# Alternate history: LBJ wins in 1968! **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [April 22, 2014, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-lbj-wins-in-1968/686713 "2014-04-22T20:38:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2014, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-lbj-wins-in-1968/686713/81 "2014-04-26T01:55:52Z")
As to the '80 election, I must agree with Mort Sahl. “Reagan won because he ran against Jimmy Carter. If he ran unopposed he would have lost.” ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2014, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-lbj-wins-in-1968/686713/82 "2014-04-26T03:32:13Z")
Who was the guy who lost the presidential election, perhaps primary, because he answered, “What are you going to do election night?” by replying, “Go home, take a couple of belts and go to sleep”? I liked the guy until I found out that as a senator, he wanted to make Christianity the official religon of the USA. Perhaps his name was Anderson? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2014, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-lbj-wins-in-1968/686713/83 "2014-04-26T04:54:20Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > I’m with you up until you have Nixon over Humphrey. Without Vietnam, there are no war protesters, no rioting in the streets in 1968, no “Silent Majority” demanding a return to law and order. With the country going well, I think Humphrey beats Nixon in 1972. Thus no President Nixon, no Watergate, no President Carter. Democrats may still get burned by the oil embargo and subsequent inflation. Republicans may decide it’s time to go hard right in 1976, enter Ronald Reagan. But I don’t think he could have stopped a second Humphrey term. So Humphrey is succeeded by Mondale, then perhaps Clinton enters about the time he did in reality. I just have a feeling that with the Democrats winning the 1960, 1964, and 1968 elections, the country would be looking for a change by 1972. And besides, even without Vietnam as a major cause, there were still plenty of other issues that would have been causing protests in that era. Nixon would have found plenty of fertile ground to appeal to “Middle America” on. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2014, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-lbj-wins-in-1968/686713/84 "2014-04-27T04:05:09Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I just have a feeling that with the Democrats winning the 1960, 1964, and 1968 elections, the country would be looking for a change by 1972. That is a statistically confirmed effect IIRC. > [@](#): > > And besides, even without Vietnam as a major cause, there were still plenty of other issues that would have been causing protests in that era. Nixon would have found plenty of fertile ground to appeal to “Middle America” on. Back to my sheet of paper. In 1968 the Democratic Convention ended in shambles and Nixon went on to win …50.6% of the 2 party vote. But he actually did better than expected given the economy… by 9/10 of a percentage point. Enough to make a difference in that campaign, but not really the most important factor. The two most important factors are incumbency and economic growth _during the election year_. You can actually manage the economy rather horribly, but if things look good once year out of every four, the incumbent is golden. Then again, Nixon beat the model by 3.3 percentage points in 1972, which is pretty good. So maybe middle American appeals helped. But recall that Democrats received 38.2% of the 2 party vote that year: other effects (election year economy plus incumbency) were more important. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2014, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-lbj-wins-in-1968/686713/85 "2014-04-27T04:13:48Z")
That said, Nixon consciously stimulated the economy in 1972 and it’s not clear whether another President would have generated such a strong electoral environment. Jimmy Carter famously ran the political business cycle in reverse. ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-lbj-wins-in-1968/686713/86 "2014-05-01T18:07:01Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > No state governor is an “amateur.” I wouldn’t even call Sarah Palin that. Of course not. What’s below amateur again? ---
**Author:** ![nevadaexile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb8c5e/32.png) [@nevadaexile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nevadaexile)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-lbj-wins-in-1968/686713/87 "2014-05-01T18:43:36Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > I’m with you up until you have Nixon over Humphrey. Without Vietnam, there are no war protesters, no rioting in the streets in 1968, no “Silent Majority” demanding a return to law and order. With the country going well, I think Humphrey beats Nixon in 1972. Thus no President Nixon, no Watergate, no President Carter. Democrats may still get burned by the oil embargo and subsequent inflation. Republicans may decide it’s time to go hard right in 1976, enter Ronald Reagan. But I don’t think he could have stopped a second Humphrey term. So Humphrey is succeeded by Mondale, then perhaps Clinton enters about the time he did in reality. There would have civil rights protestors if there hadn’t been Vietnam protestors. The war made it easier for people to forget about what was happening (or rather not happening) here in the US. Had Vietnam never advanced beyond a minor conflict in SE Asia and had the Second Korean Conflict in the late 1960s not occurred, the US would have been faced with serious political unrest on its domestic front. Nixon may not have been the GOP’s candidate for the election in 1968 (assuming that Johnson’s heart had held out) as he wasn’t that popular among many groups. Had he not been as gaffe prone as his son has shown himself to be George Romney (then Governor of Michigan) could have easily defeated Johnson. Romney could have done two terms (with perhaps Harold Stassen or Charles Percy as his VP) and then the field in 1976 would have open for RFK ( assuming that he had not been assassinated) to have run. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-lbj-wins-in-1968/686713/88 "2014-05-01T23:18:26Z")
> [@Morgenstern](#): > > Of course not. What’s below amateur again? Below the amateur is the professional (i.e., the one getting paid). ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2014, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-lbj-wins-in-1968/686713/89 "2014-05-02T03:56:42Z")
