Let’s say Nixon wins 1960 and is able to get a civil rights bill through Congress with the support of most Republicans and the new deal democrats. How would this affect American politics over the coming years, namely with African-American voters? It’s known that black voters had turned Democratic in the north because of FDR, but southern blacks had been disenfranchised their entire lives and existence. Would it be likely that southern blacks back the GOP and southern whites continue to support (socially conservative) Democrats?
Effects of a Civil Rights Act under a Republican administration
- Thread starter Tresckow
- Start date
The consequences could well be enormous(with a capital “E”!) By becoming a champion of Civil Rights(in-
stead of, as he did in 1968 IOTL, pursuing the “Southern Strategy”)Nixon could ensure that moderate-to-liberal elements remain in control of, or @ the least, quite important, in the Republican party(yes Virginia, a breed called “Liberal Republican” did actually once exist-& as recently as the 1960’s too!)This would not
only have butterflied away Goldwater’s 1964 candidacy- it might also prevented hordes of Southern Democrats from migrating to the Republicans. Their influx was a huge factor in transforming the G.O.P.
into what it is today. The one factor which might have canceled this out would be Nixon‘s Vietnam policy-
I think it is quite likely that he would, if POTUS in the early 60’s, have done what LBJ would eventually do
IOTL, & send in the troops(remember, for much of his career Nixon was a notorious hard-line anti- Com-
unist; to cite just one examp,e, he advised JFK, re Cuba & Fidel, to find an excuse- & invade). This would
have meant that the resulting anti-war movement, & divisions in the country, could well have targeted
Nixon, not LBJ, & the Republicans, not the Democrats. So maybe then, in this ATL, the Democrats win
in 1968?
Roosevelt, the more I think about it, the more I think you’ve come up with an excellent idea for a whole
TL! (hint someone, hint!)
stead of, as he did in 1968 IOTL, pursuing the “Southern Strategy”)Nixon could ensure that moderate-to-liberal elements remain in control of, or @ the least, quite important, in the Republican party(yes Virginia, a breed called “Liberal Republican” did actually once exist-& as recently as the 1960’s too!)This would not
only have butterflied away Goldwater’s 1964 candidacy- it might also prevented hordes of Southern Democrats from migrating to the Republicans. Their influx was a huge factor in transforming the G.O.P.
into what it is today. The one factor which might have canceled this out would be Nixon‘s Vietnam policy-
I think it is quite likely that he would, if POTUS in the early 60’s, have done what LBJ would eventually do
IOTL, & send in the troops(remember, for much of his career Nixon was a notorious hard-line anti- Com-
unist; to cite just one examp,e, he advised JFK, re Cuba & Fidel, to find an excuse- & invade). This would
have meant that the resulting anti-war movement, & divisions in the country, could well have targeted
Nixon, not LBJ, & the Republicans, not the Democrats. So maybe then, in this ATL, the Democrats win
in 1968?
Roosevelt, the more I think about it, the more I think you’ve come up with an excellent idea for a whole
TL! (hint someone, hint!)
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The Republicans have 35 Senate seats at the beginning of the 87th Congress and 6 of those were no votes IOTL.
Nixon was a skilled politician, but was he that skilled? I'm of the opinion that no one but Lyndon Johnson, buoyed by the Kennedy Assassination, could have overcome the racists' filibuster. Up until then, it had never been done before. But are there any Republicans with those kinds of legislative skills and that kind of cudgel?
Assuming there are, it would be interesting to see who goes after the racist vote. It's an awfully large constitutency and someone, somewhere, somewhen is going to want it.
Nixon was a skilled politician, but was he that skilled? I'm of the opinion that no one but Lyndon Johnson, buoyed by the Kennedy Assassination, could have overcome the racists' filibuster. Up until then, it had never been done before. But are there any Republicans with those kinds of legislative skills and that kind of cudgel?
Assuming there are, it would be interesting to see who goes after the racist vote. It's an awfully large constitutency and someone, somewhere, somewhen is going to want it.
