What If?
Could Bobby Kennedy have won the presidency in 1968? Also, Republicans have a pretty good primary election day.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you received this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up below.
Fifty-four years ago today, New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. Four days earlier, Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles minutes after declaring victory in the state’s Democratic primary, which he narrowly won over Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy.
Since that tragic event, Kennedy’s presidential run that year has been wrapped in mythology. Here was the savior of the Democratic Party who could unite the white working class and Black Americans in a black-blue coalition that would reorient national politics. As I wrote in my book, American Maelstrom, this theory of political change was more fiction than fact.
The other night I took to Twitter and laid out a long thread explaining why Kennedy had little chance of winning his party’s nod that year. But I thought it would best to put the argument down here … and I’m going to use as a jumping-off point a piece I wrote about this issue in 2013 for the Guardian.
The first and most pervasive myth that has developed around Bobby is that if he had lived, he would have won the Democratic nomination that summer in Chicago and gone on to win the presidency over Richard Nixon.
But Kennedy was, at best, a long shot to wrest the nomination away from Vice-President Hubert Humphrey. Not only did Humphrey have the lion's share of delegates to the convention, but Bobby was also not a terribly popular figure within the Democratic party. Southerners didn't like him; the unions were no fans either; many of the old Democratic bosses resented him; and President Lyndon B Johnson would have likely sawed off his arm before he allowed "that little shitass" Kennedy to win. When Kennedy himself told aide Dick Goodwin that he had, at most, an "outside chance of winning the nomination from Humphrey", he was likely over-estimating his chances.
Although Bobby had extraordinarily loyal support among blacks and Hispanics, it was precisely this support that alienated many working-class whites. That would have been a liability for Kennedy in a general election against Nixon, even if he had somehow captured the nomination.
Indeed, one of the more striking elements of Kennedy's much-mythologized run for the White House in 1968 was that the more voters got to see him, the less they liked him. In a May poll that year (Gallup), 67% of voters saw him as an opportunist; six months earlier, only 46% viewed him in such negative terms. In November 1967, a majority of voters (54-34%) agreed that he had the same "outstanding qualities" as his brother, the former president. By May 1968, a majority saw him as a pale substitute of his brother. Perhaps most dramatic was his slippage in head-to-head polls with Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy – a May Gallup survey found that only 25% of voters wanted to see Democrats pick him as their nominee in Chicago.
One of Kennedy’s most significant political problems was that voters saw him as a politician who, first and foremost, represented Black America. This argument isn’t 20/20 hindsight. Kennedy acknowledged the issue at the time, telling aides, “I’m the Negro candidate. I have to tell white people I care about what they care about. I’ll talk about racial reconciliation for ten minutes and it’s as cold as can be. I’ll talk about (how) we’ve … got to enforce the law, and they’ll break loose. Now are we trying to win votes, or are we trying to drop dead here?”
It’s why as Kennedy campaigned in white communities during the Indiana primary, talk of racial reconciliation faded, and instead, he boasted about his previous incarnation as the “chief law enforcement officer in the land” when he served as attorney general. He spoke of the need for “law and order” and a stern hand in dealing with race riots.
But even though Kennedy won in Indiana, his image problems didn’t disappear. In Oregon, he lost to Eugene McCarthy partly because of the lack of voters of color. In California, he began the race with a double-digit lead, but internal polling showed that white voters continued to identify him as “the Negro candidate.” He went on to victory there, but only by 4 points as McCarthy again dominated the vote in white suburbia.
But Kennedy’s problems with white voters only scratched the surface of his political dilemmas. Because of the set-up of the nominating system in 1968, he could only win a handful of delegates in state primaries. Most delegates were awarded at state conventions where establishment and elected Democrats, who preferred Humphrey, dominated. They were all too happy to stick it to Kennedy.
Ironically, for all the reverence Kennedy holds among liberal Democrats, they were another source of trouble for him in 1968.
The day after McCarthy's stunning performance against Johnson in the New Hampshire Democratic primary in March 1968, Kennedy told reporters that he was "actively reassessing" his decision not to take on LBJ. It was, said one McCarthy staffer, like waking up Christmas morning and finding that Bobby had stolen all their presents from beneath the tree. Few on the antiwar left forgave Kennedy (McCarthy himself included), and most stuck with McCarthy through the rest of the primary season.
And for a candidate long memorialized as a liberal icon in spirit, he was in reality a New Democrat (before that term became a four-letter word to liberals). He talked about reducing the role of the federal government in "telling people what's good for them", and spoke of creating incentives for businesses to save the ghettos from unemployment and economic decay. He bragged about lowering taxes on private companies and played up his experience as the nation's chief law enforcement officer. He veered so far to the right during the campaign that then-California Governor Ronald Reagan joked that Kennedy was sounding more and more like Barry Goldwater.