> [@nevadaexile](#): > > As for Vietnam: Had Ho Chi Minh been allowed to take over Indochina it would have had ripple effects throughout the West. Presuming that no war would have occurred (which seems to have been the direction that this thread is going) is simply ludicrous if for no other reason that a communist Vietnam could have been viewed a stepping stone to a communist Philippines, Thailand,Malaysia and perhaps even Indonesia. > > All of those nations had weak and corrupt governments so they were ripe for communist infiltration. Indonesia fought a civil war about that in the mid 1960s (actually it was more a slaughter of Communists) sand the PI has had a communist insurgency on its far southern islands for nearly 50 years. You’re wrong about Malaysia. They had already been fighting their own Communist insurgency _and they defeated it_, with the UK’s help but not the United States’s. Tunku Abdul Rahman was a popular, respected leader, the antonym of the sordid Diem clique. The Americans asked the British General Templer, who defeated the Malaysian Communist insurgents, for advice on jungle counterinsurgency. Templer told them the situation in Vietnam was completely different from Malaysia, and what they hoped to do in Vietnam would never work. They ignored him and got themselves neck-deep in shit. (And the big fools said to press on.) It would have been so much better for Vietnam to have enjoyed an open and fair election. If Ho Chi Minh had won the election fair and square when it was supposed to happen, he would have become a respected leader too, and there probably would have been no insurgency. There would have been no Diem and no Madame Nhu and certainly less corruption. By freezing out Ho and instead attempting to prop up Diem, they royally screwed the pooch, hell, they screwed the whole damn kennel. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2014, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-lbj-wins-in-1968/686713/90 "2014-05-02T06:23:32Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > You’re wrong about Malaysia. They had already been fighting their own Communist insurgency _and they defeated it_, with the UK’s help but not the United States’s. Tunku Abdul Rahman was a popular, respected leader, the antonym of the sordid Diem clique. The Americans asked the British General Templer, who defeated the Malaysian Communist insurgents, for advice on jungle counterinsurgency. Templer told them the situation in Vietnam was completely different from Malaysia, and what they hoped to do in Vietnam would never work. They ignored him and got themselves neck-deep in shit. (And the big fools said to press on.) The key factor was that Communism in Malaysia was seen as an outside force being imposed upon the country (as it was in Eastern Europe) rather than an internal movement (as it was in Russia, China, Cuba, and Vietnam). ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2014, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-lbj-wins-in-1968/686713/91 "2014-05-02T16:02:30Z")
Well, sort of. The counterinsurgency was able to isolate it from the population because of deep ethnic divisions. The Malay people controlled the country politically, while the insurgency was ethnically Chinese. It was not actually imposed from outside; the ethnic Chinese Communists in Malaya had organized the resistance to the Japanese occupation during the war. But it could be framed as “outside” because the Chinese minority of Malaya were “outsiders” of the Malay centers of power. Regardless, things shook out the way they did for the reason you describe, **Little Nemo.** The perception of outsiderness was sufficient. The Viet Cong was an indigenous movement of the Vietnamese people themselves and could not be isolated in that way, which made a very big difference. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2014, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-lbj-wins-in-1968/686713/92 "2014-05-02T22:16:31Z")
P.S. I reckon Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and company probably did channel funds or arms to the Malayan Chinese Communists. I’d be surprised if they hadn’t. But that was only after Malaya’s Chi Com underground had already started the struggle _on their own_, years previously. I emphasize “_on their own_” for both the Chi Com insurgency and the Malaysian counterinsurgency. It was an internal conflict that got internationalized by foreign world powers trying to get their Cold War fought by proxy in countries of the global South. Edit: If one faults Chairman Mao’s China for interfering in the Malayan Emergency, the British Empire had already been involved there on the other side of the Cold War. No _tu quoque_. I’m just sayin. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2014, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-lbj-wins-in-1968/686713/93 "2014-05-03T01:41:03Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > P.S. I reckon Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and company probably did channel funds or arms to the Malayan Chinese Communists. I’d be surprised if they hadn’t. But that was only after Malaya’s Chi Com underground had already started the struggle _on their own_, years previously. > > I emphasize “_on their own_” for both the Chi Com insurgency and the Malaysian counterinsurgency. It was an internal conflict that got internationalized by foreign world powers trying to get their Cold War fought by proxy in countries of the global South. > > Edit: If one faults Chairman Mao’s China for interfering in the Malayan Emergency, the British Empire had already been involved there on the other side of the Cold War. No _tu quoque_. I’m just sayin. I’m not saying the Malaysian communists were just front men for the PRC. I’m just saying it was easy to portray them as such. ---
