Ok, so some things in the golden era were not too cool...

[jamespowers]

I hadn't thought about your Governor Brown in a long time. Did he and Linda Ronstadt split, or are they still a thing?

AF

They have been over a long time. She was a drug addict. Then again so was he.

 

[Atticus Finch]

They have been over a long time. She was a drug addict. Then again so was he.

I can understand his willingness to help her conquer her addiction.

AF

 

[jamespowers]

I can understand his willingness to help her conquer her addiction.

AF

Yeah well that was then: This is now:

 

[Atticus Finch]

I know. I know. But I ain't exactly what I used to be, either!

AF

 

[jamespowers]

I know. I know. But I ain't exactly what I used to be, either!

AF

But add to that being a drug addict hippie and you have something else entirely.

 

[vitanola]

That right there is one of the most astounding voting block shifts ever. Practically overnight, an entire ethnic population switched party allegiance. I doubt we'll ever see something as amazing again.

Does anyone know when that happened and the circumstances? I have a hazy recollection it was between 1890 and 1900, the occasion coinciding with the Democrats dropping their call for 'hard' money & small government in favor of an expanded caretaker state.

"Overnight"? I suppose, if thirty years is your idea of "Overnight". There was a definite shift towards Roosevelt, and a lesser shift towards Democratic self-identification which was discernible in the 1936 Roosevelt landslide, but the real Democratic shift began in earnest after President Truman issued his order desegregating the Armed Forces. The passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts under the leadership of President Johnson, and the virulent opposition to these acts by Barry Goldwater precipitated the final shift away from the Party of Lincoln.

In the "Ninties and 'Oughts, by the way, partisan alignment was little like that of the past thirty years. The Republicans had both their "Standpatters" and their "Progressives", as did the Democrats.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Overnight"? I suppose, if thirty years is your idea of "Overnight". There was a definite shift towards Roosevelt, and a lesser shift towards Democratic self-identification which was discernible in the 1936 Roosevelt landslide, but the real Democratic shift began in earnest after President Truman issued his order desegregating the Armed Forces. The passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts under the leadership of President Johnson, and the virulent opposition to these acts by Barry Goldwater precipitated the final shift away from the Party of Lincoln.

In the "Ninties and 'Oughts, by the way, partisan alignment was little like that of the past thirty years. The Republicans had both their "Standpatters" and their "Progressives", as did the Democrats.

Twenty-three percent of the black vote went to Roosevelt in 1932 and 71 percent of that vote went to him in 1936 -- but the number of black voters registered as Republicans versus those registered as Democrats changed little until the Truman era, as you say. One major factor in this was the declaration by the Supreme Court in 1944 that the "white primary" system used in the South to disenfranchise black voters was unconstitutional, which led to tens of thousands of additional black voters participating in the franchise for the first time.

One response to this, and to the growing pressure of the civil rights movement, was the separation of the segregationist "Dixiecrat" wing of the party during the 1948 campaign under the leadership of Strom Thurmond. These elements eventually drifted into the Republican party in the 1960s, pushing many historically-Republican blacks in the opposite direction.

 

[Atticus Finch]

"Overnight"? I suppose, if thirty years is your idea of "Overnight". There was a definite shift towards Roosevelt, and a lesser shift towards Democratic self-identification which was discernible in the 1936 Roosevelt landslide, but the real Democratic shift began in earnest after President Truman issued his order desegregating the Armed Forces. The passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts under the leadership of President Johnson, and the virulent opposition to these acts by Barry Goldwater precipitated the final shift away from the Party of Lincoln.

In the "Ninties and 'Oughts, by the way, partisan alignment was little like that of the past thirty years. The Republicans had both their "Standpatters" and their "Progressives", as did the Democrats.

And, at the same time, there was a corresponding shift away from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party among white Southerners. To people here, that shift was just as amazing. White men who had grown up hearing their grandfathers tell of carpetbaggers and reconstruction found themselves embracing Abraham Lincoln's party. To many older people here, that was almost the same as pledging oneself a servant of Satan.

