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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35571 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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Sorry, that is an annoying amount of imprecise language and memory drift on my part. The stat living in my head was "20 of the 22 Southern Democrat Senate seats stayed Democrat for 20 years after the CRA"; the bit about "voted for" is superfluous and doesn't even make sense. And of course, trying to look it up is hopelessly confounded by results for "2022 Senate election". So, doing this the awkward way and just looking up the maps for every Senate election from 64 onward, I think the general point weakly holds.

Georgia doesn't elect a Republican to Senate until 1980. SC elected a Democrat to Senate in 1964, then confirmed in a special election in 1965. Strom Thurmond won in 66 and stayed in office forever, but the other NC Senate seat was Democrat-held until 2004, the first time a Republican held that seat since Reconstruction.

North Carolina Goes Democrat in 66, 68, then a Republican in 72, and a Democrat in 74 (that seat flips in 80).

Alabama votes D in 66, 68, 72, 74, 78 (twice!), flips R in 80, but goes back to D in 84 and 86, 90, 92, before flipping R again in 96-98.

Mississippi votes D in 64, 66, 70, 72, and 76. Flips R in 78, but D again in 82. That D seat flips R in 88.

Louisiana doesn't send a Republican to the Senate until 2004.

Texas is split 1/1 until 1994.

Florida is D in 64, R in 68. The Democrat seat stays blue until 88. The R seat flips back and forth a few times until it stays blue for a 3 election stretch ending in the 00s.

Tennessee does some complicated flipping between both seats, but doesn't seem to settle on R until 94.

Arkansas doesn't elect a Republican to Senate until 1996.

Missouri elects it's first Republican in 76, and seems to lock into that side during the 80's.

Overall, it looks like the "switch" happens in the late 70s into the mid-90s.

In presidential elections, only a few deep south states vote for Goldwater in 64. 68 is hopelessly confounded by Democrat-cum-Independent George Wallace. 72 Nixon carries basically everything, but in 76 Jimmy Carter takes the entire South. Reagan only loses GA in 80, and crushes in 84, which Bush replicates in 88; these wins, like Nixon's are so generally decisive that it's hard to chalk them up to regional-specific trends.. In 92 and 96 Clinton is at least strongly competitive in the South, winning about half the Southern states each time, and coming within 5ish points for most of the others. The South only really locks in as "Red States" with GWB.

This article takes a deeper look. Some money quotes:

This is why we see such little change from the general trend post-1964, even with the end of Jim Crow's strange career. Republicans picked up a few Congressional seats. J. Strom Thurmond became a Republican, and a few other prominent Democrats followed suit. But the Southern Congressional delegations continued to be dominated by Democrats. Almost all of the signatories to the Southern Manifesto remained Democrats until they left Congress. Some, like Russell Long and John Stennis served as Democrats into the 1980s. When Haley Barbour ran against Stennis in 1982, he lost by a nearly 2:1 margin. George Wallace was elected Governor of Alabama as a Democrat in 1982.

Richard Nixon walloped George McGovern in the South, but this was hardly exclusively about race -- McGovern was to the left of you average Southern voters on just about every issue imaginable. Four years later, Jimmy Carter was still able to carry every Southern state except for Virginia in 1976. As late as 1988, the South was still considered something of a swing region (the reason that Lloyd Bentsen was included on the ticket). Bill Clinton carried four Southern states in 1992, and came within five points of carrying four others. Republicans didn't make real progress in the Congressional delegations until the 1990s; even then the transformation continued into the 2000s.

In the statehouses, the transformation was likewise slow. Table I shows the percentages of Republicans in the state legislatures from 1962 through 2002. Some states' Republican parties grew significantly in the 1960s, but for the most part, big gains for the Republicans don't come until the 1980s and 1990s:

Regardless, it is indisputable that it was his generation, and not Thurmond's, that finally changed the political complexion of the South. Did race still have something to do with it? Almost certainly. But you also can't ignore that the South was by that point aligned with the national Republican Party on a wide expanse of issues relating to taxes, anti-communism, school prayer, abortion, the counterculture, Vietnam . . . the list goes on. Chalking everything up to the Civil Rights Act is overly simplistic, to the point of being incorrect.

So, yes, there is definitely something to this story, the Southern Strategy clearly had some effect, even if it seems like it was mostly alienating black voters. But this story Democrats tell themselves that "And then one day, for no reason, all the good people and all the bad people switched teams" is mostly copium and deflection from their party's history, which by their normal standards ought to utterly damn them.

