There was never any such platform switch. This is a popular lie from Democratic propagandists who refuse to admit that they were the party of slavery, institutional racism and Jim Crow since their founding in 1828. It was Democrat Strom Thurmond who still holds the record for longest filibuster at 24 hours 7 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Lyndon Johnson, knowing that his beloved Democrats were losing the Jim Crow battle, decided to unveil the Great Society program so as to keep Negroes in a new form of slavery: the slavery of welfare benefits and continuous government assistance. The Great Society is still, to this very day, a Democrat pet project and any attempt to defund it is immediately attacked, ironically enough, as racist. He even said, according to a former aide, “I’ll have those niggers voting Democrat for 200 years.” There is still no change in the hell on earth that Democrats have made urban America into. They implemented gun control laws in those cities. Why? To take away blacks’ ability to defend themselves from criminals and therefore, justify more arbitrary and unconstitutional gun laws that have zero effect on the crime rates.
In fact, the Democrat-affiliated KKK implemented the first gun control laws in the US during Reconstruction, making it illegal for Negroes to own guns. Why? So black people would be unable to defend themselves and that made them easier to lynch. Now, there are lynchings every day when unconstitutional gun control laws are passed by racist Democrats which almost inevitably result in more murders, mostly of minorities.
To sum up, Democrats were racist then and they are now. It’s just changing its hood.
Well, yes, now that they have the black vote. That, combine with the growing generation of non-racists in the South, has kept them somewhat competitive.
Okay.
Huh? As a Democrat, let me declare that I’m proud that we “pushed out” racists. I don’t bellyache about it.
Because the conservative positions on those issues are not only NOT racist, but were adopted by the Democrats almost entirely by the 1990s. And that’s me expanding on that.
Busing- Wrong, and ended
Welfare- stupid, and reformed
Crime- Liberals were too soft, they hardened up. Although now they apparently think that was racist again, which makes 1990s Democrats racists. Oh well.
I have to ask, was the Clinton campaign engaging in Southern Strategy lite by going after white voters on issues like that? Because it did work. Clinton was even willing to throw gays under the bus and execute a mentally disabled prisoner so he wouldn’t get out---- er, conservatived.
Don’t see what was “wrong” about it, and the opposition to it certainly was racist. Louise Day Hicks was racist if anyone was, and that’s just what the Nixon Admin pandered to when it made an issue of it. And now we’ve got a lot of AA kids stuck in second-rate, underfunded schools. Still.
There’s nothing “stupid” about welfare as such; “welfare reform” was usually a racial dog-whistle and you know it; and the Clinton reforms now look like a very bad idea in hindsight.
Either racist or pandering. Bill Clinton sure knew how to pander without letting the stink stick on him. But no, liberals were by no means “too soft” on crime at any point, and look where the “hardening up” has gotten us – the highest incarcerated population per capita in the world, and disproportionately AA, too, and all to profit a private prison industry.
We’re all a product of our times. Clinton no longer supports DOMA and I’m sure he regrets that mistake. But to come out for gay marriage in his era was electoral suicide.
Busing was opposed by many because of race: “I don’t want them coming to our school.”
Welfare has always been a Republican substitute for overt race-baiting. There is nothing wrong about it. Advocating cuts to welfare gives Republicans some cred with their racist base without having to explicitly say we need to stop giving blacks free money.
Too soft on crime? I think we’re too easy on police and we let them literally get away with murder in the current uniform fetish society.
Don’t know his heart, but he supported racist (and anti-gay) things. At the time, being anti-gay was a big political benefit, and certain racist things were also politically beneficial.
That’s just the thing though, opposition to busing WAS led by racists. And it was still the wrong thing to do, and nearly universally hated by actual parents. The only people who were fans of busing were rich people whose kids weren’t subject to it because they were in private school.
There are still very real problems that need to be solved, but busing was never the right way to do it. Nowadays liberals suggest evening out funding levels to school districts by ending property tax funding. Opposition to that is fierce though, and not really racist, although of course racists hate it too.
Welfare as a lifestyle was a terrible idea. The Clinton reforms did not make the program perfect, but they did make it better.
And historically low crime rates.
THe end result is that busing, welfare, and crime stopped being issues that harmed Democrats in elections. Democrats also backed down for the most part on guns, their recent push for pretty tiny measures notwithstanding.
The point is that the very issues Democrats called racist from Nixon to Bush 41, they pretty much surrendered completely on by 1992. It’s hard to take such complaints seriously when Democrats just adopted the Republican position later on. Much as Republicans have had to concede a lot of social liberal issues to Democrats over the years, because it was the right thing to do, Democrats have had to concede on some issues to Republicans. On those issues, it was also the right thing to do. Contrary to what progressives like to tell themselves, they have been wrong about a lot of things over the decades, and while they were wrong they said some pretty ugly things about those who disagreed with them.
It wasn’t a mistake. I do believe he sincerely regrets it, but he was not a homophobic man who changed. It’s just that the gay lobby has always been forgiving of leaders who support them in their hearts but not necessarily in how they govern. West Wing had an episode about it in their first season that was pretty good. Democrats have had a free pass to throw gays under the bus for awhile now. This will be the first Presidential election where that’s not the case.
Anti-gay, yes. There is no rational reason for DOMA other than to deny gays marriage rights.
However, welfare reform and crime reduction have rational justifications. Crying “racism” was just a way to attempt to shame reasonable people who supported reasonable things. Yes, racists support welfare reduction. Racists support putting more black people in jail. Racists support all kinds of things, from usury laws to media consolidation laws, to banking reform(stick it to the Jews!) to free trade treaties(foreigners takin’ our jobs!), and even oppose a lot of wars(no white man should die to free a brown man!). Plus most policies have a racially disproportionate impact. That should be taken into account, but should not kill good policy.
The “gay lobby” was probably pretty smart in this instance – once the Overton window shifted, which was at least partially due to softening public stances from elected Democrats like Clinton and Obama, gay rights became good politics.
Further, they correctly estimated that the Democrats would come around. Smart politics means thinking long term, quite often.