| zorg1000 said: You guys are getting it backwards. The Democratic Party didn’t abandon the rural/working class demographics, those demographics abandoned the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has never turned away from the programs created by the New Deal coalition in the 1930s-early 70s. This was a period of high taxes & regulations that saw massive investments in worker protections, healthcare, housing, manufacturing, small businesses, agriculture, education, infrastructure, research & development, environmental protections & safety net programs. Things that the Democratic Party still largely supports. What caused these demographics to realign? The 60s-70s was an era of counterculture movements fighting for the rights of minorities, women & LGBT people and it just so happens that a lot of rural/working class whites are racist, sexist & homophobic so the Republican Party began to use the Southern Strategy to cozy up to racists and later the Christian Right. |
More Republicans than Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and Goldwater lost overwhelmingly in 1964. If these things were as important beyond the Deep South as you say then surely none of that wouldn't have happened. I'm not saying Democrats needed to adopt George Wallace's ideas as the party's mainstream, and even he was open to a more gradualist compromise with either party in case 1968 was a deadlock.
None of that has anything to do with being obliterated in the high plains and the Rust Belt in recent years. Yes, that would require more concessions/moderation in social questions. But a mainstream party has to work with the electorate it has, not the one it wished it had.
Just a few months ago a Democratic representative was expelled in Nebraska for being pro-life (like... Jimmy Carter). It almost cost the Democrats the NE-2 electoral vote. Tell me how any of that is smart politics.
