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Wallace remains coy about telling what he will do if he cannot get the nomination. He prefers to ask what such liberals as McGovern and Lindsay will do if he—Wallace—is nominated. Will they start third parties? Actually, a liberal walkout would not be unlikely. Kane is convinced that Wallace will run again on his American Party ticket if the convention shuns him—even if that would hurt Nixon enough to elect a Democrat. Says Kane: "Wallace doesn't care where the dust would settle if he ran as a third-party candidate. He is not interested in party fealty. He champions conservatism wherever it comes from. And these campaign forays are more than ego trips. There must be a tidy profit in all of those buttons, hats, cuff links and clutter he sells."
As the race opens up, it revives the possibility that the party will turn to Senator Edward Kennedy. Contends New York's Russell Hemenway, national director of the Committee for an Effective Congress and now a Muskie supporter: "If Ed Muskie can't win on the second ballot and if Teddy's own polls show him within a couple of percentage points of Nixon, he'll go." There would be tremendous pressure from many Democrats for Kennedy to enter the race. Already some New York politicians are calling on Kennedy Operative Steve Smith to apply such pressure.
Assessing the primaries to date, Kennedy agrees that "the situation is clearly far more wide open than it was." He believes that only Muskie and Humphrey have a chance to get the nomination. He told TIME Correspondent Hays Gorey that he wants another Democrat to win and serve, while he gains experience through eight more years in the Senate. Even if the polls showed the Democratic nominee certain to lose, Kennedy would stay out, as races can turn about quickly. Humphrey, he recalled, trailed Nixon by 15 points in the polls in 1968 but finished so strongly that he nearly won.
Yet if all the current Democratic contenders were to fail miserably and Wallace were to have a good chance at the nomination, Kennedy said, he would do everything possible to stop him. Laughingly, he declared that he had closed the door on the nomination, locked it and thrown away the key. But he knows where the key is—and it is not far away.
Taxes. The results in Florida cannot readily be dismissed as a regional aberration. Wallace ran well in the liberal areas in and near Miami. Suburbanites and voters of all income classes gave him good support. One possible explanation is that the nation's Democratic voters feel frustrated by their inability to influence events. They see taxes rising, crime proliferating, cities decaying and the cost of living outrunning their paychecks. Alienated from the Government, they elect to vote no. Certainly, even before the primaries, the residents of New Hampshire and Florida were found to be dissatisfied and hostile toward most candidates. The Wallace brand of populism offers a convenient outlet for all kinds of protest, whether its motives be worthy or base. On top of that, the sentiment against busing, fanned by the President, was enough to give many an urge to vote for Wallace. And, on a certain level, Wallace has a country-boy charm.