2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: In 1980, did Ted Kennedy endorse Jimmy Carter? [View all]MADem
(135,425 posts)on his side, nor did he have the SYSTEM on his side. He wanted to make some points--about the war, and about HIS political future in the outyears. But his candidacy was a long shot at best. That is obvious if you look at the candidates dispassionately, in terms of how much political clout they had where it MATTERS--with the delegates.
You had two anti-war candidates in the primary. McCarthy, who had organization and the youth vote, and RFK, who was coming in late in the game, short on cash and organization, but with lots of media goodwill and no small amount of Kennedy charm. Both were, as I said, anti-war, and both were Roman Catholics. They'd fight EACH OTHER for those segments of the vote and split it--it wasn't half the party, anyway, it was a minority segment. They hated each other too--neither would have ceded to the other. They would have split that antiwar/Catholic segment, leaving the balance to LBJ. People forget that there wasn't a crazy swell of antiwar sentiment at the time--the term "dirty hippies" came about because the people who were protesting the war will still a minority segment and that was an effort to marginalize them. That silent majority that Nixon later talked about was still ready to believe that war could be won. Further, there were only thirteen showboat primaries (out of fifty states, and favorite son delegate-grabbers played in many of those) and the party bosses, who controlled the state delegates, were "establishment" and in the pocket of the party leader (that would be Johnson).
LBJ would have won the party nomination on the first ballot. The runners up, after ceding politely, would have gotten a speaking slot if they toned down their differences on the war.
Lyndon didn't want to leave unless and until he was reasonably certain that he COULD HAVE won the election, and he did think he could have done that. He was prideful that way. But he also knew he was sick--and he was right.
RFK was in that race to make a name for himself, outside of the party structure that chooses the Keynoter and decides who is allowed to advance, and separate from his dead brother. He was in the process of crafting his own identity. He had a steep road to the nomination, had he lived. People want to believe that because he was murdered in cold blood, and who doesn't like a romantic and idealistic "What might have been" narrative, but it was unlikely to happen. People just weren't as liberal as they seem through the mists of time--and the farty people who favored the status quo were loyal voters.
As it was, Hubert Humphrey (who didn't generate a huge amount of excitement but was felt to be a nice, safe and not unintelligent guy) did not bother to run in a single one of those primaries, and he had amassed more delegates at the time of RFK's murder than either of the other two candidates. And, perhaps preparing himself for (the disaster that was) 72, McGovern jumped in at the last minute to bleed some more of that anti-war vote off from McCarthy after RFK was killed. In any event, the unexciting, "establishment," status quo HHH CLOBBERED his primary opponents at the convention by an overwhelming majority--he got nearly 3x the votes that McCarthy amassed--on the first ballot, too. And he wasn't taking votes from the dearly departed RFK.
What made it look like the Democrats weren't ready for Prime Time was the rioting and the clubbing, beating and general lawlessness (on the part of the rioters AND the police) in Chicago. The mayor did a great job, in his effort to be a tough guy, of making us all look like a bunch of deranged lunatics. Those were very difficult days.