Slate Magazine: Jamelle Bouie: 'John Fund's Distorted History of the Democratic Party'

Source:Slate Magazine- Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat, Texas) 36th President of the United States (1963-69)

Source:The New Democrat

"Writing at National Review, conservative journalist John Fund promises to “set the record straight on Jim Crow.” And what does he offer? A column’s worth of warmed-over partisan pablum that begins and ends with the idea that, as far as civil rights are concerned, Democrats are the real racists. Some choice passages:

Even as the nation celebrates the passage of the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, some liberals are using the occasion to bash Republicans as inheriting the legacy of Jim Crow—ignoring the fact that a higher percentage of Republicans in Congress voted for the Civil Rights Act than did Democrats. …

[T]he political enforcement of Jim Crow was entirely in Democratic hands. The Ku Klux Klan functioned as the paramilitary wing of the Democratic party, and it was used to drive Republicans out of the South after the Civil War. Before he took up the cause of civil rights as president, Lyndon Johnson acting as Senate majority leader blocked the GOP’s 1956 civil-rights bill, and gutted Eisenhower’s 1957 Civil Rights Act. Democratic senators filibustered the GOP’s 1960 Civil Rights Act. 

First, an observation: It would be nice if Fund had reckoned with National Review’s early defense of segregation, including William F. Buckley’s assertion that “the cultural superiority of White over Negro” is a “fact that obtrudes” and that “National Review believes that the South’s premises are correct. … It is more important for the community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.” But to borrow from Donald Rumsfeld, you engage with the pundits you have, not the ones you want.

In any case, none of this is inaccurate. As Geoffrey Kabaservice shows in Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party, Republicans were a driving force behind the civil rights bills of the Eisenhower and Kennedy eras, and supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act at a much higher rate than Democrats in either chamber of Congress. What’s more, Democrats were the political beneficiaries of Jim Crow governance, dominating federal elections on the strength of a Solid South. And Fund is right: The defenders of Jim Crow—from Woodrow Wilson to Theodore Bilbo—were Democratic politicians. 

The problem with Fund’s argument is that he takes these facts, divorces them from historical context, and spins them into an unconvincing indictment of the modern Democratic Party and a disingenuous exoneration of its conservative counterpart.

The simple fact is that, despite surface similarities, the Republican and Democratic parties of midcentury were vastly different beasts than their contemporary counterparts. Unlike the ideologically coherent parties of today (i.e., most Democrats are liberals and most Republicans are conservatives), the Republicans and Democrats of the immediate postwar period were heterodox coalitions of interest and historical circumstance. Liberal Northeastern Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton shared influence and power with “stalwarts” like Gerald Ford and Everett Dirksen and hard-right conservatives like Barry Goldwater and Joe McCarthy. And on the other end, New Deal liberals in the mid-Atlantic and industrial Midwest were yoked to a huge faction of Southern segregationists.

It’s not too reductionist to say that civil rights—and more broadly, the Civil War and Reconstruction—were responsible for the general outline of this alignment. Even as the parties expanded westward in the 19th century, Republicans remained the party of the Union (and thus black Americans) and Democrats maintained their allegiance to the South." 

From Slate Magazine 

"Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964, the landmark Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination and segregation regardless of race or color. It was originally introduced in congress by President John F. Kennedy before he was assassinated in 1963. 

Among those present at the signing were:

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy 

Sen. Everett Dirksen

Sen. Hubert Humphrey

F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover" 

Source:Major Kong- Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat, Texas) 36th President of the United States (1963-69_

From Major Kong

I mostly agree with what Jamelle Bouie here. I would just say that hyper-partisan Republicans today (regardless of what their political ideology actually is) like to blame people they call Liberals and the Democratic Party, for Jim Crow and say that's it's the Republican Party that ended Jim Crow and passed the civil rights laws. 

But the fact is, Far-Right Republicans would like to see those civil rights laws overturned today and go back to the way it is (so to speak) pre-1960s civil rights movement and the laws that were passed thanks to that movement. So are they Liberals today because they don't support the civil rights laws? Of course not. But they sort of suggest that they might think they are with their dishonest arguments about the civil rights laws. 