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I have been making some wikiboxes about this, and have been considering this for some time
People seem to overlook that there was something of a link, however tenuous, between the failure of the Bay of Pigs and subsequent involvement in Viet Nam. Kennedy, as I recall imperfectly, saw the score as essentially even after the combination of the Bay of Pigs and the October missile crisis; thus, he saw an opportunity to flex his Cold Warrior muscles in Viet Nam, and took it. Johnson, it should be noted, capitalized on that with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and what followed. Alter the course of the Bay of Pigs and there's a pretty fair chance Viet Nam plays out differently.
IMHO one big problem that is going to hurt Southern blacks regardless of whether a Republican or Democratic president passes a civil rights bill is the roadwall of economic opportunity -- in which case they are good to find more sympathy for their cause from New Deal Democratic liberals, rather than the more conservative GOP.
We could end up with them as a swing demographic, but I think an issue with southern blacks is that local Democrats will be people like George Wallace and Storm Thurmond, and facing that might push them into the GOP column even if the liberal New Deal Dems are better for income equality.
I mean, yeah, but's that's OTL, African Americans regularly voted for Democratic Presidents despite the presence of Southern Dixiecrats, they did for FDR, for Truman, Stevenson, and Kennedy, the best the GOP did after 32 was with Eisenhower in 56, and even then Stevenson, a "moderate" on the racial issue pulled in 60% of the Black Vote.
But it was a Democratic president who pushed through civil rights legislation, and the GOP ran a polarizing candidate who voted against the 1964 bill. People remember a president better than they remember a congressman or Senator, and Nixon would be remembered as the president who signed a civil rights/voting rights bill into law. Either way, they won’t be 90% Democratic like they are OTL.
Also, just to add to my last post, southern blacks were still disenfranchised for all of these elections listed. Northern blacks, who resided in urban areas and were more Democratic than Republican, were able to vote. So this statement, while true, leaves out the fact that a big chunk of African-Americans were still forbidden from voting.
And yet, despite signing not one but two Civil Rights Bills and campaigning for his heir apparent Nixon failed to improve on Eisenhower's 1956 Margin, winning just 32% of the African American Vote. Any sort of Civil Rights Bill Nixon's signs will look far more like the ones passed in 57 and 60 than in 64, and if he's facing say, Hubert Humphrey in the general he's hardly going to improve on his margins.
Yes, which would likely still be true in this alternate 64, because good luck getting a substantial voting rights act passed through a staunchly democratic congress.
Deleted member 109224
1920: Harding wins Missouri, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Tennessee
1924: Coolidge wins Missouri, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Kentucky
1928: Hoover wins Missouri, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Arkansas, Florida, Oklahoma and Texas.
He also is within half a point of winning Alabama.
1952: Eisenhower wins Missouri, Virginia, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma.
1956: Eisenhower wins Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, and West Virginia.
The GOP had already proven to be competitive in the South before the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Odds are the GOP will continue to make some gains down south as urbanization-suburbanization and sunbelt migration come into play. The Southern GOP would be an amalgamation of suburban interests, black interests, and business interests.
Goldwater might end up nominee in 1968, but any Civil Rights Act Nixon puts through would probably be a bit more moderate, so I imagine Goldwater would have voted for the CRA TTL. But insofar as just how moderate the 1964 law would be, Goldwater was on board with most of it but disagreed with Title II (desegregation in places of public accommodation) on freedom of association grounds - the impression I get is that the public was ready for a significant Civil Rights Bill by the mid-to-late 1960s. A more moderate law could perhaps mean less backlash.
1924: Coolidge wins Missouri, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Kentucky
1928: Hoover wins Missouri, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Arkansas, Florida, Oklahoma and Texas.
He also is within half a point of winning Alabama.
1952: Eisenhower wins Missouri, Virginia, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma.
1956: Eisenhower wins Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, and West Virginia.
The GOP had already proven to be competitive in the South before the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Odds are the GOP will continue to make some gains down south as urbanization-suburbanization and sunbelt migration come into play. The Southern GOP would be an amalgamation of suburban interests, black interests, and business interests.
