I watched a documentary on him earlier this year on Netflix. He was an interesting person and there is no question his death has shaped our society - for starters his death was pretty much the explanation point of an incredibly turbulent period (it came 2 months after MLK's assassination).

I'm pretty confident RFK would have beaten Nixon although others may disagree. If that had happened, it would be interesting to speculate where things might have led to in other presidential elections.

RFK also has his own assassination conspiracy theorists. Pretty much everyone concedes Sirhan Sirhan fired some of the shots but some people also think there was a second gun man - perhaps the bodyguard that had been hired that night to protect Kennedy.

I was very impressed with Ethel Kennedy in the documentary. It's tough to compare to JFK to RFK but to me, Ethel was a much greater first lady than Jackie O. She raised 10 (!) kids on her own after he died - she was pregnant with #10 when he was shot. She's still alive today at age 90. I don't think she's doing amazing health wise (she's in a wheelchair in one recent photo I saw of her) but hopefully she can hang around a bit longer.

Im not even confident that he would have gotten the nomination. Back then many of those in charge of the DNC were no fan of Bobby.

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Just think, we could have had 4-8 years more of corruption and moral bankruptcy. This is a Kennedy you're talking about after all.

(06-06-2018 06:08 AM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  I'm pretty confident RFK would have beaten Nixon although others may disagree.

(06-06-2018 06:14 AM)fsquid Wrote:  Im not even confident that he would have gotten the nomination. Back then many of those in charge of the DNC were no fan of Bobby.

Tough to say. Certainly, LBJ would’ve been 100% against Kennedy no matter what. Would’ve been very strange to see an incumbent president get shafted like that by his own party — which is what it would’ve been if the Dems had nominated RFK (he hated to be called “Bobby” and no one that was close to him ever called him that unless they were teasing or trolling).

In the Nixon/Humphrey race, Nixon won the Electoral College by 302-191, with 45 to George Wallace. If you put RFK on the November ballot instead of HHH, then Texas automatically flips to Nixon and he margin stretches to 327-166. At that point, you have to ask what Nixon states would’ve flipped to RFK? California, maybe, but CA was *Much* more conservative back then, overall. Illinois? Same as CA. Kennedy really would’ve needed both of them. Humphrey already had won all the other industrial/NE states like Mich-PA-NY and most of New England.

Just tough to say with any certainty, IMHO.

(06-06-2018 06:14 AM)fsquid Wrote:  Im not even confident that he would have gotten the nomination. Back then many of those in charge of the DNC were no fan of Bobby.

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Agree with this. JFK was a pragmatist, Bobby was a hot-head and had burned a lot of bridges. He also was much further to the left than his brother, and I don't think the country was ready for that at the presidential level at that time.

At risk of sounding callous, I am very glad the Kennedy dynasty is nothing but a shell. And part of the reason they are a shell is that prominent members of that family where politically assassinated.

Hereditary politicians are bad for this country (Bush included.)

Humphrey had the support of the big city political people and the unions even before RFK was assasinated.

(06-06-2018 12:52 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  

(06-06-2018 06:14 AM)fsquid Wrote:  Im not even confident that he would have gotten the nomination. Back then many of those in charge of the DNC were no fan of Bobby.

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Agree with this. JFK was a pragmatist, Bobby was a hot-head and had burned a lot of bridges. He also was much further to the left than his brother, and I don't think the country was ready for that at the presidential level at that time.

Absolutely on the hot-head part - the documentary makes that quite clear. But it also seems to suggest that he was initially much more conservative than JFK on a lot of issues (specifically civil rights) before having an epiphany or something which certainly moved him very far to the left. When he was AG, he fought against some voting laws initially. Eventually he became a huge champion of the minorities (also the hispanic farm workers of California and Cesar Chavez' movement) but a lot of that didn't happen until after JFK was assassinated.

I think RFK would have gotten the nomination - he was building up quite a bit of momentum after California. Humphrey really didn't step up his campaign until after he was killed. If RFK had won the nomination and somehow convinced Humphrey or someone like Proxmire of Wisconsin to be the VP, I think they would have won the election.

Yes, NG is correct in that Texas would have swung to Nixon (LBJ certainly ran Texas at that point) but all RFK would have needed was to have 3 of Illinois, Ohio, California and Wisconsin swing to the blue side. And all four of those states were very close - Nixon wasn't that popular in his own state to begin with. I guess there is no point in speculating too much because obviously none of this could have happened as of June 7, 1968.

Any speculation on a 2nd shooter?

(06-06-2018 04:21 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  Any speculation on a 2nd shooter?

Make-believe fairy-tales, born from the grief of people who don’t want to accept that some random punk-loser can do something in 5 seconds, yet still leave a lasting impact on history. In a perverse way, it’s more comforting to think that the really big, painful things in history are caused by some sinister force lurking behind the curtain like SPECTRE or the Parallax Corporation. It makes the world easier to understand, and holds out hope that the villains can (someday) be identified, thus clearing the way for us to avoid future losses.

Okay, how much is this "investigation" going to cost us? I say who cares if there's another shooter, he's probably dead already anyway. Teddy never paid for his misdeed, let the issue die.