I remember my father once asking a local elderly Democratic stalwart why he had always been such a "Yellow Dog" Democrat. The old fellow responded that, "After the war, my granddaddy went to vote. There, at the courthouse steps was a pair of blue-belly Yankees with brass banded muskets. They were guarding the courthouse door and they wouldn't let nobody but Republicans and their henchmen vote. Everybody in my family has been a Democrat since." Now, four decades later, several of that man's descendants are active young Republicans. They tell me that the Democrat Party left them...they didn't leave the Democrats. And I'm sure in their minds, that is exactly what happened.

AF

 

[LizzieMaine]

Funny thing, the exact opposite thing happened here. Maine and "Rock Ribbed Republican" always went side by side -- we were one of the two states to go to Landon in 1936 -- but we went Blue in the early '90s and haven't looked back. And you hear the exact same phrase used to explain it -- "We didn't leave them, they left us."

 

[vitanola]

They tell me that the Democrat Party left them...
AF

Um, it is "The Democratic Party", NOT "The Democrat Party". In the early 1990's Frank Luntz initiated suggested a Republican effort to re-brand the Democratic party as "Democrat", because the new name sounded uglier.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/07/060807ta_talk_hertzberg

"There’s no great mystery about the motives behind this deliberate misnaming. “Democrat Party” is a slur, or intended to be—a handy way to express contempt. Aesthetic judgments are subjective, of course, but “Democrat Party” is jarring verging on ugly. It fairly screams “rat.” At a slightly higher level of sophistication, it’s an attempt to deny the enemy the positive connotations of its chosen appellation.

During the Cold War, many people bridled at obvious misnomers like “German Democratic Republic,” and perhaps there are some members of the Republican Party (which, come to think of it, has been drifting toward monarchism of late) who genuinely regard the Democratic Party as undemocratic. Perhaps there are some who hope to induce it to go out of existence by refusing to call it by its name, à la terming Israel “the Zionist entity.” And no doubt there are plenty of others who say “Democrat Party” just to needle the other side while signalling solidarity with their own—the partisan equivalent of flashing a gang sign."

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Hmm..you must be a very serious democrat. lol

 

[vitanola]

Hmm..you must be a very serious democrat. lol

No, I am probably the last living "Bull Moose", but I care little for mendacity. Others appear to embrace it.

As this is a forum with a "Golden Era" theme, why do some insist upon using modern politically charged terms?

I merely follow usage as long codified in the American Heritage Dictonary, Merriam-Webster, the NOAD and Funk and Wagnall's. There are entries for "Democratic Party" in those useful guides, but no entry for any "Democrat Party". "Democrat party" was a conscious construct, designed to have negative connotations, carefully devised and tested with focus groups, at least according to the term's modern popularizer, Mr. Luntz.

A quick search notes that the monicker was unknown before 1991, save as an epithet uttered as part of a political polemic.
As early as the run-up to the 1940 election the term was used, generally by extreme anti-Democratic speakers, but all style guides of the time referred to the term as an epithet unworthy of use in a serious forum, or by a serious speaker. Some of the more "red hot" Liberty Leaguers made reference to the "Democrat Party". Wendell Wilkie, on the other hand, addressed the "Democratic Party".

 

[Atticus Finch]

Um, it is "The Democratic Party", NOT "The Democrat Party".

That's what's great about this forum. I learn something every time I log on. Here I've been a registered Democrat since November of 1973, and I never knew anything about a Republican effort to re-brand my party. But then again, I never thought to look up the term in the dictionary and I seldom read the New Yorker. In self defense, though, I did use both terms interchangeably in my post above.