But this story Democrats tell themselves that "And then one day, for no reason, all the good people and all the bad people switched teams" is mostly copium and deflection from their party's history, which by their normal standards ought to utterly damn them.

Well, that is not the story I told, and more generally, this does not address the very clear reality that, while in the past social conservatives were Democrats, that is obviously no longer the case, so, whatever the specific details, the claim that "Democrats are the racists because most racists were Democrats sixty years ago" is not a very honest claim. So, no, the party's history should not "damn them," because both parties have different compositions than they did in the past.

Well, that is not the story I told

Then we are watching two very different movies. That's the story I imbibed growing up and there may still exist the cringy teenaged political rants on LiveJournal to prove it. I get annoyed at this discussion because I'm coming with the embarrassed energy of the deconverted. More generally, I think if I rephrased it less snarkily, something like "After the CRA, basically all of the racists immediately switched to the Republican party and stayed there ever since", the median Redditor would agree, and further agree that all educated people know this is true history.

while in the past social conservatives were Democrats, that is obviously no longer the case, so, whatever the specific details, the claim that "Democrats are the racists because most racists were Democrats sixty years ago" is not a very honest claim.

At this point we're a little deep in the woods, in terms of multiple people jumping into a conversation. The "newest posts" feed is great for murdering time, but contributes to this sort of situation. To clarify, I'm not saying the quoted bit above, but I am saying that many of the racist Democrats from 60 years ago stayed Democrats in the wake of the CRA, and many who did switch did so more for other reasons ranging from religion to foreign policy, over the course of that 60 years. Hlynka, by contrast, was making a separate claim that Democrats are a party of public disorder and violent race baiting, and that this is core enough to the meme cluster "Democrat Party" to be common between old social-con Klansmen and new woke-prog antifa.

So, no, the party's history should not "damn them," because both parties have different compositions than they did in the past.

This is a very isolated demand for rigor. Dems damn the Republicans for the Southern Strategy and the United States in general for slavery and historical racism, but BlushingFlowerMeme.jpg regarding their own party's history as the party of slavery, the party of the Klan, and the party of Jim Crow. I'm certainly amenable to "the past is a different country" arguments, but the folks who toppled statues of abolitionists because they don't actually know who the person was don't get a free dodge for that accusation of hypocrisy.

Then we are watching two very different movies.

To clarify, I meant the story that I told in this thread, not the story that I was told as a child.

"After the CRA, basically all of the racists immediately switched to the Republican party and stayed there ever since",

Not a claim I made.

This is a very isolated demand for rigor. Dems damn the Republicans for the Southern Strategy and the United States in general for slavery and historical racism, but BlushingFlowerMeme.jpg regarding their own party's history as the party of slavery, the party of the Klan, and the party of Jim Crow. I'm certainly amenable to "the past is a different country" arguments, but the folks who toppled statues of abolitionists because they don't actually know who the person was don't get a free dodge for that accusation of hypocrisy.

I don't see how that is relevant to the issue. which is whether the Democratic Party is "the real racist party" today. Just because statute-topplers are morons who make moronic claims does not mean that is it ok for us to do so.

I have no patience for claims of racism in general, and specifically not for claims that "Republicans are racist," but it is very clear that that parties have changed on issues of relevance to African Americans. In 1960, if you were a real honest-to-goodness racist, you were almost voted Democratic. Today, you almost certainly vote Republican. (I am of course assuming two parties). The Democratic Party tends to support affirmative action, while the Republican Party tends to oppose it. The Democratic Party appoints judges who tend to reign in police civil liberties violations; the Republican Party appoints judges who are "law and order" judges who tend to do the opposite. Etc, etc. This has been true for thirty years

The fact of the matter is that the Democratic Party, at least, is a vastly different party on these issues than it was 70 years ago. In contrast, the Republican Party, has drifted in the other direction. More generally, once upon a time the Republican Party was the more liberal party, not just on race, but on many other issues; meanwhile, the Democratic Party was the more conservative party, especially on race. That is obviously no longer the case.

Not a claim I made.

Did not quite say you did. What I am claiming is that it is a very common understanding of events, and the first comment of yours that I replied to was in that ballpark.

I don't see how that is relevant to the issue

I think we're into 3 or 4 different issues, talking past each other, and I have a feeling that if I go into responses for a bunch of the parts of the next two paragraphs I have problems with, it's going to keep happening.

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