re: #121 HappyWarrior

Well LBJ technically declined to seek renomination but he definitely was on his way to being beaten by either Kennedy or McCarthy. I need to read more about McCarthy. I honestly don’t like a lot of what I’ve read. Hindsight bias and all but I think I’d be a RFK man first and then a Humphrey but again I have the privilege of hindsight knowing that McCarthy ends up being a Reagan backer 12 years later.

I’ve just read American Maelstrom by Michael Cohen, about the 1968 election and its legacy, and the short version of my opinion is that your negative opinion is justified. McCarthy was a dilettante, intelligent but lazy as a Senator, who never seriously expected to win and kept talking himself further and further away from positions that made any sense. (I was strongly reminded of a certain junior senator from Vermont.) He was devastated by RFK’s assassination and never pulled himself together to lead his anti-war movement, but his legacy of dovish foreign policy did a lot to keep the Democrats away from the White House for the next generation.