# The Dems held the House for 40 years, how did that happen? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [September 28, 2014, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786 "2014-09-28T16:50:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2014, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/61 "2014-12-20T00:47:37Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > The number of Democrats that went Republican begin and end with Strom Thurmond. Your ability to claim sincerity was not reinforced by that post. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2014, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/62 "2014-12-20T02:31:14Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > That’s a lot of straw men there. Well, golly, I knew was a wacko, but I didn’t realize that all those Republicans I grew up around and grew up voting for–and the things they actually espoused–were straw men. Nope, sorry if I missed some stuff, but that is the GOP stripped bare, not a straw man. Deal. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2014, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/63 "2014-12-20T02:34:45Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > You mean Strom Thurmond. The number of Democrats that went Republican begin and end with Strom Thurmond. George Wallace remained a Democrat. And well, every other prominent Democrat stayed a Democrat. When Thurmond became a Republican, he arguably established a more progressive record on race than any of the Southern Dems who remained loyal to the party. Phil Gramm? Rick Perry? Pretty much the majority of the Texas political establishment? This is some Mitt Romney level baldfaced lying, **adaher.** That might work on TV, but we’re not George Stephanopoulos here, and we don’t have to let that slide. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2014, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/64 "2014-12-20T03:43:05Z")
Phil Gramm’s career in Congress began in 1979 and he became a Republican in 1983. We aren’t talking about party switching in general, but party switching in the wake of the Civil Rights Act. And really, Rick Perry? He was 14 when the Civil Rights act passed! His party allegiance never had anything to do with civil rights. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2014, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/65 "2014-12-20T16:51:25Z")
The First Rule of Holes, laddie. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![42fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/4/b487fb/32.png) [@42fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/42fish)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/66 "2014-12-21T01:19:54Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > We aren’t talking about party switching in general, but party switching in the wake of the Civil Rights Act. Floyd Spence (1962): South Carolina State Rep, later elected to the US House Rubel Philips (1963): Mississippi Public Service Commissioner, Republican candidate for Governor Howard Calloway (1964): US Rep from Georgia Albert Watson (1965): US Rep from South Carolina Jesse Helms (1970): Former Raleigh city councilman, future Senator from North Carolina Trent Lott (1972): Future US Rep and Senator from Mississippi Plus a passel of officials at the State Representative level. (Main source [Party switching in the United States - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_switching_in_the_United_States#1960s)) ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/67 "2014-12-21T03:38:21Z")
And the oh, 40 Democratic governors and Senators? Yeah, just Strom Thurmond. The fact that you had to find a “passel” of state and local officials and some guys who never ran for statewide office as Democrats proves the point. The vast, vast, majority of segregationist Democrats stayed with the party and are still honored to this day. Thurmond, of course, is a villain, mainly because he switched parties. You’ve got to admit, there is a an awful lot of Democrat revisionist history around this subject. THe party has a lot to answer for. The Republicans, not so much, so the Democrats need them to be the more recent villain. Because they opposed busing or something. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/68 "2014-12-21T13:04:07Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > You’ve got to admit, there is a an awful lot of Democrat revisionist history around this subject. Amazing. Just amazing. Now, about those non-racial “issues” … got a few highlights for us? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/69 "2014-12-21T13:20:42Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > And the oh, 40 Democratic governors and Senators? Yeah, just Strom Thurmond. The fact that you had to find a “passel” of state and local officials and some guys who never ran for statewide office as Democrats proves the point. The vast, vast, majority of segregationist Democrats stayed with the party and are still honored to this day. Thurmond, of course, is a villain, mainly because he switched parties. The vast, vast majority of segregationist Democrats didn’t hold office and switched to voting Republicans. That’s what the Southern Strategy was for. You were talking about officials, not voters, of course. > [@](#): > > You’ve got to admit, there is a an awful lot of Democrat revisionist history around this subject. THe party has a lot to answer for. The Republicans, not so much, so the Democrats need them to be the more recent villain. Because they opposed busing or something. Revisionist history? Like what? The Democrats were the party that made efforts to appeal to racists as a matter of party policy until the 60s. The Republicans did so afterwards. The Democrats, in my view, were a morally evil and reprehensible party (for the most part) until the 60s, considering their views on the greatest American sins in our history. The Republicans were a morally evil and reprehensible party, for the most part, after the 60s, subsiding somewhat in the 80s and 90s as they made less efforts to appeal to racists, and this evil came back (in my view) in the 00s with support for torture. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/70 "2014-12-21T13:30:09Z")
Here’s another way to put it – white supremacism was one of the most important parts of America’s political philosophy until recently. For most of our history, a huge portion of the population (and even large majorities for a significant part of the time) ascribed to this philosophy. So it was a given that at least one political party was going to try and tap into white supremacism because it was such a massive part of American politics and American political philosophy. Until the 60s, this party was the Democrats – and afterwards, it was the Republicans. Now, white supremacism is a political liability, except perhaps in some small and scattered portions. ---
**Author:** ![davida03801](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5e925/32.png) [@davida03801](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davida03801)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/71 "2014-12-21T15:36:14Z")
> [@etv78](#): > > The Democrats had an uninterrupted hold on the House from 1954ish until 1994. The next longest is about 8 years. What caused this anomaly? The south changed from solid Democratic to Republican in that period of time. Lots of history in that. The Democrats were the party that supported slavery prior to the Civil war, and the Jim Crow laws after. It was the Republican Party that brought about the winning of the Civil War, and the freeing of the slaves. Not that many nowadays want to acknowledge that. Therefore the south was decidedly anti republican in excess of 100 years due to that history. The coalition of the southern democrats and the rest of the Dems, odd as it was, started cracking in the 1960’s and finally this year was completely broken. ---
