Whatever for? The parties have migrated significantly since then. But even if you obsess on 1964, you need to look at the vote in regional terms, not party terms. More Democrats than Republicans voted no, but only because the old Confederacy was dominated by Democrats. Times have changed, parties have changed. Why focus on 1964?
Because it was brought up. Review the thread.
So? It’s as relevant as Lincoln’s party affiliation is to modern politics. And generally quite misunderstood by those unwilling or unable to split the vote between north and south.
Yes, I’ve been saying about the same thing. Thanks for joining the thread.
False. Strom Thurmond was the only Senate party switcher and he changed. No governors changed.
Basically, you’re supporting your argument with, “Democrats are racist, so those Democrats who stayed in the party(as in ,99% of them) apologized, no matter how late, and so therefore receive a dispensation. Republicans are evil, and any Democrat who switched is a traitor who obviously was motivated by racism.”
Except guess who supported national MLK day before most southern Democrats? Strom Thurmond.
Also, parties do not just switch positions. That would imply that one party was doing something stupid and the other doing something intelligent. The “republicans adopted the old Democratic position on race” argument is based on the idea that Republicans were smarter, but Democrats were just do darned motivated by goodness that they took losses to fight for equality. Or that they were fighting for a longterm success that none of them would live to see. Both ideas are naive and ignorant. Politicians don’t function that way.
What actually happened is that Democrats saw which way the tide was turning after 1964, and adopted the Republican position on civil rights, thus neutralizing it as an issue. And it worked. Aside from Jim Crow, African-Americans were natural Democrats and started supporting Democrats even with Jim Crow. Without Jim Crow, there was no longer any reason for African-Americans to NOT support Democrats.
An aside - some Dems became independents rather than Republicans in that era.
Well, that’s hardly all of it. The fact that millions of blacks were getting the vote in the South, and voting in the Democratic primaries, had alot to do with it.
Actually, you rejected my north-south breakdown of the party vote. Thanks for playing, we have some lovely parting gifts for you.
The old racist policians didn’t all change parties, their replacements in their parties changed as well as the voters. Billy Joe Jimbob may have been a Democratic US rep in 1963, but by 1973 his district was represented by Republican Joebob Cooter. Did all the D’s switch party affiliations en masse in 1964? No. But anyone who followed them was of the other party.
There were a lot of party switchers, they were just lower offices, or voters. Nearly all Democratic House members, Senators, and governors stayed with the Democrats, and remained Democrats in good standing despite abandoning their segregationist views well after 1964.
It’s fair to say that Republicans capitalized on white anxiety to win the South. It is not fair to say that the parties just switched on civil rights issues. The Republicans never conceded anything to southern voters on the issues they fought for over the previous decades. Instead, they emphasized points of agreement with southerners, such as law and order, welfare, etc.
They still couldn’t vote in 1964.
No I didn’t, I explained why it didn’t matter.
The South became more Republican, although that process was actually pretty slow and arguably never completed. 1988 and 2004 were the only non-landslide elections where the South went solid for the GOP(I’m not counting 1972 and 1984 because the Republicans won virtually all the states, so the fact they won the South doesn’t tell us anything).
If you’re just saying that the Democrats lost the Solid South because of civil rights, and that Republicans capitalized, not always using pure as driven snow means, then sure, I’ll agree with that. But the idea that they switched positions is a myth, and one that doesn’t even make sense. Parties do not just switch positions with each other, especially on something they feel so strongly about. That would be like Republicans suddenly going pro-choice and Democrats going pro-life.
I didn’t say they could. As I’ve explained, this process happened over several decades.
1964 was the point when the black vote began going to Democrats en masse.
A hint about how well repealing Obamacarewill work for the Republicans, even Scott Brown:
But the Democrats first won the black vote in 1933. 90% is certainly better than 60%, but both are winning.
Maybe someday Latinos will go 90% for Democrats, but that does not mean that Latinos aren’t overwhelmingly Democratic today despite “only” giving Democrats 65% of the vote or so.
It all depends on how many helped vs. how many hurt. Or how many pissed at the idea that they are expected to buy insurance. 9 out of 10 uninsured have not signed up. Are they angry about the government’s presumption? We’ll find out. We already know how the people with cancelled policies will vote.
I’d say it’s more accurate that Democrats gradually stopped tolerating racists in their ranks of candidates and Republicans gradually started to welcome racist voters by using code words (States Rights!) dog whistles and little winks and nods like appearances at Bob Jones University to tell the angry whites “See, we’re on your side” The Republican candidates weren’t nearly all or mostly all racists, they just actively began to court their vote. By the Nixon era, the transistion was more or less complete.
No, not quite. The trend really started in 1948.
And, as I explained, correlation not being causation, a large part of the black Democratic vote around that time came from new black voters in the South who voted in the Democratic primaries because that was the de facto election at the time.
But why?
If racism was a winning strategy, so much so that Republicans adopted it, why did Democrats give it up in the first place?
Do you really think that’s all there is to public service?