Comment by rayiner
5 years ago
That's an overstatement, which has been popularized by Democrats to distance themselves from their longstanding coalition with southern segregationists. The key Civil Rights Acts were passed from 1957 to 1968. The political alignments on various issues haven't changed much since FDR. Democrats were on the liberal alignment with respect to government regulation, business freedom, taxes, education, immigration, social welfare, religion, gun control, etc.
Contrary to your statement, the Civil Rights Acts were not a "precipitating event for politicians switching parties." That doesn't even make sense--why would politicians who were against civil rights join the party that much more strongly supported every Civil Rights Act from 1957 to 1968?
The realignment of southern democrats actually occurred much later. Nixon did not win a majority in any southern state--to the extent he won with a plurality, it was only because the Democratic vote was split between Humphrey and Wallace. In 1976, Carter won with the same east-coast south/north coalition that long voted Democrat; with Ford winning the west coast and mid-west. Reagan won almost every state, but his margins in New York were larger than his margins in Alabama or the Carolinas. Reagan did blow out Mondale in the south in 1984, but I'm not sure how much that tells us. Even by the time of Clinton, he won Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Georgia, not to mention Arkansas.
I think the more accurate take is that the political realignment of the parties on "civil rights" issues happened more in the mid-late 1980s through 1990s. And it happened because the nature of the "civil rights" debate morphed over that time. The battle fronts during the 1980s and 1990s was not eliminating de jure and overt discrimination (the aim of the 1950s and 1960s legislation republicans supported), but measures like affirmative action, which sought to use the power of government to shape private conduct to eliminate existing inequities. That of course maps very cleanly onto longstanding republican versus democrat positions.
(I'll give another example of situations where political alignments change because the issue has changed rather than the "mix of platforms" of the parties. On the abortion front, for example, a significant amount of the debate has moved from talking about whether it should be legal at all, to talking about whether religious organizations should be required to provide healthcare coverage for them, whether the government should support them with public funding, etc. If you're a consistent libertarian, you might have found yourself more aligned with Democrats back in the early 1990s, but more aligned with Republicans today.)
I'm a longtime fan of your comments and you've shaped my POV on many things. I am a religious reader of https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=rayiner
You normally have the facts on your side, or else you make generous and clear concessions. What is happening here? You are saying such incorrect (or confusing) things.
In point of fact, Democratic presidential candidates began to lose in Southern states because of integration well before the 1970s. Formerly-Democratic Southerners splintered from the Democratic party for explicitly segregationist reasons, and carried several Southern states under a third-party banner, in two different presidential elections (1948 and 1968).
(One of them, Strom Thurmond, is a direct counterexample to your argument that the Civil Rights Acts were not a "precipitating event for politicians switching parties." At least according to Wikipedia, he switched his affiliation to Republican because of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.)
Is this, like, something you haven't read about yet? Or do you have a strong argument that explains the above, which I don't get yet?
I think you’re overlooking some of the context of this thread. It started when someone said that republicans invoked states rights to justify opposing the Civil Rights Acts. Following that up with, “the Civil Rights Act was a huge precipitating event for southern Democrats to become Republicans” falsely reinforces the idea that Republicans opposed the Civil Rights Acts, when in fact they supported it overwhelmingly. Nor does it make sense to say that southern segregationists would leave the Democratic Party in response, to decamp for a party that supported the Civil Rights Act even more strongly.
Some Democrats like Thurmond did switch in 1964, because once Democrats abandoned their support for segregation, they found they shared other principles with Republicans. But focusing on those isolated instances overlooks and downplays the deep alliance between Democrats and segregationists. Woodrow Wilson, a pioneer of modern progressive “governance by expert bureaucracy” re-segregated the federal workforce. Segregationist Democrats were a key pillar of support for FDR’s New Deal. George Wallace was a segregationist, and also a New Dealer, a champion of labor who called for expanding Social Security. From 1930-1970, the Democratic coalition was glued together by the New Deal, with northern Democrats agreeing to look the other way at what southern Democrats were doing. (I use 1970 as the end date, because those alliances were in place even by Carter’s time: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/jimmy-carters-racist-camp.... Carter would not have won without the South.)