**Author:** ![Andiethewestie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ba9def/32.png) [@Andiethewestie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andiethewestie)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2014, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-lbj-wins-in-1968/686713/94 "2014-05-03T01:59:29Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Oh, c’mon, we’re talking about LBJ here! The most admirable and beneficial sleazebag in American history, but still a sleazebag! Sleazy sure, but Nam is the taint of his legacy, The Civil rights act was the greatest domestic social policy since the New Deal. He would have been revered at least as much as FDR on the domestic front. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2014, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-lbj-wins-in-1968/686713/95 "2014-05-03T03:30:48Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I’m not saying the Malaysian communists were just front men for the PRC. I’m just saying it was easy to portray them as such. Even if they weren’t, an insurgency led by an ethnic minority is not going to have an easy time blending in with the population. As for the Viet cong, yeah they were indiginous, but they too were defeated. It was the NVA that beat South Vietnam, not the Viet Cong. Although really it’s impossible to separate the two: the VC may have been made up of southerners, but it was led and directed from North Vietnam. The Viet Cong’s commander was a North Vietnamese Lt. General and a member of North Vietnam’s Central Committee: > **[Trần Văn Trà](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%E1%BA%A7n_V%C4%83n_Tr%C3%A0)** > > Nguyễn Chấn, known as Trần Văn Trà (September 15, 1919 – April 20, 1996) was a colonel-general in the People's Army of Vietnam. He was Commander of B2 Front during 1963 – 1967, Deputy Commander of Liberation Army of South Vietnam during 1968 – 1972; member of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Vietnam from 1960 to 1982 (3rd and 4th terms). > The son of a bricklayer, Trần Văn Trà was born in Quảng Ngãi Province in 1918. He joined the Indochinese Communist Party in 1938 and spent the yea... So really, both arguments are right: the VC was indigenous, and not, at least if by indigenous you mean South vietnamese. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2014, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-lbj-wins-in-1968/686713/96 "2014-05-03T16:32:28Z")
New book on 'Nam: [_Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam._](http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American/dp/1250045061/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1399134499&sr=1-1&keywords=kill+anything+that+moves) Reviewed [here](http://www.salon.com/2014/05/02/the_burden_of_atrocity_how_vietnam_was_exposed_as_a_dirty_war/). > [@](#): > > Reading _Kill Anything That Moves_ evokes a sense of visceral revulsion and sickened recoil, reactions toward war that are rarely experienced in the US today in our more sanitized, draft-free, drone-filled conflicts. It is like getting repeatedly punched and bracing oneself for more — an overwhelming experience, even for readers already familiar with detailed accounts of the varieties of savagery perpetrated in Vietnam, and knew already the pervasive, normal nature of the war’s brutality. > > What makes _Kill Anything That Moves_ different from other texts that cover the same material is the sheer compendium of evidence. Each of the not-quite-the-same stories — ranging from massacres to rapes to murder to torture to running people over and compensating deaths with a few dollars for the bereaved families — bears the imprint of a violent logic repeating itself again and again. > > Like others writing about the war crimes committed by the United States in Vietnam, Turse sets up his own narrative pointing out that the massacre at My Lai in 1968 — in which over 500 civilians were brutalized and killed — was the “tip of the iceberg” of non-combatant murder. Turse began his own investigations when, while conducting related doctoral research, he “stumbled upon” papers from the War Crimes Working Group, a secret task force created at the Pentagon after My Lai that collected files for over 300 such criminal incidents that had been substantiated by military investigators — none individually at the scale of My Lai, but indicative of a pattern of brutality Turse traces with his book. Over the years this group regularly reported such incidents up the chains of command at the Pentagon as well as the White House — not for the purposes seeking justice, but as part of an operation of “image management . . . to be parried or buried as quickly as possible.” > > Beyond these files, Turse found further official documentary evidence of war crimes in similar archives. He interviewed government officials and over 100 American veterans of the war. He visited Vietnam, speaking with the victims of US warfare. There, searching out a hamlet that had been the site of one of the many civilian massacres he was investigating, he began to see that, rather than finding the “needle in the haystack” of the small rural village in the Vietnamese countryside marked by this horror, he was instead discovering a “haystack of needles,” a whole social landscape overwhelmed by a history of criminal brutality and death. > > The narrative frame of book, the analysis that links it all together, is the observation that such bloodiness, such wanton destruction, was in fact the plan. Vietnam was the technocratic set letting slip the dogs of war. From the very top, from the very beginning, the war in Vietnam was intended as a war of attrition that the US would win because it was able to bring down more lethal destruction than its enemy. General William Westmoreland, with the statistical support of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and his team, sought the elusive “crossover point” of carnage, “at which Vietcong and North Vietnamese casualties would be greater than they could sustain,” in McNamara’s description. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-lbj-wins-in-1968/686713.md?page=4)