Outside of Black and Hispanic voters, as well as ethnic whites who revered his slain brother, Kennedy had little solid support within the Democratic Party.
Part of the problem for RFK was that in the spring of 1968 he still didn’t know who he was or what he believed in. The man who hawkishly counseled his brother to send bombers over Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis would enter the ‘68 race in large measure out of anguish over the war in Vietnam. A man who the novelist William Styron once said “could put people off horribly” tried to run a presidential campaign as the candidate who could bring the races together and unite the country. One day he would speak passionately about the need for racial reconciliation and the on another day (specifically his only campaign debate with McCarthy) he would race-bait his opponent by accusing him of wanting to send tens of thousands of black people to predominately white Orange County.
Kennedy was constantly torn between the desire to win (a trait instilled in him by his domineering father) and a yearning to do the right thing. In 1968, he never quite figured out how to balance those two impulses. Had Kennedy lived, he likely would have matured as a candidate — and as a person. He would have become more disciplined and steady in his approach to campaigning — as his brother eventually did. The tragedy of Kennedy’s death is American politics’ ultimate “what if?” It’s not hard to imagine that he could have been elected president one day — just not in 1968.
Midterm Roundup
Republicans finally had a good night in midterm elections. In California, New Mexico, New Jersey, and Iowa, less extreme, more electable GOP House candidates prevailed. Of particular note, Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski of New Jersey is one of the most vulnerable incumbents in the election, and he’ll now face off against Republican Tom Kean Jr., who he defeated by one point in 2020. Kean is the son of the state’s very popular former governor and is relatively moderate (at least for the 2022 version of the Republican Party). Also, the district has been redrawn to make it slightly less Democratic-leaning. Malinowski’s chances of holding on to his seat just got decidedly worse.
In San Francisco, Chesa Boudin, the city’s liberal district attorney, was recalled by voters, angry over rising crime and Boudin’s perceived permissiveness. Boudin had run for office on a promise of reforming the criminal justice system, ending cash bail, and sending fewer people to jail. But that was a poor fit for the city as crime rates, homelessness, and illicit drug use skyrocketed. In particular, Boudin was hurt by the rising political power of the city’s Asian-American community, which felt that its concerns over public safety went unheeded. We should also be careful in reading too much into this outcome. Boudin narrowly won in 2019, garnering only 36 percent of the vote in the first round of voting (SF uses a ranked voting system). In addition, Boudin’s defeat is largely a by-product of the unique politics of San Francisco and his own missteps. Still, it’s an important reminder that politicians who don’t keep their constituents safe will pay a political price — and, yes, liberals and voters of color care about public safety too.
In South Dakota, voters rejected a ballot measure that would have made it more difficult for voters to enact ballot initiatives. Republicans put this measure on the ballot in order to stop a ballot initiative this fall to expand Medicaid in the state. Medicaid expansion is a central element of Obamacare, but after the Supreme Court ruled on the case in 2013, it mandated that states had to approve it. Dozens of Republican legislators, aghast at the possibility of greenlighting anything with Obama’s name on it, refused to take what is in effect free money from the federal government to help their state’s most vulnerable citizens receive health care access. Over the years, Republican opposition has been worn down — often by ballot initiatives, though some states like Florida, Texas, and South Dakota refuse to expand the health care program. More than 12 years after it passed, the GOP war on Obamacare continues.
What’s Going On?
I have a new piece in the New Republic on President’s Biden bad decision to rehabilitate Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman.
An insane story about a man wrongly accused of shoplifting and sent to prison for 17 days.
Ron DeSantis and the state of Florida bullied the Special Olympics into lifting a vaccine mandate for its annual games in Orlando. While this is yet another reminder that DeSantis is a loathsome human being, there is a political angle here. The guy is a jerk, and as a general rule, people who openly act like jerks don’t go that far in politics. Before you say “Donald Trump,” at least the former president could occasionally be charming. DeSantis is about as charming as foot fungus.
Former four-star general John Allen is in some rather serious trouble.
The noose is tightening on Donald Trump.
Musical Interlude
As a note of clarification, this haunting Phil Ochs song is about John F. Kennedy’s assassination — not his brother, who was shot and killed five years later.
In the context of the decision by SD voters to reject, in impressive numbers, a blatant attempt to hamstring an initiated measure to bring MedicAid to the state, I reminded of a Republican colleague who refused to buy what was then the standard issue postage stamp because: "I refuse to lick Franklin Roosevelt's ass." This statement was made circa 1971. Long memory indeed.