You’d be amazed how often that situation comes up, but there is a sort of legal presumption that applies.
Hey all, I am 26 now, so will not be eligible to run for president until 2024.
This question does intrigue me though. What I am wondering is if there are specific trends within these states that are moving from their traditional platforms. Is it income level? Further, has anyone performed research, or know of any research, which correlates the population demographics (such as income) to a particular switch in general platform belief?
Help would be greatly appreciated.
Then how did Obama win 2 presidential elections?
By not really being very far to the left at all. He’s a neoliberal DINO like Clinton was.
Then what was with his talk of being like Reagan, a transformational President? Was the just blowing wind?
If the country has moved to the right, why would it prefer Obama over McCain and Romney?
I was wondering the same and skipped page 2, so forgive me if this has been asked. I just saw a story about how Kansas used to be more moderately Republican (e.g., Bob Dole), but has moved farther and farther into tea party territory. Apparently there has been such a backlash from the remaining moderate Republicans that some are supporting the Democratic candidate for Governor and that race is currently a dead heat. I’m not sure if this counts as moving to the left or simply rebounding from an extreme position.
If there are any Kansans around, I’d like to hear their take on the state of Kansas political leanings.
All of the most recent polls show the Democrat leading the Republican Brownback in Kansas. Rick Santorum came to campaign for him and they had to hold the rally at a local Cars4Less because they could only come up with 200 people who wanted to attend.
I doubt I have much in common with any Democrat who could win statewide office in Kansas, but it’s nice to hear that the entire state isn’t as insane as Brownback has made it seem.
It just shows that one election doesn’t tell you anything. Or even two, especially if it’s just one guy running for reelection. New Jersey hasn’t moved to the right because of Chris Christie and neither has Kansas because of Sam Brownback.
I agree that is over simplistic to attribute this shift to a simple “swap.” Before the Civil Rights Movement, many white southerners viewed themselves as subject to northern industrial interests that drove tariff policy, and victims of a monetary policy that ran counter to their interests. Even rich planters shared this sentiment with poorer white tenant farmers and sharecroppers. The Democrats appealed to these disaffected southerners. Race, in terms of appeals to white solidarity and the “lost cause” of the Confederacy often became part of this economic package too.
The Civil Rights Movement caused these white southerners to see that they were not all at the bottom ladder, and that they were really in the middle of the economic pyramid. The new social welfare and education programs that emerged after the 1960s would primarily target the underclass, not the working class. Southern whites moved to Nixon and Reagan for much the same reason union workers in the north did, a perception that liberalism threatened their economic position. Of course, a heavy dose of racial anxiety went along with this.
I’ll just add that a lot of this took place at the presidential level, beginning with Goldwater and Nixon in the 1960s. Only in the 1990s did this shift happen at the congressional level. And, if I am not mistaken, many southern counties to this day still have a strong one party - Democratic Party - system. I know in Arkansas, one of the last Democratic Party holdouts in the South, after Clinton’s reelection in 1996, no Democrat has won a presidential vote there. Democrats lost all congressional seats in recent years, only Mark Pryor hold on - due to family name…and perhaps not after this year. But the county sheriffs, judges, coroners remain Democrats in the counties I know best. Personally, I can’t see how having a partisan coroner matters, but that’s how it goes.
A lot of the local positions in my neck of the woods didn’t even have a Republican running in them last time. It was Green, Independent, and Democrat. This surprised me, since I always think of Arkansas as a red state. (I guess I hadn’t paid attention before.)
I’d also add that there’s no such thing in politics as a simple “swap”. Parties don’t just switch positions, it doesn’t make sense. What sometimes does happen though is that one party abandons an untenable position to find a new one. If the new position is the same as the opposition party’s, then the issue ceases to be an issue. Once the Democrats started supporting the Civil Rights Act, the issues dealt with in that act were off the table. And sure enough, neither party supports public discrimination, segregation, or job discrimination. The differences are over other issues having to do with civil rights. And there really hasn’t been a change. The Republicans were for color blind policies then, they are for color blind policies now. The Democrats opposed that then, they oppose it now.
Only in the same sense as, “In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread.”
Do you believe the gerrymandering imposed by Republican legislatures was only coincidentally drawn along racial lines in many districts?
Racial gerrymandering is supported by Democrats as well as Republicans to insure that we get minority Congressmen. I mean, if you want to abolish the CBC…
Even if that were true, “Democrats do it too!” does nothing to support your false claim that Republicans are color blind. Racial gerrymandering proves they are not.