A question about JFK that's more important than who killed him.

[RandySF]

If what would America look like if he had lived and been re-elected (assuming that surviving an attempt would have enhanced his popularity)?

My take is that the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts would have stalled because he was not the master dealer that LBJ was. The failure of the Civil Rights Act might have taken away Nixon's wedge to win the election, or at the very least, we might have had a different Republican in 1968. We would not have completely pulled out of Vietnam, but it would have have escalated to the point it did. And we might have made more progress sooner with the Soviet Union.

[ScreamingMeemie]

1. If you haven't read it, Stephen King's novel 11/22/63 addresses this (albeit in fiction).

It was a very interesting read. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in JFK, the assassination, and "the butterfly effect."

[Tx4obama]

2. See the link below...

Exploring An Alternate History: What Would The World Look Like If JFK Survived?

VIDEOs and Article, here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/22/what-if-jfk-lived-alternate-history_n_4325831.html

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. I think the same thing, personally.

If Kennedy had lived? The Civil Rights Act probably wouldn't have passed. (LBJ knew how to get the Senate to do things, and he was able to browbeat fence-sitters with "we need to pass this in honour of our martyred president, it's his legacy".) And we still would've been involved in Vietnam.

[nyquil_man]

4. I've always wondered what the '64 election would have looked like

if it had been Kennedy vs. Goldwater. I'd never really considered the idea of JFK surviving the assassination attempt, but I'm not sure it would have had a huge effect. Reagan's numbers shot up after he was shot but then declined rapidly.

To win in '64, especially against an opponent like Goldwater, Kennedy would have had to focus much more heavily on winning in the Midwest and on the West Coast than he had in 1960. Goldwater's base was in the South and in the Mountain States.

I think the end result would have been a comfortable Kennedy victory, with a map which looked more like our current political alignment than anything prior to that (or anything after that, for many years). LBJ's victory gave a sense of that sort of realignment, but his inflated margin concealed it and the national party's near collapse in 1968 & 1972 made it impossible to capitalize on it.

What would a second Kennedy term have been with a coalition closer to the one we have today?