In fact, a minority of Republicans in the 1960s, like Barry Goldwater, did make overtures towards anti-integration forces, in an effort to win southern votes. But they never managed to dismantle the Democratic New Deal coalition in the south. That didn’t happen until much later. And at that point, two major things had happened. Southern states has transitioned from agricultural to industrial. The economy of places like Georgia had boomed by drawing businesses from northern states with lower taxes and less regulation. At the same time, the focus of the “civil rights” movement changed. It moved onto very different issues like affirmative action. I happen to support affirmative action, but it’s hard to deny that it’s an ideologically very different thing than the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Its the class “negative right” versus “positive right” dichotomy that’s always divided conservative versus liberal thought.
The reason I take an exception to the characterization above is that through omission framing, it attempts to tarnish Republicans for something they were on the right side of, while absolving Democrats of something they were for a long time on the wrong side of. It also falsely equates very different civil rights policies. It goes to Biden’s “[Romney] wants to put y’all back in chains” rhetoric. No, it was Democrats who wanted to do that. Romney, and modern Republicans, don’t want to use the power of government to affirmatively erase historical inequities. But it was the Romney-type pro-business Republicans that were a bulwark of the Civil Rights Acts.
Thanks for the response! I get how this thread is about framing and partisanship and that is the part that is boring for me. I am more interested in the broader topic of the realignment, and I think you are articulating the clearest and strongest version of your argument that I've heard. I'd recap it as follows:
1) Democrats were the party of white ethno-nationalism, starting in the 1800s. 2) Democrats abandon that plank by the 1960s, joining with longstanding Republican efforts and overturning Jim Crow. 3) Much later, for unrelated reasons, the South becomes Republicans.
Is that about right?
I agree with #1 and #2. I disagree with #3 and I don't see how the facts support it.
First, there's the "much later" part of #3. Here [1] are presidential voting records for the 13 states of the confederacy. In every case but Missouri, there is a) a period of near-uniform Democratic domination from 1880-1944, b) a string of Democratic losses, and at least two Republican victories, by 1972.
(Yes, Carter won several of those states after Nixon's disgrace. To some degree I contest the conclusions you're drawing there: so did Hoover, Clinton, etc to lesser degrees. I acknowledge that many of these states were purple in the 1970s, but I don't think that supports the timeline of #3 in context.)
Second, there is the claim of "unrelated reasons". The idea that "a minority of Republicans in the 1960s" made overtures to segregationist Dems is equivalent to saying "Nixon didn't do anything like the Southern Strategy", right? (Or were you talking about regional races?) Doesn't that assertion, in turn, hinge on the idea that "states' rights" (to pick one example) is not an overture? If so, I would call it a weak argument.
[1]
https://www.270towin.com/states/Alabama https://www.270towin.com/states/Georgia https://www.270towin.com/states/Louisiana https://www.270towin.com/states/Mississippi https://www.270towin.com/states/Missouri https://www.270towin.com/states/North_Carolina https://www.270towin.com/states/South_Carolina https://www.270towin.com/states/Tennessee https://www.270towin.com/states/Texas https://www.270towin.com/states/Virginia
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Sure, I won't deny that it's a much more complex situation than my two sentences. But I'm not sure how "realignment unfolded across the next decade or two" contradicts the 60s civil rights actions "precipitating" that realignment.
You made a much broader point than what you've retreated to:
> Current party lines blur to to the point of falling apart in the context of the 1964 Act, because it was a huge precipitating event for politicians switching parties (particularly Southern Democrats becoming Republicans). You can't directly map "Rs voted for the Act" onto party membership today: there was a very different mix of platforms at that time, only loosely comparable to what we have now.
In the 1950s and 1960s, as today, Democrats were the party of social welfare, regulation, big government, higher taxes, etc. And republicans were the party of big business, tax cuts, religion in schools, etc. Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx haven't voted for a Republican since the 1920s.
Apart from that, the way you phrased it makes it seem like southern democrats defected to the Republican Party because the democrats supported the 1964 civil rights act. That misleadingly implies that republicans didn't support the 1964 civil rights act (even more strongly)--otherwise, why would southern democrats defect to the Republican Party? Standing alone, it's an assertion that makes no sense, and it subtly tars Republicans as somehow having opposed civil rights.
What happened instead is that the issue changed. "Civil rights" in 1964 meant eliminating discrimination at lunch counters and on busses. That victory was won decisively. By the 1980s and early 1990s, the front had moved to things like affirmative action and racal quotas: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/01/15/q.... That triggered a realignment, based on pre-existing ideological lanes. The same republicans who supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 could, entirely consistent with their ideology, oppose affirmative efforts to eliminate racial disparities.