You need to be more cynical. Johnson was a brilliant political tactician. He was also antebellum. He recognized the power of the Republican support of Civil Rights legislation and found an effective way to, in his words, “Keep the n*****s enslaved for 100 years by virtue of the War on Poverty. It was, in fact, a cynical ploy to maintain a substantial segment of the American public in poverty.
Cynical is my middle name. You do know that Diogenes is the father of Cynicism? That Johnson was a Racist Southern Democrat who had the typical Democrat attitude regarding Blacks is not lost on me. I just don't think he anticipated that giving them government housing and welfare would result in the destruction of the black family which subsequently occurred.
In other words, I don't think Johnson was that smart. I think he could see the votes, but never thought about it much beyond that. Johnson was a good politician, but a brain surgeon he was not. Most Democrats had no idea what was going to happen. The sole exception was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who looked into the situation and wrote a treatise about it. The rest of the Democrat party was just ignorant stupid power seekers, same as today.