George Wallace announced his candidacy for the Democrat nomination a week before the Kennedy assassination.
A Wallace-Kennedy fight would have given Nelson Rockefeller the presidency. Wallace probably would have beaten Kennedy. Wallace, a folk hero, would have beaten the oily Johnson too.
If Johnson ever was to be president, Nov. 22, 1963 was the day.
In some respects, Wallace was a precursor of Donald Trump, whose campaign featured culturally conservative themes (law and order for Wallace; immigration control for Trump) while not emphasizing the anti-big government themes as Goldwater and Reagan did. Like Wallace, he did well in those Northeastern and Midwestern areas not dominated by racial minorities, Jews, or upper-income whites. Trump carried Staten Island and southern Brooklyn in New York City, areas still largely Italian-American, and most of Pennsylvania outside of the two big cities, whether white Catholic, German Protestant, or Scots-Irish. He did suffer some runoff in the libertarian wing, Ron and Rand Paul supporters, and with the country club crowd, Bushies, but not enough to lose the election.