**Author:** ![42fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/4/b487fb/32.png) [@42fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/42fish)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/72 "2014-12-21T17:46:52Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Amazing. Just amazing. Apparently, **adaher** has decided to evolve from being merely indifferent to the facts to being actively hostile towards 'em. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Winkler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/82dd89/32.png) [@The\_Winkler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Winkler)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2015, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/73 "2015-03-04T07:04:20Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > No, let’s unpack this. Modern movement-conservatism hinges on the following principles: > [ol][li]Always cut income taxes and other taxes that land especially on the wealthy, even if Congress is already running in the red.[_]It is, however, acceptable, even desirable, to raise FICA taxes, sales taxes, and other taxes on the working class.[/li][li]Jobs are an end, not a means to an end. Environmental regulations, public safety, and the peace of the planet are not more important than Joe-Bob’s God-given right to work at the particular job he’s working at.[_]However, the stockholders’ bottom line is more important, so Joe-Bob shouldn’t expect any job security or pension.[/li][li]Labor unions ain’t nothin’ but Bolsheviks, and Bolsheviks ain’t nothin’ but foreign enemies of our people.[/li][li]Affirmative action is “reverse racism.” Blacks shouldn’t assume they are entitled to equal opportunities with whites, and it is unscientific to assume the average black is equally capable to the average white.[/li][li]The flag, and other symbols of our civilization’s traditions, must be revered. (Easy piety for most of us, and noticing a politician who finds vexillolatry hard to swallow is a good way to spot an anti-American or a politician otherwise with non-standard principles he can’t hide. Those guys are a threat to the established order.)[/li][li]The Second Amendment guarantees a personal right to bear arms, or at least dumb people who already have guns think it does, so it’s safest to just pretend that’s all it says.[/li][li]Abortion gets Christians to the polls, so you’d better be more against it than your opponent. If you’re very lucky, you’ll be running against an avowed baby-killer. If you’re very unlucky, you may have to be somewhere to the right of the Vatican to win.[/ol]The white conservative populist south seems to like 3, 6, 7, & 8. Number 9 plays more to the more Catholic north.[/li] > Numbers 1, 2, 4, & 5 are for [del]Flavor-Aid drinkers[/del] hardcore free-marketers. Not sure those win very many white working-class votes. And since #1 is the most important to the GOP ruling class, it takes a lot of propaganda to keep that going. #6 - I don’t think Affirmative Action is “Reverse Racism.” I think it’s just racist because it assumes that people of certain ethnicities are inferior and can’t succeed without extra help. It also assumes that all white men are racist and will not hire or accept into a university anyone who isn’t a white male, which is absurd. Therefore, Affirmative Action, which is mainly supported by liberals, makes liberals the real racists, imo. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2015, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/74 "2015-03-04T07:43:04Z")
The Republicans have held the House for 18 of the last 20 years. It seems quite plausible that they could hold it for another decade, making it 28 out of 30. The Democratic Party’s dominance of one house of Congress for forty straight years, in hindsight, doesn’t look so much like a political anomaly now; it may be normal. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2015, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/75 "2015-03-04T17:34:26Z")
> [@The\_Winkler](#): > > #6 - I don’t think Affirmative Action is “Reverse Racism.” I think it’s just racist because it assumes that people of certain ethnicities are inferior and can’t succeed without extra help. No, it assumes that people of certain ethnicities cannot overcome prejudice by hirers/admitters without extra help; an assumption that is very nearly as justified today as it was in the 1960s. ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2015, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/76 "2015-03-04T23:47:06Z")
> [@etv78](#): > > Not really. What % pre-64 ish were “Dixiecrats”? FYI - southern conservative Democrats were not all “Dixiecrats.” The Dixiecrats was the name taken by a specific breakaway movement of segregationist Democrats in 1948. It’s now used as a general term for southern Dems but that’s not what it really refers to. Just some esoterica. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2015, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/77 "2015-03-10T22:11:24Z")
**Moderating** > [@foolsguinea](#): > > This is some Mitt Romney level baldfaced lying, **adaher.**. Knock it off. Do not accuse other posters of lying in either Elections or Great Debates. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2015, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/78 "2015-03-10T22:39:03Z")
Not that it’s a defense, but that comment, like most of this thread, was made back in 2014. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2015, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/79 "2015-03-21T23:39:02Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > The Republicans have held the House for 18 of the last 20 years. It seems quite plausible that they could hold it for another decade, making it 28 out of 30. The Democratic Party’s dominance of one house of Congress for forty straight years, in hindsight, doesn’t look so much like a political anomaly now; it may be normal. They held it for 4 years, 2007-2010. I’m sure the question has been answered, but the answer is white people in the south used to be overwhelmingly democrat, now they are overwhelmingly republican. LBJ and the civil rights act handed the south over to the GOP, just as he predicted it would. However I have no idea why it took so long for the transition to occur. In presidential elections the southern whites had abandoned the democrat party by 1968. Democrats still had power in the south on smaller elections until the 90s. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2015, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786/80 "2015-03-22T01:43:58Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > They held it for 4 years, 2007-2010. > > I’m sure the question has been answered, but the answer is white people in the south used to be overwhelmingly democrat, now they are overwhelmingly republican. LBJ and the civil rights act handed the south over to the GOP, just as he predicted it would. > > However I have no idea why it took so long for the transition to occur. In presidential elections the southern whites had abandoned the democrat party by 1968. Democrats still had power in the south on smaller elections until the 90s. Oh right, my bad - the Democrats already had the House after the 2006 midterms; for some reason I thought it was 2008-2010. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dems-held-the-house-for-40-years-how-did-that-happen/699786.md?page=5)