Today, the Democratic Party is primarily the center-left, progressive party in America, with a center-right New Democrat coalition in it (that I'm part of) and a left-wing that the Jamelle Bouie's of the world are part of, America's version of the Social Democrats or Euro Democrats. 

And the Republican Party is now home to people who were Dixiecrats in the 1960s, people like Strom Thurmond and many others in Congress back then, who were Democrats, until the passage of the civil rights laws. And the Republican Party has a center-right, classical conservative faction it as well today, people like Senator Jeff Flake, Senator Mike Lee, and other classical conservative Republicans in Congress today. 

But in the 1960s and go back 100 years earlier, the Republican Party was the party of progress. Or at the very least where you were more likely to find Progressives in it, even though it's always had a center-right, conservative faction in it. 

And the Democratic Party was the home of the Neo-Confederates, people who knew they lost the Civil War, but thought they would win the cultural war of the time by forcing African-Americans, as well as other racial and ethnic minorities, and women of all backgrounds, to live as second-class Americans under law.

CBS News: President Jimmy Carter- On Hostage Crisis: On Face The Nation (1980)

Source:CBS News- President James E. Carter (Democrat, Georgia) 39th President of the United States.

Source:The New Democrat 

I give President Jimmy Carter a lot of credit for all the time and effort that he put into seeing that the American hostages in Iran were brought home. Which includes the rescue attempt in the spring of 1980 even though that failed. But it should give you an idea how badly he wanted to see those hostages come home. But he was essentially in an impossible situation with the Iranian terrorists holding all of the cards. And with America looking and being somewhat weak militarily and economically at this point. It was going to be very difficult from the start for the Carter Administration to bring those hostages home in a timely matter.
Source:CBS News

CBS News: John Dickerson: President Jimmy Carter's 'Malaise Speech'

Source:CBS News- President James E. Carter (Democrat, Georgia) delivering his 1979 crisis of confidence speech, at The White House.

Source:The New Democrat 

"Over thirty years ago, Jimmy Carter gave his famous "malaise speech," in which the president said the country's economic woes were in part due to a "crisis of confidence." CBS News political analyst John Dickerson dug up this archives clip from 1979." 

From CBS News

I covered most of this yesterday, but John Dickerson's comment about President Carter's speech being "tone-death" was spot on. This speech sounded like a President who was out of ideas and that his administration was also out of ideas. That they tried everything they could think of to fix the economy and that nothing was getting through. But that they also wanted to get reelected and had to do something drastic which was to try to put the blame on the American people for the problems with the economy. And telling them they were spending too much money and blaming the bad economy on materialism.

James Miller Center: President Jimmy Carter's Crisis of Confidence Speech (July 15, 1979)

Source:The New Democrat 

Just to start out and to give you an idea of where I'm coming from. This is one of the most depressing speeches in American history. Especially coming from the President of the United States and coming from someone with the intellect of a Jimmy Carter. Not saying it was one of the worst speeches, or it was even a bad speech. Because he did make some good points about how the country was doing at this time in the summer of 1979 one of the worst summer's the country has ever gone through economically and perhaps in general.

But the problem with the country or even lack of confidence had nothing to do with the people itself. But the actual economy with the runaway inflation and interest rates, the energy crisis that made us look like a third world country in a country with all of the natural resources that we have. This crisis had nothing to do with materialism, or people being selfish, but what it was about the fact that a lot of Americans were unemployed, or seeing their business's fail and finding themselves on public assistance for the first time in their lives.

What President Carter was doing instead of focusing on the true economic challenges that the country was going through instead was trying to put the blame on the American people and suggesting that they were selfish and materialistic. Which obviously didn't play well which is what we see from the polling data after the speech where President Carter's poll numbers went down even further. So this speech was ineffective and if anything cost the President political power.

U.S. Senate Democrats: John Tester: 'Taking Care of Veterans is a Cost of Going to War'

Source:U.S. Senate Democrats- Senator Jon Tester (Democrat, Montana)

"Senator Tester expresses concern that House Republicans are dragging their feet on a veterans bill." 

