Posted on 04/18/2013 2:14:07 PM PDT by Epsdude
Sorry for this unusual post. I'm probably the youngest one this site so you can imagine I've got a lot to learn in politics, but one thing has always puzzled me.
I know that Republicans broke away from the Whigs to oppose the pro-slavery Democrats but the change in party demographics since then has perplexed me.
I recently saw this picture: http://manwiththemuckrake.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/slavery-2012.jpg
I'm just curious, what caused such a radical shift in the solid south? Some people accredit this to an 'ideological party switch' but that seems rather implausible to me. So what did cause this arbitrary shift and, also why did the black vote slowly drift over to the Democrats?
Thanks.
Might check up on your short term memory ~
Blacks do not make up 40% of the democrat party and are not as you say, “Blacks are today THE DEMOCRAT PARTY itself.”
I didn't say the Federalists/Whigs were "more popular." I said they were "conservative." And they were. The Jeffersonian/Jacksonian political tradition has always been America's radical tradition, and this was recognized at the time.
You are aware that George Washington was a Federalist . . . are you not?
Sigh... the inevitable Lincoln idolator.
I didn't even mention Lincoln. You neo-Confederates really have Lincoln stuck up your butts, don't you? May I suggest that if you hate the first Republican president so much that you don't belong in the Republican party?
Thaddeus Stevens was not a Whig. He was the leader of the anti-Mason party, and a complete loon.
The Anti-Masons were born out of America's first "red scare." The Masonic lodges were believed to be infiltrated by the Bavarian Illuminati and the forces that caused the French Revolution (to which your beloved infidel Thomas Jefferson was so sympathetic). The Anti-Masonic party itself began later (after the murder of William Morgan in 1826) but it began in the anti-Illuminati furor of the late eighteenth century. And again, it was the Federalists who stood for true conservatism against this threat.
Later the Anti-Masons went through an "ideological drift" from Right to Left and they morphed into a sort of anti-aristocratic, anti-clerical party (the Masons being the aristocracy, and the Masons the "state clergy," of the United States), but they started out as the Senator McCarthys of their day.
My point about Stephens was simply that, like so many neo-Confederates, he was against "the money power" and wanted the government, rather than banks, to coin and print US currency. Of course you'll never hear about this from race-obsessed neo-Confederates who don't even hold their ancestors positions on tariffs vs. free trade.
I suggest you learn a little American political history.
Didn’t say that ~ you said that. The effective voting strength in the field ~ not the same as the number of Democrats. It’s all very clear to anyone ~ except you.
Another one was former Texas Senator Phil Gramm, who started his political career as a yellow dog Democrat representative but switched in the early 80s.
BTW, he's about the only one I know who switched honorably, as he switched parties in the middle of his term and resigned his seat to run in a special election as a Republican, saying that it wasn't right that people who voted for him as a Democrat shouldn't have another opportunity to vote him up or down.
Well, growing up in Tennessee in the 60s, my relatives always told me that Republicans favored “the rich”. A few years later, however, most of them were of the “I didn’t leave them (Democrats), they left me” mindset. The social issues had a lot to do with it.
Texas had a relatively large influx of northerners moving in during the 80s. But, Texas is a little different from the general overview I provided to epsdude. In fact, each of the southern states had some variations in their journey to conservatism but, overall, they followed the general path I cited.
The tide didn’t really begin turning in Texas when Bill Clements was elected governor in ‘78. His first term was ok, but sketchy and he was defeated by Mark White. However, at the end of Mark White’s first term, Clements was re-elected and then lost to Ann Richards (Queen Ann). Although Queen Ann served 2 terms, by the end of her second term, Texas went for George Bush and has never looked back.
Since the mid-90s, though, Texas has been a mostly red state. The Dems have made som inroads in trying to regain power but, IMO, I think Obama will eventually sink the Dems and make them a minority party for quite some time to come.
“There’s more to it than that”
Civil Right’s Act turn south blue. Goldwater carried southern states in 1964 and Nixon’s southern strategy took them in 1968. End of story?
What is missing? What else occurred?
Yeah, you said it, and I disagree with it.
Blacks are today THE DEMOCRAT PARTY itself.
44 posted on 4/18/2013 3:37:49 PM by muawiyah
Is that how that cunning 6.6% of the California population took over the state for their democrat party?