AF

 

[LizzieMaine]

Getting back to the question of why and when black voters made their final shift across the party lines, one of the most illuminating accounts of this process can be found in the autobiography of baseball/civil rights legend Jackie Robinson. Robinson had been a staunch Republican up until the early sixties -- he campaigned for Nixon in 1960, declaring that at least Nixon seemed to have some idea of what needed to be done on the civil rights front while he wasn't at all impressed with Kennedy's personal views on that issue at all. (He claimed that Kennedy had told him candidly "Being from Massachusetts I have not known many Negroes." Robinson retorted "It should be your *business* to know Negroes," and the meeting went downhill from there.)

In any event, Robinson became a staunch supporter of Nelson Rockefeller, both on a political and personal basis, and went to the 1964 Republican Convention as a Rockefeller delegate. He was horrified by what he saw happening on the convention floor:

I will never forget the fantastic scene of Governor Rockefeller’s ordeal as he endured what must have been three minutes of hysterical abuse and booing which interrupted his fighting statement which the convention managers had managed to delay until the wee hours of the morning. Since the telecast was coming from the West Coast, that meant that many people in other sections of the country, because of the time differential, would be in their beds. I don’t think he has ever stood taller than that night when he refused to be silenced until he had had his say.

It was a terrible hour for the relatively few black delegates who were present. Distinguished in their communities, identified with the cause of Republicanism, an extremely unpopular cause among blacks, they had been served notice that the party they had fought for considered them just another bunch of “n*****s”. They had no real standing in the convention, no clout. They were unimportant and ignored. One bigot from one of the Deep South states actually threw acid on a black delegate’s suit jacket and burned it. Another one, from the Alabama delegation where I was standing at the time of the Rockefeller speech, turned on me menacingly while I was shouting “C’mon Rocky” as the governor stood his ground. He started up in his seat as if to come after me. His wife grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

“Turn him loose, lady, turn him loose,” I shouted.

I was ready for him. I wanted him badly, but luckily for him he obeyed his wife.

-- Jackie Robinson, "I Never Had It Made", Chapter 15: Being Black Among The Republicans.

It's a pretty chilling account of the political environment in 1964 -- you can read the full chapter here -- and helps explain a lot of what's happened since -- the embrace of the former Dixiecrats/Wallaceites by the Nixon campaign as part of the "southern strategy" in 1968 horrified Robinson and his fellow black Republicans even more, and certainly it did nothing to endear the party to the rank and file of black voters. Those events are still living memory to a lot of people.

 

[Story]

The recently announced demand for lands from Turkey by the Prosecutor General of Armenia attracted much attention from Armenians worldwide and harsh criticism from the Turkish government. While this was the first time that an Armenian official had raised this issue since the country’s independence in 1991, the demand itself is not new. Armenians have been seeking the return of their historic territories from Turkey for decades.

A confidential 1943 document, declassified by the Central Intelligence Agency, reveals that the US government was well aware of the Armenian demands for recognition of the “atrocities” and return of Turkish occupied “provinces.”

http://www.armenianweekly.com/2013/...armenians-demand-return-of-lands-from-turkey/

 

[fashion frank]

That's what's great about this forum. I learn something every time I log on. Here I've been a registered Democrat since November of 1973, and I never knew anything about a Republican effort to re-brand my party. But then again, I never thought to look up the term in the dictionary and I seldom read the New Yorker. In self defense, though, I did use both terms interchangeably in my post above.

AF

Now a days it seems like the parties have switched their ideas everything the one party stood for in the 60's and 70's now the other party has those ideals.

All the Best ,Fashion Frank

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Republicrats and Demopublicans. What's in a name?

 

[vitanola]

It's a pretty chilling account of the political environment in 1964 -- you can read the full chapter here -- and helps explain a lot of what's happened since -- the embrace of the former Dixiecrats/Wallaceites by the Nixon campaign as part of the "southern strategy" in 1968 horrified Robinson and his fellow black Republicans even more, and certainly it did nothing to endear the party to the rank and file of black voters. Those events are still living memory to a lot of people.

Certainly much more interesting and nuanced that the story being promoted today, isn't it?

"I have a hazy recollection it was between 1890 and 1900, the occasion coinciding with the Democrats dropping their call for 'hard' money & small government in favor of an expanded caretaker state."

