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estimate now how these states would have voted, but we doknow that they would have been the focus of such dealing, such chicanery, such promises, and such log-rolling as we have not seen for a long time.
    Assumption 2.
That the 21 states in the Democratic column would have mustered all their delegates through twenty or thirty ballots. Kentucky, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee would all have Democratic margins of one vote; illness or absence could immobilize these states and cast them intothe deadlocked column. Of course, by the same reasoning, Republican majorities of one in the following states would have been equally vulnerable: Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Vermont, Wyoming. It must be remembered, however, that in the early stages of the balloting the Republicans would have been in the passive posture of merely trying to prevent a Democratic victory, so that it would not have mattered if some of their states had fallen into the deadlocked column,since deadlocked states would have counted as votes against the Democrats. Of course, when it came time for the Republicans to try to put together 26 votes of their own to elect Nixon, any defection would have been fatal, but in general the possibility of deadlocked states would have hurt the Democrats more than the Republicans.

    Assumption 3.
That the deadlocked delegations would have remained deadlocked. The pressures on these split delegations would have been tremendous, and that they could have remained evenly balanced is doubtful. Remember that it was the unlocking of such delegations in 1801 that finally solved that impasse, and in a protracted series of indecisive ballots, it would probably again be the deadlocked delegations that would decide the issue.
    Assumption 4.
That Republicans would remain Republicans and Democrats stay Democrats through a long impasse. In 1801, key delegates withdrew their loyalty on the crucial ballot. This would probably have happened in 1969, too.
    One can say with certainty that on the day it became clear that the 1968 election was headed to the House, a band of the most expert character analysts in the nation—the henchmen of the major parties—would have been studying each House member with a microscope, his family, his college deportment, his bank loans, his son’s addiction to drugs, his business interests, in order to find the weak spots in that man’s armor. And when those spots were found, a dozen prying fingers would be thrust therein to tear that man apart. It would require supermen to withstand these pressures.
    In addition, there would have been the normal pressuresof a troubled conscience: what ought a man who loves his country and his party do at this point? These are not light matters, but our election system seems to delight in placing men in positions where unusual and unnecessary pressures are thrust upon them.
    Another factor which must be taken into account in calculating whether the apparent majority of Democratic states could have been delivered to Humphrey is the climate of opinion that would have existed at the time balloting took place. It would not have been conducive to a Humphrey victory. Television, still smarting from Chicago, would have continued to do all it could to discredit the Democrats. Its probing eye would have sought out every evidence of a break in Democratic ranks and exploded the rumor into fact. Meetings between negotiating delegates, supposed to be clandestine, would have been magnified into treachery. Newspapers which tended to support the Republican side, or did so outright, would have been justified in pointing out that since Nixon had won a plurality of the popular vote, however slight, he was entitled to the Presidency and that to deny him was treason. Gangs of young white people from the radical left would have descended on Washington to make one supreme effort to deny the Presidency to Humphrey, the inheritor of Johnson, and there would have been some ugly scenes, all reported instantly