Saturday, May 21, 1960

Withdraw

JFK took a break in his frenetic travel around the midwest and west to visit Adlai Stevenson in an attempt to discern whether he was planning to withdraw from the upcoming nominating convention. Once Kennedy became convinced that Stevenson would make no active move to remove himself, he realized that he would have to fend off both a first and second ballot challenge from Lyndon Johnson, as well as a possible later complication from Stevenson is the vote was deadlocked.

[300, p. 142]