stumbled or made a gaffe before the convention voting. But out-and-out winning the Democratic nomination AND the 1968 general election, that's all myth, kept alive now by conspiracy buffs like Oliver Stone.
I suppose some see RFK's great populist victory in liberal California as some sort of momentum to sweep the country. In the presidential election, California went for native son Richard M. Nixon.
Re: Bobby was going to go after LBJ with everything he had including his own personal investigation of the assassination
If LBJ was worried about that, he would have remained in office. Why would Hoover and Johnson engineer a 'coup' in 1963, then throw it all away in 1968? Especially knowing the liberal wing of the Democratic party expected to get the Democratic nomination. Most of the Democratic Party preferred Humphrey, a popular stable national figure since many years; "reckless" RFK was an unknown quantity outside New England and pretty much hated throughout the South, laughed at in the Midwest, mocked in the song 'Wild Thing' by Bill Minkin.
Jerry
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« Last Edit: November 03, 2010, 03:37:23 AM by Jerry Organ »
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 "It's, uh, very heavy." — President Johnson on receiving the Warren Report in the Oval Office, Sept. 24, 1964
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