Nixon may have despised the open racism of Wallace. But Nixon's whole "Southern strategy" was to appeal to these same thoughts and feelings using code phrases such as "law and order."
Sure. But that doesn't mean he wants Wallace as president.Nixon may have despised the open racism of Wallace. But Nixon's whole "Southern strategy" was to appeal to these same thoughts and feelings using code phrases such as "law and order."
Nixon may have despised the open racism of Wallace. But Nixon's whole "Southern strategy" was to appeal to these same thoughts and feelings using code phrases such as "law and order."
This process was assisted by the general shift of the Democratic party to the left.
(Don't tell me that never happened. The incumbent Democrat President launched his political career in the living room of his close friend, an unrepentant '60s bombthrower; the current Secretary of State was an "anti-war" radical; the current "moderate" contender for the Democrat nomination was an ally of the Black Panthers.)
Do NOT drag current politics into a discussion about 48 years ago again.Nixon did nothing during his Presidency to roll back civil rights enforcement in the South. Nothing.
The "Southern strategy" was to emphasize the broad differences between the national Democratic party and Southerners. These differences included the race issue, and that was the wedge that separated the "Solid South" from the Democratic Party, but Nixon did not need to talk about it explicitly or even pander substantively.
The Southern/Democrat link in the Jim Crow era was unnatural in many ways. The South was conservative, rural, anti-Catholic, practically devoid of immigrants, anti-union... Yet Southerners voted in lockstep for the liberal party, the party of urban Catholics, immigrants, Jews, intellectuals, and labor unions. In return, northern Democrats protected the Jim Crow regime from any Federal intervention. (Not that Republicans ever seriously pushed the issue.)
When "northern" (i.e. non-Southern) Democrats took up the civil-rights banner in 1948, they broke that link. All that Republicans needed to do was hold out a bucket, and most of the South fell into it. That is, avoid offending Southerners by rubbing their noses in civil-rights issues, or sneering at "rednecks" and "hillbillies", and emphasize the other things that Southerners disagreed with northern Democrats about.
For instance, in 1972, the Nixon campaign labelled Democrat George McGovern as the candidate of "acid, amnesty, and abortion". Over the next generation, the old yellow-dog Democrat voters died off, the old Democrat officeholders retired, and the South switched over. This process was assisted by the general shift of the Democratic party to the left. (Don't tell me that never happened. The incumbent Democrat President launched his political career in the living room of his close friend, an unrepentant '60s bombthrower; the current Secretary of State was an "anti-war" radical; the current "moderate" contender for the Democrat nomination was an ally of the Black Panthers.)
I won't deny that there was some pandering to Southern racism, notably the way Goldwater used his vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. (I truly believe that his vote was mainly a matter of libertarian principle, but Goldwater tacitly let it look like sympathy for Southern racism.)
While the Democrats moved to the left socially, they moved to the right economically.
You could look it up.I know nothing about Obama...
Kerry was part of the radical end of the anti-war movement; his claim to fame was as an organizer of the "Winter Soldier" movement, which presented testimony about alleged American atrocities.but as for Kerry, being anti-war was hardly a radical opinion in the Vietnam War era.
Hillary Clinton was a Goldwater supporter in '64; Goldwater wanted to nuke Vietnam and pandered to Southern racism during his '64 campaign. If anything, Hillary Clinton was a right-wing radical as a young person, not a left-wing one.
This is not about current-day politics. It is about what happened to the Democrats after 1970. Obama, Clinton, and Kerry are just examples.
If so, you should have better examples of this at work. You know, maybe some politicians that people actually cared about in the 1970's. Obscure state-level figures like what Clinton or Kerry started out as don't matter to this narrative and you know it.