Reply #159: Bobby ran for president because he was the only candidate

[Ken Burch]

who had the trust of Latino, African and Native-American voters. McCarthy was a good man, but he only had the campus activists and middle-class intellectuals(and they needed a candidate too).

Bobby also ran because, McCarthy's potential to be a good president or not, it was clear that the party hacks would destroy McCarthy, even if the choice was(as it ended up being)nominating McCarthy or losing.

And the Stevenson example was the old Bobby, not the Bobby who later emerged. I hope you aren't implying that, had Bobby lived but McCarthy had been nominated, Bobby would've voted for Nixon, for God's sake.

(Also, remember, if Stevenson had been elected, {and it was clear throughout the '56 campaign that he basically had no chance} Bobby's brother Jack would have had to wait another eight years before he could run for president.)

Bobby was pragmatic, but he would never have supported people whose response to the welfare dilemma was simply to punish the poor for accepting welfare by cutting the benefits off and just throwing the poor to the wolves, as Billary did.

Bobby had a heart, and a spine, and principles. No one in the DLC has any of the three.