PoD here is the 1956 US Senate election in Colorado going the other way, resulting in a 48-48 split in the Senate, and VP Nixon breaking tied votes.
I really do think that had LBJ not been majority leader and Eastman not held the Chairman's chair on the Judiciary Committee, that the Senate would have likely passed a bill much more like the one first submitted by AG Brownell. Putting aside the fate of the filibuster itself at the start of the congress, the countless delaying tactics that were employed in Committee OTL prior to the Easter Recess, combined with Johnson actually allowing a greater slowdown of legislation in general -- which, combined especially, meant that it would be virtually impossible to seek cloture on the CRA without dropping other essential legislative priorities altogether, making said cloture that much harder to accomplish -- all this would have been butterflied if it had been Knowland, Nixon, and Langer dictating procedure and scheduling.
Yes, the 20 Southern Democrats (to the extent LBJ sticks with them) ate going to do everything they can to derail this; yes, Eisenhower OTL did little to exert pressure on the Senate to act; and yes, having these advantages does not assure that the Brownell bill gets passed in the Senate unaltered.
But all that still leaves me with the same conclusion -- that a much stronger Civil Rights Bill, setting the accomplishments of the mid-sixties years ahead, was only one vote in the Senate away. Am I wrong? If so, what am I still missing?
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I realize this may seem like needless thread
multiplication, but since this I've been reading about this event recently (and the alternative was thread
necromancy) I had to revisit it (just so nobody thinks that I'd forgotten the points previously brought up). In fact:
'57 isn't as strong as '64. The major provision was judge instead of jury trials, which given the sympathies of most Southern judges was hardly an enormous improvement.
Wasn't there an entire section -- Section III, I believe -- in the original Brownell Bill that did much of what the 1964 CRA would be known for (allowing the Justice Dept to enforce integration in various public and private facilities)? In fact, IIRC, this section, like the voting rights section, allowed said cases to be heard by federal judges (without juries)?