Yeah, right. The same guy that reached out to black college students by revealing to them the astounding news that Lincoln was a Republican. If he’s reaching out to Democrats, I’d like to know how. Seriously, he’s your great hope? The think I can’t figure out is how did someone so smug and cocksure that he can not be wrong about a single thing ever get into medical school?
Hey, he’s the best we got in that respect so far. Jack Kemp is dead, unfortunately.
So is Lincoln. FYI.
The NAACP has requested his presence. Even if he’s not convincing anyone, he’s willing to talk and the African-american community is willing to listen. That’s progress:
The NAACP has offered Republican Sen. Rand Paul the opportunity to speak to the organization, with the its interim president saying, “We’d love to have him.”
In an interview taped for C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” that will air Sunday, Lorraine Miller said she was interested in hearing more about the “Economic Freedom Zones” that the Kentucky senator has pushed.
“We’d love to talk with him about it and work with him on it,” Miller said, adding that her comments amounted to an invitation to Paul to address the group.
A top Paul aide said the senator is game.
“Senator Paul is pleased to hear that the NAACP would like to work with him on reforms like economic freedom zones and he would be honored to address the organization,” Doug Stafford, a senior adviser to Paul said.
Read more: NAACP wants Sen. Paul to speak - POLITICO
That’s how it starts. Take an idea that the other party isn’t advocating, work together on it, slowly build support. Democrats didn’t win African-Americans over in a day, but they had to start sometime.
Sure they did. July 2, 1964.
Oh, you mean the Civil Rights Act. The bill that Republicans in Congress voted for by a higher margin than Democrats. The one that a large group of Democrats fought viciously and filibustered for more than a month.
Yeah, right.
I’m a Democrat, but I’m not naive about the party’s history. This law wasn’t what suddenly made 95% of blacks vote Democratic, far from it.
Better find another one. The fact that you don’t know about it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
How many times do I have to debunk this bullshit?
Southern Democrats were more likely to vote for it than Southern Republicans in the Senate.
Northern Democrats were more likely to vote for it than Northern Republicans in the Senate.
Southern Democrats were more likely to vote for it than Southern Republicans in the House.
Northern Democrats were more likely to vote for it than Northern Republicans in the House.
It’s only because there were more Southern Democrats than Republicans in those days do people get the impression that Republicans have a proud history in this regard. Many, like Everett Dirksen, do. However, all the old racist southern Democrats became Republicans.
What an incredibly stupid argument.
Southern Democrats were DEMOCRATs. You can’t just dismiss them. You can’t say they had no affect on black voting decisions! They were busy loudly and forcefully attacking civil rights!
And you can’t just shave them out of the vote tallies either. The FACT is that Republicans voted at a higher margin for the Civil Rights Act than Democrats did. You can’t talk your way out of that mathematical fact.
Now, indeed, there was a sharp difference between northern and southern Democrats. Northern Democrats certainly don’t deserve blame for what southern Dems did. But this is not about placing blame, it’s about how the parties, as a whole, lined up on civil rights.
You could certainly look at black voting patterns in the south vs. the north too, and make an argument about it. But this is not about that either, it’s about a national, overwhelming trend for nearly all blacks to vote Democratic. You simply can’t claim that this magically and suddenly happened in 1964.
But they aren’t fucking Democrats any longer! They all turned Republican! Look at virtually every state legislature in the south- virtually every single Democratic member is black and virtually every single Republican member is white. Is that an accident? The votes in 1964 by party are irrelevant because the parties have flipped on racial politics. Which party had a presidential candidate symbolically open his campaign in Philadelphia, MS? Which party’s presidential hopefuls made traditional pilgrimages to Bob Jones University? Hint: their mascot has tusks.
The one that - rightly or wrongly - the Democrats have taken both the blame and the credit for because their president signed it into law.
Sure, the Democrats took credit because Johnson pushed it and signed it. Doesn’t mean blacks agreed with that claim and gave them credit though.
Yes, it does. Look what happened to the African-American vote after 1964.
Before the 1960s, most blacks who voted were in the North and West, and they typically voted Republican. Blacks in the South mostly couldn’t vote at all. In the 1960s, the Voting Rights Act brought new black voters on the rolls in great numbers (most blacks lived in the South). Because the Democrats had dominated the South since the end of Reconstruction, the Democratic primary was the de facto election. Most blacks voted there, where they could have an impact. In the general election, they often ended up with the candidates they supported in the primary on the ballot as the Democrat, so they’d vote for the Democrat there too.
So the shift in black voting patterns in the 1960s can’t be simply laid at the feet of one law, especially since Republicans supported that law more than Democrats did, and many prominent Democrats strongly and visibly opposed it. That’s just not supportable. There’s no way you can say the Civil Rights Act was more a Democratic than a Republican law. It was bipartisan.
Your link doesn’t really look at the causes, just the numbers. And as your own link notes, the trend was happening well before the 1960s, among those blacks who actually could vote. A majority of blacks first reported being Democrats in 1948.
Sure, it was bipartisan but it was LBJ who did the heavy lifting and famously predicted (correctly) that passing this bill would cost the Democrats the south for a generation. Then Nixon and Reagan capitalized on residual white resentment, turning the GOP into the angry white guy party.
So Truman rightly got credit for desegregating the military and the Democrats gained black support, LBJ rightly got credit for the Civil Rights Act and the Democratic black base solidified, and since Reagan, Republicans have extended the middle digit to blacks. Does anyone seriously question why blacks should vote Democratic?
Sure, but that’s quite a different and more complicated story than the “blacks suddenly loved Democrats because LBJ signed a civil rights act” version.
Yes - long before 1964.
No, LBJ was hardly the only part of it, as I explained. Blacks aren’t dumb - they saw more than LBJ, they saw Democrats fillibustering the bill too.
No, I’m just saying it didn’t magically happen because of one bill in 1964, important as that bill may have been.
Republicans started losing the black vote in 1933. the Civil Rights Act solidified the black vote for Democrats, but it’s not as if African-Americans voted Republican in 1960 and then switched to the Democrats in 1964. Eisenhower briefly arrested the drift to the Democrats, but that’s the only time when African-Americans were ever a swing group. In the 30s, 40s, and the 60s, the black vote went overwhelmingly Democratic. The New Deal was the first step.
Without LBJ, the bill doesn’t pass. There were some arms twisted. Sure, Southern Democrats filibustered the bill. But do southern Democrats represent racism any more? No. Are blacks capable of reasoning that the parties have migrated on racial issues since 1964? I sure think so. If the Democrats had reverted to supporting segregation and vote suppression after the bill passed, then the South would still be solid blue. It didn’t fucking happen. Robert Byrd had a change of heart and admitted that he had been wrong. So did George Wallace. Those that didn’t change their hearts changed their parties. Which is why Republicans embraced the Southern Strategy.
And, more recently, vote suppression.
Sure, but without Republicans in Congress, the bill doesn’t pass either.
But they did in 1964, and we’re discussing 1964.
Obviously they are - they vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.
Yes. Those things happened after 1964.