Hazy indeed.

 

[p51]

Interesting how we're now hearing that there are polls on the most previous President Bush and how the public has a more forgiving opinion of the man already. No matter what you think of his presidency either way, it's a fact that he had a lot of detractors. And that fact is slowly vanishing. That's what bigs me, as FDR had a not of people who hated him and now the history books will tell you everyone loved the man and everything he stood for, when most of us know that is hardly the reality of his time.

There were great swaths of the country where "The Sixties" never happened. We never had a single rock record in our house when I was growing up -- the closest thing to it was my mother's 78 of "Sh-Boom" -- we never knew anyone who used pot, LSD, or any of the rest of that crap...

I was born in '69 so my memory of the 'Nam era is very hazy. I grew up in Northern Florida, real 'redneck' country. I have since asked my parents and they said the two local universities had very little anti-war protesting and neither of them ever saw a hippie at all in that timeframe (and Mom said she would have known one when she saw one, if she ever had).
Now, I live south of Seattle, and growing up I'd always wondered whatever happened to the people who'd been hippies. Now, I know, I think a lot of them moved here. My oldest sister-in-law is married to the son of two (my brother in law is as straight laced as they get, though). They've spawned an entire new generation who just want to buck the system. Rebels without causes, I think.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Interesting how we're now hearing that there are polls on the most previous President Bush and how the public has a more forgiving opinion of the man already. No matter what you think of his presidency either way, it's a fact that he had a lot of detractors. And that fact is slowly vanishing. That's what bigs me, as FDR had a not of people who hated him and now the history books will tell you everyone loved the man and everything he stood for, when most of us know that is hardly the reality of his time.

There were two main groups of FDR opponents in the Era. There were dignified, principled critics, newspapermen like Walter Lippmann and Mark Sullivan and politicians like Wendell Willkie and Thomas E. Dewey, who though they opposed various aspects of his policy made it clear they respected the man himself. Even Sen. Robert A. Taft, who was pretty hard to the right on most issues and led the conservative/isolationist wing of the Republican Party thru the forties, fell, for the most part, into this category. Most of the people who followed this line of thought were upper-middle-class and above, usually found in cities along the East Coast and in the Midwest, and were the sort of people who read the New York Herald Tribune: they wouldn't be caught dead with a Hearst rag on their table.

And that was the other faction of the anti-FDR forces: the Hearst press, the McCormick press, writers like Westbrook Pegler and George Sokolsky and John T. Flynn, people who loathed Roosevelt as a man, not just as a president. Supreme Court Justice James Clark McReynolds was a member of this faction -- a man who routinely referred to FDR as "that crippled son of a bitch in the White House." The followers of this faction tended either to be what FDR condemned as "economic royalists," or the sort of conspiracy-minded white paranoids who were convinced that the New Deal was a communist plot to collectivize the land and that Eleanor was trying to recruit all those Alabama sharecroppers she was supposedly sleeping with into being pawns and cannon-fodder for the coming revolution. (This may sound like sarcasm, but read a few years' worth of Sokolsky or Pegler columns and you'll see that it isn't exaggerated at all.) The only Hearst writer who didn't follow this particular party line was Walter Winchell -- who worshipped FDR to his dying day, and was the only newspaperman in the country with enough power, or guts, to tell William Randolph Hearst to go to hell. These factions had their greatest strength in the West and parts of the midwest and South.

The followers of Father Coughlin post-1938 fell somewhat into this last group as well -- although they were more concerned with being anti-Semitic and anti-British than anything else. They opposed FDR because he had rejected Coughlin's wish to be a trusted presidential advisor and refused to endorse the Coughlin program -- but they hated "Jewish international bankers" and the British even more. They had their greatest strength in working-class Irish neighborhoods in Eastern and midwestern cities. Some of the straggling remnants of Huey Long's movement allied with Coughlin as well, as did the followers of the raving anti-Semite Gerald L. K. Smith.