Reply #245: No, to appease the big city bosses who distrusted Kennedy

[happyslug]

The big city bosses AND southern Democrats did NOT trust JFK, thus once JFK had the votes to be nominated as the Presidential Candidate, to appease these two groups, groups needed to win in the Main election, Johnson was picked as the VP.

Remember, this is pre-1972 convention, where most of the delegates were picked by state organizations NOT in primaries. The Classic case is the 1968 Democratic Convention, which pick Humphrey, a person who had won NO primaries.

Do to the fact that the selection of the Candidates had to be done at the Convention. deals were made all the time as to who would be President or Vice President. In 1960 Kennedy won the Nomination but had to accept Johnson as his VP, just like FDR, having won the 1944 Nomination, had to accept Truman as his VP, replacing Henry Wallace who had been the VP since 1941, when he took the oath as VP with FDR after FDR had won his third term but FDR's original VP refused to be the VP for the third time.

Things change in 1972, primaries are the way to win Convention nominations today. The main affect has to make the US election system top down as oppose to what it was prior to 1972, bottom up. i.e. People on top tell people on the bottom what to do, prior to the widespread adoption of primaries, it was people at the bottom of the political parties that told the people on top what to do. Yes, individuals have more "Say" in a primary system, but so does money to run the ads to get the people to vote for one candidate or another. Prior to 1960, the local election "bosses" told the top people what was needed to get the candidate elected. A fundamental Change in how power is shared in America, and all the result of the switch to primaries instead of Conventions to pick candidates.