Goldwater might end up nominee in 1968, but any Civil Rights Act Nixon puts through would probably be a bit more moderate, so I imagine Goldwater would have voted for the CRA TTL. But insofar as just how moderate the 1964 law would be, Goldwater was on board with most of it but disagreed with Title II (desegregation in places of public accommodation) on freedom of association grounds - the impression I get is that the public was ready for a significant Civil Rights Bill by the mid-to-late 1960s. A more moderate law could perhaps mean less backlash.
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Black people don't vote for democrats out of gratitude for civil rights. They vote for democrats because of the southern strategy.
Those dogwhistles you're always hearing about? They're not for us. They're for ostensibly non-racist white suburbanites to not feel dirty when they vote for Republicans.
Then there wouldn’t be a southern strategy in this timeline if Nixon was successful in his first presidential bid. The states needed for Nixon to win the presidency are Hawaii, Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico, and New Jersey, all but Missouri are outside of the solid south.
Could it be possible that Nixon is able to get a Voting Rights Act passed in his first term, giving the GOP and pro-civil rights dems a boost in the south for the 1964 election down ballot that leads to a substantive civil rights act. The reason I say this is that conservative republicans like Goldwater weren't in favor of the anti-freedom of association parts of the OTL civil rights act, but they were in favor of civil rights in general (Goldwater was a founding member of the Arizona NAACP after all). Could a weird situation develop where northern African Americans end up voting 70-30 in favor of the dems and southern African Americans end up voting 70-30 in favor of the GOP?
To quote an old post of mine:
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If a civil rights bill is passed under a Nixon administration in 1964, most northern Democrats--and the Democratic presidential nominee of 1964--will support it. And African Americans will continue to vote Democratic. They had been doing so ever since the New Deal, based not on the notion that the Democrats were superior on civil rights but for economic reasons. (George Wallace or someone else will no doubt run a third party campaign in 1964 which will win most of the states that went for Thurmond in 1948, Goldwater in 1964 and Wallace in 1968.)
Note that Nixon took a stronger stand on the civil rights bill of 1957 than JFK but still overwhelmingly lost the Illinois First Congressional District--77.4%-22.0%--and New York's 16th Congressional District.--77.1%-22.2%--in 1960. https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...up-in-american-politics.454831/#post-17809925 (These were easily the most heavily African American districts in the country, one being the heart of Chicago's South Side "black belt", the other being most of Harlem.)
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To that I would add that even in 1956 when Stevenson's moderation on civil rights left a lot of African American voters displeased, and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. endosed Ike, the Demcorats won a majority of the Black vote: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...arty-platform-switching.498942/#post-21212745
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If a civil rights bill is passed under a Nixon administration in 1964, most northern Democrats--and the Democratic presidential nominee of 1964--will support it. And African Americans will continue to vote Democratic. They had been doing so ever since the New Deal, based not on the notion that the Democrats were superior on civil rights but for economic reasons. (George Wallace or someone else will no doubt run a third party campaign in 1964 which will win most of the states that went for Thurmond in 1948, Goldwater in 1964 and Wallace in 1968.)
Note that Nixon took a stronger stand on the civil rights bill of 1957 than JFK but still overwhelmingly lost the Illinois First Congressional District--77.4%-22.0%--and New York's 16th Congressional District.--77.1%-22.2%--in 1960. https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...up-in-american-politics.454831/#post-17809925 (These were easily the most heavily African American districts in the country, one being the heart of Chicago's South Side "black belt", the other being most of Harlem.)
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To that I would add that even in 1956 when Stevenson's moderation on civil rights left a lot of African American voters displeased, and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. endosed Ike, the Demcorats won a majority of the Black vote: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...arty-platform-switching.498942/#post-21212745
As it has already been said, I don't think you can have a significant number of Black voters move to the Republican Party without the Republican Party moving toward where New Dealer Democrats were on economic issues. The idea that you could cleave off a lot of Black voters without engaging in the interventionist economic policies that Black leaders had been advocating for since the end of the Civil War is a bit nonsensical.
Perhaps Nixon not only pushes for a Civil Rights Act, but a Republican version of Medicare? Remember that Nixon advocated healthcare reform IOTL. That could serve to realign black voters to the GOP in presidential elections (at least to some extent).