Threat or Opportunity: non-violent protest?

[Ken White]

We'll never know for sure what might have happened.

Obviously. However as one who'd been voting for about 20 years at the time and thus was paying attention, Nixon was distrusted as was Johnson he was the less distrusted until mid 1967 when too many rumors of dumb things related to Viet Nam and his personal pecadilloes were circulating and he became the 'untrust' front runner. He was a sitting President, yet he drew two challengers for his own party's nomination?

McCarthy had the student and academic vote, Kennedy had the working Democrat vote -- both campaigned using war errors as fodder -- and Johnson had less than 20% support among Democrats in the polls. Viet Nam sunk him -- as it should have. It also killed him, a good part of his decision was based on his belief that another term would kill him. He died two days after it would have ended.

I personally subscribe to civil rights role as being what cost him the most...and from what I have seen and read it was the blowback to his work on civil rights that drove his rapid decline after leaving office.

We can disagree on that.

Addendum: Started this, stopped, went to dinner came back an posted without looking. Mike had posted in the interim and I didn't see it until this post had arrived on the Board. Good catches, Mike. All makes sense, and with due respect to Clark Clifford, et.al. (very little, I'm not a Clifford fan -- nor a Vance fan...) Lyndon left due to Viet Nam. James R. Jones not withstanding, I'm not at all sure that Lyndon would've trumped Nixon. The press had long disliked Nixon; they had come to dislike Lyndon even more...