From U.S. Senate Democrats

Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator John Tester with the lines of the veterans affairs debate. Senator Bernie Sanders, "that if you can afford to send your soldiers to war, you can afford to take care of them when they come back". And the one from Senator Tester "taking care of veterans is a cost of going to war". Something that House Republicans or at least the Tea Party Caucus has either forgotten or simply doesn't understand. That it apparently it was easy for them to run up the national credit card during the Iraq War. But guess what that bill has come due and its time to pay and they don't seem to want to pay the bills.

Constitution Daily: Lyle Denniston: The Constitution Outside the Courts: The U.S. Sentencing Commission

Source:The New Democrat

Making punishment fit the crime should be an obvious statement if it isn't, but if you look at our criminal justice system that of course is not always the case. We have thousands if not more people doing five years or more for simple drug possession and in a lot of times that is their first offense. Look at the War on Drugs where we have thousands of people doing long sentences again for drug possession, or selling small amounts of marijuana and other illegal narcotics. Doing long sentences for selling things that people want to buy, have and use.

And anyone still wondering why we have two-million or more people in prison in America? I sure as hell am not and by the way we have the largest prison population in the developed world. And we are supposed to be this beacon of freedom and great free society this liberal democracy that everyone else wants to be. It is hard to make the case that we are those great things when we have so many people in prison that do not represent major if any threats to society and are doing time in a lot of cases for what they did to themselves. Or providing services that others wanted from them.

I'm not a fan of illegal narcotics including marijuana even though I do support marijuana legalization. I'm not a fan of gambling or prostitution. But just because I don't like these activities doesn't mean I want to arrest people who choose to engage in them. There are much better more cost effective ways to dealing with activities that come with high risks including tobacco, junk food and soft drinks than arresting people and locking them up for engaging in those activities. It is called regulation to make sure non-adults aren't involved in them and making sure that adults who are involved in them know what they are getting into.

And I'm referring to gambling and prostitution mostly. But with lets dangerous products that people choose to use like alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, soft drinks and junk food instead of expanding the War on Drugs which is what some nanny statists on the progressive Left want to do. Again regulate them so people know exactly what they are consuming and tax them for it so Americans who choose to live healthy don't get stuck with the health care bills of people who choose not to live healthy.

But that is just one way to cut the prison population and create that free society and liberal democracy that a lot of Americans on the Left and Right do want. Another way would be to say "prison and jail are not always the answers and they aren't always the first answers either". When we are talking about low-level offenses and instead look at halfway houses, community housing, community service, probational release where offenders aren't free or in incarcerated, but living in a halfway house type environment as they are also working so they can pay their rent outside of the home. And getting treated for why they are there in the first place.

We put in policies like this and we'll have all of the jail and prison space needed for real hardcore criminals that need to be in prison. Violent offenders and organize criminals, but also white collar criminals who represent a serious threat to the economy and Americans economic wellbeing. Instead of having so many overcrowded prisons in America full of not only people that we have to have in prison, but with offenders who do not need to be there.

The Young Turks: Cenk Uygur: Dick Cheney The Living Embodiment of Dwight Eisenhower's Greatest Fear

Source:The New Democrat

Darth Vader Dick Cheney on the loose. So no I don't like Dick Cheney or have much respect for our former Vice President. But Cenk Uygur in this video is the perfect example of why I don't use The Young Turks as a credible news source other than to hear what the far-left and the rabid partisan left-wingers in the country are thinking. Dick Cheney didn't say we should pay for our defense and national security at the expense of everything else in that interview. He said that "national defense should be our number one national priority. Not Food Stamps or infrastructure". Which is a huge difference.

Now here is where I agree with Cenk. Dick Cheney is "the living embodiment of what President Dwight Eisenhower's feared" in his Military Industrial Complex speech. That some people especially in the military and people who have worked with the military as Dick Cheney did first as Secretary of Defense and then later as Vice President of the United States. Someone who would put no limits on what we should spend when it comes to national defense. "That there is no such thing as waste in the defense budget. And there aren't many if any limits to what our military can do in the world."