“Next time maybe the media will concentrate on content of character instead of selling us a caricature.”
Yep. Uh-huh. Sure. Okey-Dokey. *SMIRK*
But the poll only covers time since the 1940s: "Over the span of 69 years of American history and 12 presidencies,
History didn't start in 1945...
"... the Civil Rights Act that granted blacks the same basic rights that whites had, ..."
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
As far as I can tell, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was established outside the framework of the Constitution, probably to win votes from low-information voters.
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Constitutional problems with the Civil Rights Act are evidenced by the fact that the act was based on the unreasonably wide interpretation of the Commerce Clause by FDR's activist justices. More specifically, FDR's justices wrongly ignored that that both Thomas Jefferson and a previous generation of justices had clarified that the states have never delegated to Congress, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate any aspect of intrastate Commerce. Using terms like "does not extend," and "exclusively" here is what Jefferson wrote about limits of Congress's Commerce Clause powers.
“For the power given to Congress by the Constitution does not extend to the internal regulation of the commerce of a State, (that is to say of the commerce between citizen and citizen,) which remain exclusively [emphases added] with its own legislature; but to its external commerce only, that is to say, its commerce with another State, or with foreign nations, or with the Indian tribes.” –Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson’s Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank : 1791.
Reflecting on Jefferson's statement, here is an official clarification of the scope of Congress's Commerce powers by the Supreme Court.
”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added].” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
But as a consequence of parents not making sure that their children are being taught the federal government's constitutionally limited powers imo, low-information voters were probably oblivious to the following constitutional problem with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the power to protect arbitrary "rights," but only those rights which the states have amended the Constitution to expressly protect. And although the four voting rights amendments, the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments, expressly give Congress the power to protect specific voting rights, the 14th Amendment gives Congress the power to protect only but all enumerated rights. This is evidenced by the following excerpts from the post-Civil War congressional record where John Bingham, the main author of Section 1 of 14A had officially clarified the scope of that amendement, and also an excerpt from a Supreme Court case opinion which also officially clarified the scope of the 14th Amendment, reflectinig on Bingham's clarification.
“Mr. Speaker, this House may safely follow the example of the makers of the Constitution and the builders of the Republic, by passing laws for enforcing all the privileges and immunities of the United States as guaranteed by the amended Constitution and expressly enumerated in the Constitution [emphasis added].” — Congressional Globe, House of Representatives, 42nd Congress, 1st Session. (See lower half of third column.)
“3. The right of suffrage was not necessarily one of the privileges or immunities of citizenship before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that amendment does not add to these privileges and immunities. It simply furnishes additional guaranty for the protection of such as the citizen already had [emphasis added].” —Minor v. Happersett, 1874.
Again, the feds have the constitutional authority to protect only those rights enumerated in the Constitution by the states. "Rights" not based on enumerated protections were either wrongly legislated from the bench in the name of political correctness, abortion comes to mind, or made by corrupt federal lawmakers to win votes imo.