Well my political start was with the Reagan campaigns, so I missed out on '64. The article seems to try and thread race into every aspect of that campaign, so I immediately smelled a RAT. Was it really that important to the '64 campaign, or anything close to how this author portrays it? I'm sure it mattered, but this story reminds me of how a Stephanopolous would write it.
Yer right, totally written from a liberal bias. According to the author, no one could ever possibly have sincerely believed in the principles of property rights, prosperity through small government and individual initiative, or (gasp) handling racial problems at the state/local level. Such professed principles are only an excuse for the powerful to trample and exploit the 'less fortunate', and of course RACE was/is the ever-present bogey-man. The learned liberal perfesser sees only two kinds of Goldwater voters: those who were consciously racist, and those who were too ashamed to admit their real reasons for supporting him. Everybody else supported LBJ and all Dem-sponsored legislation, naturally!
Of course, the truth is that this is an example of psychological transference: impugning one's own faults to one's opponents. Fact is, nobody wants elections to be about RACE more than liberals/Democrats. And nobody wants more to make race a non-issue than principled conservatives. Especially Senator Goldwater. But trying to make people forget about race and concentrate on the principles of good government and personal responsibility was a political impossibility in 1966. I remember... I lived just a few miles from Compton/Watts in 1965. And I remember how frightened all whites were. Only liberals look at their fear and call it 'compassion', while those who refuse to assuage black anger with gov't money and enhanced 'rights' are called 'racist'. Raised in a liberal household, it took me about 25 years to figure that out. (Most blacks have had it figured out all along.)
It had taken years of demonstrations and work in Congress to get the Civil Rights Act of '64 passed. Goldwater had opposed the bill on constitutional grounds because it was a carbon copy of the 1876 Civil Rights Act that had been struck down by the Supreme Court shortly after enactment. (Goldwater had a great understanding of American history.)
But, yes, race was the key issue of the 1964 presidential race.