71 posted on 4/18/2013 4:30:54 PM by ansel12
Or new York, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Vermont etc, etc. yet the the most black states in the union are generally red states?
Texas, and the South did not become conservative because of yankees and Cubans, yankees would have made it more liberal and still do.
In 1968 Texas gave the democrat presidential candidate 41% of the vote, in 1972 it was 33%, it wasn't yankees and Cubans doing that.
Historically, though, it was Northerners like the Bushes who led the way in getting elected as Republicans in Texas.
Nonsense, naming a single guy who moved to Texas permanently at age 24 after being there as a teen in WWII and who was elected a congressman in 1966 stands on it’s own, it doesn’t justify your claim.
Senator Tower was from my hometown, and Clements was from my son’s hometown.
Ansel, you apparently have never heard of Gerrymandering. it’s used all the time to concentrate the opposition in a way to optimize your own party’s opportunities to win office.
LOL, that is some gerrymandering for 13% of the electorate to have become “”40% of the Democrat vote overall”” and “”Blacks are today THE DEMOCRAT PARTY itself.””
They are brilliant enough to run the national party and California with 6.6% of the population and Vermont with 1.1%, and Massachusetts with 7.7%, and Hawaii 2.2% etc, etc.
But they can’t run states with the largest black populations, for instance Mississippi with it’s 37.3% black population, or Texas with double the black percentage of California.
You really have no idea how redistricting works or how a minority can leverage its power relative to a majority.
Why don’t you just quit trying to mislead, avoid, change the subject, do everything that you can to avoid just showing me the proof of what I said you were mistaken about?
Wrong-“”40% of the Democrat vote overall”” and “”Blacks are today THE DEMOCRAT PARTY itself.””
Why don’t you quit denying that mathematics and political wisdom exist.
Rather than lie and make personal attacks, why not just respond to the points that I said you were wrong about?
You must at least have some source showing that 40% of the democrat party is black even if you can’t explain things like California and Mississippi and Texas and Hawaii.
Wrong-“”40% of the Democrat vote overall”” and “”Blacks are today THE DEMOCRAT PARTY itself.””
139 black Democrats are then 40% of 348 Democrats.
That sets the bounds on the analysis. It is possible.
Since everybody doesn't vote according to racial category in the census, that 13.9% group will have to do a bit more to achieve 40% of the Democrat voting strength ~ so let's say if all the black voters do is always vote 100% of the time, and the other voters only vote 40% of the time, you'd have a mere 539 total Republican and Democrat voters.
Under that constraint, the 139 black voters would actually be 27% of the total vote (clearly double their percentage of the population), and a full 100% of the Democrat vote (establishing another limit since you can't go higher than 100% except in Philadelphia and Detroit).
We know that in the case of California only 60% of registered voters vote at all. Further, we know that registered voters are less than 2/3 of the total voting age population. All blacks need to do to is vote ALL the time, every time, for Democrats, and they will be the winning margin in districts where Democrats can win and they will have influence in the Democrat party way beyond what their numbers in the population suggest they might have otherwise.
Regarding Mississippi, there you don't have very many white Democrats, so blacks can be 100% of the Democrat vote and dominate the Democrat party, but the Republicans still win ~ on the other hand, Mississippi has had a very large percentage of elected officials who are black ~ since blacks are clustered in towns where there are no other kind of voters.
What's going on here that you seem to not understand is that we have different kinds of adults ~ those who always vote, those who vote sometimes, and those who are eligibile, and might even be registered, but never vote! Overlying that structure we have people who always vote Republican, those who always vote Democrat, those who vote irregularly, and those who never vote.
Black voters AMPLIFY their effective force by always voting Democrat in areas where Democrats can win ~ with not only their black voters but their white voters, and hispanic voters, and so forth.
Where there are no Democrats, nor black voters, somebody else dominates political life.
We know Democrats are, themselves, clustered in riverine urban areas ~ as are black voters. It is relatively easy in a number of states ~ not all states as you seem to demand ~ for black voters in cities to dominate the Democrat party regarding internal affairs. In those states where the Democrat party controls the statehouse and does redistricting Democrats gerrymander to make sure they create the maximum number of Democrat districts.
One of the hardest things to find in Charlotte is someone born in North Carolina.
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