This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It is excerpted from “Republic of Wrath” by James A. Morone.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1339996
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1339996
The overwhelming support for Donald “grab her by the …” Trump by White Evangelicals proves beyond all doubt that values in front of the word voter is and has always code for race.
That said, how things will change in the “long run” forces the observation made by John Maynard Keynes, “in the long run we are all dead”. I am 62, in 1964 when I was 6 the Democrats joined the Republicans in support for equality. In response Republicans over the next 50+ years moved at first slowly and then rapidly to capture the racist vote to the point that the GOP is totally dependent on White nationalism and grievance.
I will be dead before the any of this changes.
I am 62, in 1964 when I was 6 the Democrats joined the Republicans in support for equality.
Huh? I think you meant Republicans joined the Democrats.
Prior to LBJ, Democrats were the party of Lester Maddox and George Wallace and Strom Thurmond and above all, Jerry Falwell Sr who preached that Blacks had the mark of Kane and therefore by Gods law were inferior to Whites. Whereas the GOP was still the Party of Lincoln.
It took some time and well a few like Wallace eventually accepted the Democrats, most became today’s Republican base.
Although I appreciate the details regarding African-American/Immigrant support by party, I am not sure its appropriate or useful towards explaining the threat that Trump and the current GOP poses to our democracy. We have several examples of modern democratic backsliding (see Russia, Hungary, etc) that seem far more relevant than 19th century American political battles.
I feel the most notable passage is this one:
Second, change takes time. Big shifts often appear to come on suddenly — a bolt from the blue. But, in reality, the storms gather slowly, over many years.
We’ve had warning signs for years before Trump that the GOP has been taking steps that could be used to abandon our current form of democracy, if needed for them to maintain power.
I think a more worthwhile article would have been to find historical examples of these types of democratic backsliding and what did people at those time do to stop or reverse those actions.
“We’ve had warning signs for years before Trump that the GOP has been taking steps that could be used to abandon our current form of democracy, if needed for them to maintain power.”<
Bush v Gore.
.
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Yes but Southern Republicans were never supportive of race equality before or after LBJ. Party identities did change dramatically but it was the assassination of JFK, the deal making of LBJ and his VP Humphrey chasing after Sen Dirksen for a year, who had the deciding votes for the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act a year later, that forced the presumption of “equality” on the southern states.
Republicans never “joined” Democrats, they were dragged. Don’t know why you’re being so negative. There has been real change. It’s nearly taken forever I agree. I have 15 years on you and have lived in the South for almost 20 years - and have watched and experienced real change socially and in the work place…
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“If all politics is local, then in the South all politics is racial”, former Georgia Senator Max Cleland.
Change happens when change is demanded. That is why it takes time for change but when it happens it happens quickly. In regard to society, history shows not much has changed in the South in 150 years.
In 1956 the very liberal Adlai Stevenson won 7 states, all former slave states and came very close in Louisiana, and in 1964 the very conservative Barry Goldwater also won 6 states including Louisiana and came very close in Arkansas, North Carolina and Missouri, three states that went for Stevenson. The other four states Stevenson won, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia also supported Goldwater.
For over 100 years before Stevenson and Goldwater those states were the base of the Democrat Party and for the 50+ years after Stevenson and Goldwater have been the base of the Republican Party. While the base of the Democrat Party, the Democrats ranged from the most conservative President Grover Cleveland to the very liberal John Kennedy and the Republicans did the same with the most liberal president in American history, Teddy Roosevelt. The South, the poorest region of the country loved “The New Deal” which when originally written excluded Blacks even from Social Security. The “Great Society” which the South hated mostly just extended New Deal benefits to all Americans. Another words race, or really racism, not economics, foreign policy, morality or anything else determined and still determines Southern politics.
Over 70% of the 25,000,000 people who gained healthcare thanks to Obamacare are White people with a high school diploma or less living disproportionally in the South. Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are popular in Kentucky for trying to kill Obamacare but the state recently ousted its Republican governor for trying to take away the Affordable Care Act.
Prior to LBJ there were no Southern Republicans. They only became Republicans after LBJ and the GOP abandoned the very principles for which it was formed and became the party of Jim Crow. But as to Republicans, Earl Warren in 1948 was Thomas Dewey’s VP running mate and was appointed Chief Judge by Dwight Eisenhower. I have to look it up, but I am unaware of Republicans signing the “Southern Manifesto” in response to Brown v Board of Education.
But as to living in the South, in 1984 I was living in New Orleans, was not very political and had a job that caused me to travel around Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida panhandle. To a person, man and woman, often brought up politics and had two contrary positions. Those positions were the understanding the Ronald Reagan was screwing them and that they adored and supported Reagan.
The reason they loved Reagan fully realizing how Reagan was screwing them was, “Reagan is screwing Black people much worse”. Only that is not an exact quote as they never used the term Black people.
In 2004 in Alabama there was an amendment on the ballot to end the Alabama state constitutional mandate of “Separate but Equal”. The amendment lost and “Separate but Equal” is still mandated by Alabama’s constitution.
The workplace has changed ONLY because the federal Government forced the changes. But at least politically, in how people vote and choose their leaders, not much has changed in 150 years.
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In many ways, the period from the end of World War II through 1980 or so was atypical. The bipartisanship that held during that period, when a liberal Republican was to the left of many Democrats went along with the flattening of the income distribution. Outside of that time, partisanship was typical. Adams jailed political opponents, including a Congressman from Vermont. Newspapers were party organs (there is nothing new about Fox News). After 1980, with the skewing of the income pie, the return to earlier partisanship was probably inevitable.
What can break this trend? Well, it took two world wars and a depression to break it the last time…
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radicalcentrist, And what has been the biggest issue to divide America throughout its history, what caused the Civil War?
The answer is Black and White.
Yes, although the Federalists and Democratic Republicans in Adams’ day were fighting over whether to ally with Britain or France.
But, yes, there is something different about partisanship today, and it centers on two conflicts that each burned hot throughout American history — the long, hard battles that surrounded race and immigration.
I really like the premise that what got us here is the historically unique (?) singularity of purpose present in today’s party alignments. When I started to write this reply, I thought I was uncomfortable equating immigration with slavery and its consequences - not necessarily in a moral way, but because it underplays the motivational differences between generational persecution and perpetual state-consecrated disenfranchisement.
But as I was writing this, I seem to have convinced myself (with an assist from this excerpt) the inflection point we’re at now has a foregone conclusion: today’s tumult will resolve into the much greater inertial mass that is the accumulation of our nearly 250-year national story. I do think there’s a significant chance of violent skirmishes as we wade through this, but I no longer fear we haven’t the critical mass necessary to avoid an existential crisis.
So, thank you to TPM and the author.
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The workplace has changed ONLY because the federal Government forced the changes. But at least politically, in how people vote and choose their leaders, not much has changed in 150 years.
Yes, and all true but it’s an easy argument to make if you go back 150 years. The last 50 years has seen IMO significant change in the enforcement of anti-discrimination legislation. The New Deal had anti-discrimination legislation in it as well but was rarely if ever enforced. And that’s the difference maker. Southerners had power in Congress during Roosevelt’s time. He had to give them attention. There’s been real change in the workplace (standard of living) and it will make all the difference as we move forward. Our appetite for violence and tribalism will remain but having a decent paying job, home ownership, and money in one’s pocket, even if redlined and directed by Wells Fargo and the real estate industry to live in black neighborhood, is real progress.
in some ways I agree with you. Income equality, which will lift all boats, is as much a civil rights issue as any anti-discrimination legislation.
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