The Big Switch. It would be funny if there was not in fact a switch over time. My memory is too Southern-heavy, as the exchange of talking points is mostly that of seeing southern democrats drop their conservatism in the 1950s. When did blacks switch ... during the Depression as FDR promised what the republicans of the 1920s deprived them of? But that’s a change of electorate, not of the parties.
It’s a good question.
It would be funny if there was not in fact a switch over time. My memory is too Southern-heavy, as the exchange of talking points is mostly that of seeing southern democrats drop their conservatism in the 1950s. When did blacks switch ... during the Depression as FDR promised what the republicans of the 1920s deprived them of? But that’s a change of electorate, not of the parties.Yeah, but that was before the big switch.I was watching a debate, a conservative vs. a liberal, and the conservative made the point that most Jim Crow supporters (KKK, etc.) were Democrats.
The liberal countered that that was before the big switch. That's when all the bad racist Democrats magically became Republicans, and all the good folks in the GOP magically became Democrats.
The lib didn't give any more details on that. No time line, etc. Kinda complicated, I guess. Probably caused by magnetic fluctuations in the earth's core, or something like that.
It’s a good question.
I will argue that the switch was led by blacks abandoning the Party of Lincoln for the Party of FDR. Notwithstanding that the Republican Party did not give up on the black vote until 1968.
states that there were five or six things that Nixon could have reasonably expected in 1960 which did not go his way. Among them were an endorsement from Eisenhower (frankly, IMHO Ike would have been forthcoming with it if anyone had pointed out to him that since the passage of the 12th Amendment only Andrew Jackson had seen his sitting VP win election as POTUS), the fact that Nixon accidentally banged up his knee enough to seriously affect his ability to campaign, the fact that he was disadvantaged in a TV “debate” which he won if heard on the radio, and others. One of which was that he did not get support from blacks (negroes, as they were then politely called).
- Nixon:
- A Life
That was the turning point; since then Republicans have assumed that the black vote was not an opportunity but a problem for them. Hence the famous “Southern Strategy” of Nixon’s victorious 1968 campaign. Historically, that doesn’t happen if Nixon had gotten black support in 1960 - in which case he would have won the election. And although he had not made much of it politically, Eisenhower had been very good for
negroblack progress. Which makes Eisenhower’s failure - I will call it that - to endorse Nixon a historic turning point in US politics.