Comment by dctoedt

>> The two major political parties fundamentally realigned during the civil rights era of the 1960s.

> This is an incorrect analysis looking at the wrong causal factor (civil rights rather than economics).

Boy, is THAT ever a contrarian take, verging dangerously close to crank theory. Economics was distinctly in third place as a factor in the political parties' realignment. In first- and second places were the Vietnam War (nationwide) and civil rights (in the South, with race riots and black militarism being a factor nationally).

1. VIETNAM: I came of age during that era. I was very politically aware. My family on both sides had been Democrats for decades. Most of my family switched to the GOP in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Their main driver was dislike for the Vietnam War protestors (and for race rioters).

Most of my family regarded support for the government's war policy as a patriotic duty, even if they happened to harbor doubts about the merits of specific policies. That was true during both the LBJ and Nixon administrations. (The men on both sides of my extended family were pretty much all veterans, from WWII, Korea, and/or the Cold War.)

2. CIVIL RIGHTS: I grew up in various southern states during the 1960s and early 1970s (my dad was military, we moved around). You need to read up on the GOP's so-called Southern Strategy, starting with Nixon's courting of George Wallace voters and continuing with Reagan's dog-whistle support for "states rights," Lee Atwater and the Willie Horton campaign ad for GHW Bush, etc.

A signature moment was when arch-segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond switched from being a southern Democrat to the GOP — and was welcomed. Sure, other reasons were cited for these switches, but those were mostly window dressing.

The race riots of the mid- to late 1970s, and the publicity attending the Black Panthers, were also a factor in my extended family's switch to the party of "law and order" (the GOP). Example: During the rioting after MLK's assassination in 1968, my dad carried a .45 pistol on his commute to work in downtown Washington D.C. And in our suburban Maryland neighborhood — populated largely by military, CIA, Air America, etc. — my dad and other men on the block loaded up their hunting rifles, put them close to the front door, and gave us kids strict instructions not to touch them. They did that because of rumors that carloads of black rioters were roaring down the streets in white neighborhoods, throwing Molotov cocktails. (That certainly never happened in our neighborhood — or anywhere, AFAICR.) My family members weren't racist, but they regarded obeying the law as paramount.