(I have to start by pointing out this message board doesn’t let me copy and paste from my smartphone. Otherwise I would provide citations.)
But I don’t have to, because it is a well-known fact. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 clearly transformed this nation like never before. We all remember that famous photographer of LBJ signing it, with MLK in the background.
My question is simply: How did they do it?
I mean, Democrats had a clear majority in each house. But roughly half of them(-?) were so-called Dixiecrats from the South.
I know they never had the votes to do it before. I know for example, Truman tried getting Medicare through when he was in the White House (I recall reading some place). And he was blocked by a coalition of Republicans and Dixiecrats.
Why did everything just come into being in 1964? Surely I am not the first person to wonder this.
Which skin are you using, Sultan’theme’s Responsive vB3-Blue or Straight Dope v3.7.3? Copy and paste is a known issue with Sultan’theme’s. If you switch to the Straight Dope skin, you won’t have that problem.
LBJ pushed it through with sheer force of will. We will never have as effective a persuader in the White House again.
There are some misconceptions about the voting on the bill. From Wikipedia:
Dividing North vs South as non-Confederate States vs the 11 states of the Confederacy:
A higher percentage of Southern Democrats were in favor in both houses than Southern Republicans.
A higher percentage of Northern Democrats were in favor in both houses than Northern Republicans.
Yet because at the time Democrats were the majority party in the South, there were more Democrats opposed than Republicans.
So depending on how you want to read the votes, either side can claim superiority.
First, you have to understand the trauma of Kennedy’s assassination. The nation was shaken. It prompted introspection about who we were as a society and opened some doors into correcting faults. Johnson had overwhelming public support as the inheritor of Kennedy’s now burnished legacy with about an 80% approval rating. That was a terrific boost to his massive legislative skills.
Second, the political world was unimaginably different than today’s. The South was a Democratic bastion, true, but functioned as virtually a separate political entity. Strom Thurmond in 1948 ran as an independent as would George Wallace in 1968. The rest of the country was more or less split and movable. Both the Republicans and the northern Democrats had liberal, moderate, and conservative wings and each of those wings had representation in Congress. In addition, unions were far stronger in those days and unions then were heavily Democratic, if not always liberal.
BobLibDem showed the result. The southern Democrats were humiliated and pushed against the wall. It was almost a repeat of the conditions leading to the Civil War. They couldn’t withdraw from the Union so they did the next best thing; they withdrew from the Democratic party. Nixon utilized the Southern Strategy, which in blunt terms could be stated “we don’t care if you’re racist as long as you vote with us.”
That worked. Over the next generation the South became as strongly Republican as it had been Democrat. The parties became realigned along conservative and liberal lines, to the point where every Republican member of Congress is to the right of every Democratic member of Congress. Hence, our currently polarized government and the general inability to enact bipartisan legislation on any subject that attracts broad public attention.
When I look at that data, the only “sides” I can see are North vs. South, and it’s overwhelmingly clear which of those two sides was responsible for the bill.
Don’t forget that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was soon followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (Unfortunately a few 5-4 Scotus decisions have emasculated much of the Voting Rights Act.)
Excellent summary. And, contrary to the common misconception that politicians always do what is in their personal or partisan interest, *LBJ knew that these Acts were conceding the South, which had been a key bastion of Democratic votes, to the GOP.
*
Neither JFK nor LBJ could have achieved these Acts alone. It was the charisma of the one, the political prowess of the other, and the shock of assassination that led to these legislative triumphs.
Well, that and a whole lot of dealmaking on the side. LBJ was not above using a carrot-and-stick approach to getting legislation passed. JFK hadn’t developed that skill.
I know some people are going to disagree but I don’t think Kennedy would ever had gotten a major civil rights bill like this passed. Kennedy liked the idea of civil rights but he wouldn’t have been willing to push it; when the opposition started resisting, Kennedy would have stepped back.
It took Johnson to get the law enacted. He was a better political operator than Kennedy was and he was more thick-skinned. He knew people didn’t like him as a person but he wanted their respect as somebody who could get things done. So he would have pushed through the opposition just to show he could.
And the surprising thing is that it appears Johnson really did care about civil rights. He wasn’t just using it as a political issue. Which meant he was willing to make sacrifices that Kennedy wouldn’t have made.
I would disagree on this point in one aspect. Southern Republicans don’t have as strong a control as southern Democrats used to have. Because their base is southern white people.
Prior to the sixties, determining how white people voted was the only thing that mattered in the south. Because black people were not allowed to vote in any significant numbers. So the white vote was the southern vote. Pre-civil rights Democrats could rely on getting overwhelming majorities in every election.
The civil rights movement changed that. It allowed black people to begin voting in significant numbers. And while southern whites shifted over the the Republican party, southern blacks stayed with the Democrats.
The Republicans can still generally count on the south; there are more white voters than black voters. But there’s now a strong base of opposition in a way that didn’t used to exist. This gives Democrats something to work with and to expand from.
The south now has a real two-party system in a way it didn’t used to have. So the dominant party can’t just take elections for granted the way they used to.
Demographics are going to bite the Republicans in the ass, and probably sooner rather than later. It’s still true that today and for the last decade or more, the South has been a Republican stronghold. Republicans own state legislatures, governorships, and Congress. Gerrymandering has played a large part and will continue to as long as Republicans have control of states. They know they’re doomed if they don’t. For the moment, nevertheless, the South is thoroughly Republican despite a few local exceptions.
Maybe, but there is a risk that as minorities gain in power, that white people will become more and more republican as a result.
Mississippi is 40% black, 60% white (roughly). But the whites are firmly in control because 90% of blacks are democrats and 90% of whites are republicans.
People keep saying things like this but I haven’t seen any evidence that younger white voters are turning Republican. Quite the contrary. Even older white voters are probably at peak Republican today as well. The world can always change unexpectedly, but there is no current evidence that such a future is in the offing.
This is the case in today’s world. But you might want to shift your gaze over to Florida and Georgia and Texas, three red states where Democratic challengers made Republicans’ skins crawl by how close they came to victory. What happens when the South is even more minority than it is today? Remember that the South took 25 years after 1964 to fully turn Republican. Look out 25 years from today and ask what the demographics will be then and base your calculations on that.
Getting back to the question in the OP, you may find this article interesting, Jim B.:
“The Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency”.
It discusses how different the party and congressional structure was in the 1960’s. Yes, LBJ was a master at politicking in Congress, but it’s doubtful that an LBJ could do that today, because the parties are split much more strongly on ideological lines, and changes in Congressional practice, like the reduction of earmarks, has limited the persuasive tools.
There’s also research that shows that when the parties are evenly balanced, the president’s powers to influence passage of bills is actually weakened.
