Don't Change Horses Midstream

Chapter 8: The 1960 Presidential Election and the Johnson administration
Lyndon B. Johnson started off as a unique president, the first one to have a vice president who is of a different party at the start of his presidency. His cabinet was full of Democrats and Liberals, and as such there was some sort of coalition government between the Democratic Party and Liberal Party. Despite this, southern Democratic senators and representatives (Who later formed the Congressional Southern Caucus, which acted as a separate party in all but name) allied with conservative Republicans to defeat Liberal legislation, though by this point the number of conservative Republicans and southern conservative Democrats have decreased. Not only that, but more left-wing Liberals who supported Morse’s run were pretty unwilling to work with Johnson. Johnson knew that the uneasy coalition of Liberals and Democrats could not stand as people from both parties did not agree to it, and as such the leaders of the Liberals and Democrats formed the Liberal Democratic Party. The Congressional Southern Caucus either became independent or “Continuity Democratic”, Strom Thurmond, the junior senator from South Carolina formed the “States Rights’ Party of South Carolina”, which dominated South Carolina politics before his defeat in 1966.

Johnson’s presidency started off on a bad start. In Arkansas the enrollment of nine African-American students in a school in Little Rock, Arkansas following attempts by the school district to desegregate the schools led to Arkansas governor Amis Guthridge to order the Arkansas National Guard to prevent them from entering the school. The standoff inflamed racial tensions in Arkansas to the point where some segregationists managed to get close enough to two students and lynched them. This led to race riots all across the United States, leading to around 1,029 people dying in total. The lynching also led to an increase of support for the Civil Rights movement. Lyndon Johnson was forced to crackdown on white supremacist organizations, and the KKK and White Citizens Council began to lose a lot of supporters.

The Liberal-Democratic merger shook American politics. The merger was supposed to create a more left-leaning alternative to the Republicans. However, some leftists were not happy with the merger. A week after the merger Wayne Morse announced the formation of the Social Democratic party. The 1958 midterms showed the Liberal Democrats holding on to most of their seats, though the Social Democrats made gains in the House, solidifying themselves as a force to be reckoned with.

The 1960 Presidential election was the first test of what the new party system would look. The Continuity Democrats would obviously win the Deep South, though the Republicans have been aiming to appeal to Southerners who feel betrayed by one of their own, Johnson, allying with northern Liberals. The Republicans nominated Nixon’s vice president, Joseph Ball, who while senator was a major opponent of labor unions. The continuity Democrats nominated Mississippi governor Carroll Gartin, while the Social Democrats nominated Virginia Foster Durr. The Continuity Democrats were polling well in the south, and the Social Democrats was tarred as “communists”. The main fight, however, was between Johnson and Ball. The debates had the telegenic Ball look more prepared than Lyndon Johnson, despite the fact that Ball was three years older than Johnson. Johnson was slipping in the polls, and had to do a risky, yet ultimately necessary move in order for him to him. Two days after the first debate Johnson announced his support for the civil rights movement, and called for a Civil Rights act and Voting Rights Act, which led to an increase of support for the Liberal Democrats in the northern areas yet the GOP and CDs taking ground in the South. Ball privately supported the movement yet did not say anything lest all the GOP progress in the South be lost.

It turned out that the declaration of support for the Civil Rights movement barely helped Johnson eke out a victory.

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Lyndon B. Johnson/Henry M. Jackson (Liberal Democratic)-279 Electoral votes; 27,774,698 popular votes (41.00%)
Joseph Ball/Hugh Scott (Republican)-209 Electoral votes; 28,042,446 popular votes (41.44%)
Carroll Gartin/Edward J. Robeson Jr. (Continuity Democratic)-49 Electoral votes; 6,306,843 popular votes (9.32%)
Virginia Foster Durr/A. Philip Randolph (Social Democratic)-0 Electoral votes; 4,980,512 popular votes (7.36%)

While the popular vote was lost (which led to a small effort to abolish the electoral college, though it did not succeed) Johnson got his second term. Johnson’s second term had a civil rights act and a voting rights act passed, which caused a lot of racial resentment and led to race riots not just in the south but also in the midwest and the west coast. Many threats were made against Johnson’s life by white supremacists. The extremists got what they wanted on June 30th, 1962 when Air Force One crashed on route to Havana. While even the most racist of congressmen expressed their sympathies, when it came to people such as KKK Grand Wizard J. B. Stoner and Methodist minister Wesley Swift, Johnson’s death was an “act of God”. Johnson’s successor, Henry M. Jackson, used the extremists’ celebrations of the events to crack down on them even further, with measures such as labelling the KKK a domestic terrorist group, banning it, and arresting their leaders. Such heavy handed approaches led to many extremists carrying out acts of violence, the most notable of which being the bombing of a federal government building in California on January 27th, 1964, killing 27 and injuring 49. To give you a hint of how the government responded, the KKK was referred to in past tense following 1965.
 
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