An article about the history of the 2 US political parties in and surrounding the south and broadly racism, and why the party switch is much more complicated and gradual than southern racism:
An article about the history of the 2 US political parties in and surrounding the south and broadly racism, and why the party switch is much more complicated and gradual than southern racism:
November 8, 1994 was the day the New Deal coalition died. That night, Republicans swept over fifty seats in the House and found themselves in unprecedented territory. After sixty years of Democratic dominance, they were in the majority. Republicans pushed deep into traditionally Democratic strongholds in the South, taking more than half the seats in the region for the first time since 1872. White Southerners had broken off from the Democratic party.
The story of how the post-Depression political order collapsed and Democrats lost control of the Solid South is a story that’s been told in many a think piece. These explainers always go something like this:
During the Civil War, Northern Republicans abolished slavery, and slaveowning Southerners reacted by joining the then white supremacist Democratic party. Following the Great Depression, Democrats added urban Northern progressives to their coalition with a new left-wing economic platform. This New Deal coalition dominated the House until Northern Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act, leading to a Democratic collapse in the South. Republicans like Nixon adopted a new strategy of appealing to white grievances to win over Southerners, and the South has been Republican ever since.
This story is partly true. Desegregation really did drive white Southerners away from Democratic nominees for President in the era from roughly 1948 to 1972, especially in the Deep South. Comparing presidential elections just before and after the Civil Rights Act passed makes this abundantly clear. So why did Democrats lose the House in 1994, not 1964?
The truth is that Congressional Democrats held because of their divisions, not in spite of them. A united party is a weakness, not a strength.
An article about the history of the 2 US political parties in and surrounding the south and broadly racism, and why the party switch is much more complicated and gradual than southern racism: