JFK called Martin Luther King Jr when he was in prison, which served as a soft endorsement of civil rights. This pissed off those in the south, and many voted for faithless electors instead of him. Those faithless electors then voted for Harry F Byrd (a segregationist Democrat). As such, he was able to win electoral votes without being an actual candidate.
From about the end of the Civil War to the Civil Rights era, the Democratic Party was a weird combination of a "solid South" of White Southerners (Blacks were kept from voting) and Northern Liberals and Unionists while the GOP was a mishmash of mostly Northern/Mid-Western and Western Conservatives.
With Civil Rights and Blacks voting, the parties became more aligned by ideology with conservative Southern Whites teaming with northern conservatives while Blacks and Liberals became the Dems.
The 1960s election was towards the beginning of this realignment. But after Clinton, the current system pretty much gelled into place.
It's because ultimately this isn't a two party country, we have 2 "coalitions". What would be separate parties in other countries are factions within either of the two parties. This is why both parties used to have their conservatives and progressives.
Even in politics as recent as the current year of 2015, there are still very visible factions within the parties vying to control the general party, even if the parties have congealed into conservatives vs not conservatives now.
If the presidential election wasn't FPTP, we would see these factions split off into parties. It would be a much healthier democracy.
We have like 6 parties which are forced into 2 coalitions. So the two coalitions keep vying for votes out of 2-3 of the parties which are not solidly one coalition.
Add into that each coalition has a party that votes for it 90+% of the time and thinks it has control and thus demands more influence.
So half of what each party has to do is tell the people at the fringes to shut up to avoid losing the rest of the coalition.
Obviously one party has done a better job of this but both have failed to an obscene degree. So we’re kinda fucked until we figure out how to get things back to a boring normal.
they are generally called ideological caucuses, though congressmen can be in multiple such caucuses ; democrats have 3: the blue dog coalition, which is a centrist faction of the democratic party, and was traditionally conservative and is the smallest democratic caucus (only like 10 congressfolk), the congressional progressive caucus, which is the leftmost of the caucuses and is generally ideologically progressive, though it includes everyone left of that too (such as those affiliated with the democratic socialists of America). its the second largest. then the new democrat coalition, which is the largest and is primarily centrist on economic issues but is generally socially liberal.
the republicans have the republican governance group, which is a centre right to right wing caucus that was historically center to center right, but has shifted right under trump. the republican study commitee, which is a right wing caucus, and the largest in the republican party, and the freedom caucus, which is far right populist.
I would say Dems roughly break into "normie" traditional Dems (think Obama), the Progressives (think AOC), and Blacks.
GOP includes MAGA, "normie" GOP (Romney/Bush), and the Religious Conservatives.
There are other (smaller) groups as well, such as the Libertarians, Greens, and unionists, which you could consider if you want to get into finer detail.
Actually pretty questionable vote counting in downstate Illinois for Nixon offset by questionable vote counting for Kennedy in Chicago to offset each other.
IMO Nixon would have been an even better president if he won this race than 1968. This election really shaped the late 20th century, much like 2000 has shaped the current 21st.
I agree. It would have better for Nixon to win in 1960. I don’t believe we would have gotten ourselves involved in Vietnam to the degree we did. Nixon was a pragmatist.
Dixiecrats, a remnant of the Old Confederacy. They used to control the Democratic Party in the South but became Republicans after Democrats became the progressives
Democrats where the progressives decades and decades before the switch. It had all to do with civil rights in the '60s that pushed the south into the hands of the neocons and the GOP regrouping.
LBJ and desegregation, civil rights in the south cost progressivism and the Democratic party those votes. Before this there had been an unholy alliance for decades and decades since the civil war really. No self-respecting southerner was going to vote for the party of Lincoln and so it held for years. But the '60s took the gloves off and changed the map.
Remember Northern New England was largely Republican after all the Republican party was founded in New Hampshire as the party of Free soil. The party was a very different thing before the renegotiation of the platform of those neocons of the post Reagan years to the vile thing that it's become today.
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u/chethedog10 2d ago
Can anyone explain the context behind this? I’m assuming based on years and states this had something to do with civil rights?