He was on track for that for sure. But he had two crippling flaws: anti union, and ego obsessed jackass.
The first is obvious how it went down. We like unions, he’s deep in the Californian ideology that caused conflict and he rejected the left aspects of that ideology because of what appears to be a lack of emotional regulation. And that’s where the second comes into play here. It’s also partly because the left is vicious. We kill our heroes to an unhealthy degree.