The Bullet Misses! Kennedy's Second Term

== Attempted Assassination of John F. Kennedy ==

November 22nd, 1963
12:30 PM- Kennedy survives an assassination attempt while riding in his motorcade in Dallas, Texas.

12:34 PM- The Dallas police report Lee Harvey Oswald, an American communist, missing.

1:12 PM- Dallas police officer JD Tippet is shot by Oswald

1:50 PM- Lee Harvey Oswald is caught in a local movie theatre and is arrested by the police.

November 24th, 1963
11:21 AM- Jack Ruby shoots and kills Lee Harvey Oswald, and is also jailed.

Presidential Election of 1964
The United States presidential election of 1964 was the sixth-most lopsided presidential election in the history of the United States behind the elections of 1936, 1984, 1972, 1864, and 1980 (in terms of electoral votes; in terms of popular vote, it was the fifth-most). President John F. Kennedy has been the President since his inauguration in 1961. Kennedy also successfully painted his opponent, Republic Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, as a right-wing legislator who wanted to abolish the social welfare programs created in the 1930s (such as Social Security). JFK advocated more such programs, and after 1965, instituted three: Medicare, Medicaid, and the War on Poverty. Kennedy, who dealt with such crisises as the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Berlin Crisis of 1961, had experience on waging the Cold War. His opponent, Barry Goldwater, wanted to use nuclear weapons and supported nuclear warfare against the Soviet Union. This scared the American public. With these factors working for him, Kennedy easily won the Presidency, carrying 44 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. As of 2009, Kennedy's 22.6 percentage point-margin of victory in the popular vote is the fifth-largest such margin in Presidential election history (after the margins of the 1920, 1924, 1936, and 1972 election). Kennedy won 61.1% of the national popular vote, which remains the highest popular-vote percentage won by a U.S.presidential candidate since 1820. The election is also remembered due to Goldwater's status as a pioneer in the modern conservative movement.

No post-1964 Democratic candidate has managed to better JFK's 1964 electoral result.