Unironically yes. The war on public schools started when the Feds wouldn’t let southerners run their segregation academies. Conservatives have been trying to sabotage the system ever since
These folks can’t stand that they lost the civil rights battle, the Roe decision (till now), and less remembered the affirmation of the rights of the detained. Maybe there would be less partisanship if they just stuck to trying to lower taxes rather than wage an full assault of personal liberties.
Moderates just want oppressed groups to lay down and take it so their prized stability is not jeopardized
There was no meaningful change to the parties since the 1930s. FDR Democrats believed in social engineering, and Biden Democrats believe in social engineering. All that’s changed is that FDR Democrats wanted to discriminate against Black people, and Biden Democrats want to discriminate against white people.
What you might call social engineering, others might call rejecting social Darwinism. Now the elderly and disabled can live till old age instead of dying on the streets like they did pre-social security. Thanks FDR? The TVA was pretty sweet too.
The core of the Democratic Party (the oldest in the world) has been distrust of big business and advocating for the common man (literally white men for most of it but that can change). It’s essential they go back to these roots and start attacking things like Citizens United with the same verve Republicans go after their goals
Keywords: identity, marginalized, disproportionately, underserved.
But if this is real, this thinking falls into the trap of thinking in final binary outcomes rather than viewing politics as a discourse. Are unions perfect? No. But the center of power has shifted so far in the opposite direction that there needs to be elements far on the other side to bring things back to a sane level
Edit: iPhone autocorrect was bad on this one
What I meant to say, to be more clear, is that Democrats need to pull back from the messaging about how important it is to be LGBTQIAPP+ and Disproportionately Affected Marginalized Communities of Every Shade of Color Except Pink and get back to the roots of being against corporatism, rather than changing the corporate logo to a fist or rainbow for a month twice a year.
And hey look, if it makes you feel any better, I'm browner than pink and I'm on a lot of spectra. I'm not bitter or scared or hateful (OK well sometimes any combo of those), just shaking my head at it all.
HN seems to be incapable of differentiating between national political parties and wide, more genal political ideologies.
There was no realignment. Who owned the slaves? Who was responsible for Jim Crow and the KKK? Which party set up the Great Society which destroyed the black family? Which party controls the teacher's unions and the public schools?
The Democratic party. 100%. Those are just facts.
We can't fix this until we quit the partisanship. We need to fix the public school system. You'll remember the teacher's union official, who, when asked when he was going to start thinking about the kids, replied, "When they are old enough to vote."
EDIT: Please read at least the introduction to the "Dixiecrat" splinter party page for history[0]. (Wikipedia isn't known for having a conservative slant on things.)
Your history conveniently stops at around 1970 and leaves our figures like Jerry Falwell and Nixon’s southern strategy. The partisanship is not being driven by rhetoric - it’s being driven by tens of millions of people being left behind by neoliberalism with zero attempt at mitigating the harm done. If people felt like the current system worked for them then they wouldn’t adopt extreme views.
But sure let’s keep on liberalizing and consolidating economic and political power. It’s worked out great the last 4 decades.
Edit because you edited: wanted to drive home point I can barely stand the democrats. In a sane country they would be the center right party
You know, if that yellow team popped up, I'd likely be right in line behind you.
Both the Democratic party and the Republicans drifted to the left over the last fifty years. And then the Democrats reached around and embraced the elite that a century ago was on the right.
Now, the Fortune 500 C-suite and virtually all the richest counties in the US uniformly vote for the Democratic party. And that party is a strange conglomerate of the lower class, for which they trade votes for handouts (while destroying their culture) and the elite (comprising the tech corporations, the Beltway, the Hedgies, the media and academia), which trades political favors for donations.
I think I'm with you on neo-liberalism and the excessive consolidation of economic and political power. The Democratic and Republican parties, the tech corporations, the media, and academia form the block benefiting from this consolidation. What to do?
Tearing it all down isn't a good idea - history shows that. The kind of people who tear things down are the last people you want in charge of the new order.
But, if we could flex the system over the next fifty years, what should we do?
I’m not too optimistic for team yellow though. We need good-faith experts to lead us through these times (and social trust) but the last few years have been as disastrous if not not more for wonks as the financial crisis. Between Fauci and J Powell it’s not looking too good
If you come up with something, ping me in a thread.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfranchisement_after_the_Rec...
It's a mystery to me why the blacks switched to voting Democratic. I can only think that the history they learned in school was falsified, and then they were convinced that the Democratic party was responsible for giving them their civil rights.
Have you considered asking them?
> they were convinced that the Democratic party was responsible for giving them their civil rights.
Democrat Harry Truman abolished segregation in the federal government and military. Democrat Kennedy proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Democrat Johnson signed it. The Congressional vote broke down by region: >90% of northern state representatives voted for, >90% of southern state representatives against. This was a big factor in the realignment, where southern Democrats switched to the Republican party. Strom Thurmond for example did so in 1964, and the 1964 presidential election flipped many southern states from Democrat to Republican. (In 1968, many of them went to George Wallace, another former Democrat who left and went independent.)
It's true that the Democratic party has a history of racism, and it's also true that Republican Lincoln freed the slaves, but things change over time, and political parties change over time. Today's Republicans are not the party of Lincoln, and today's Democrats are not the Dixiecrats.
The national parties didn't meaningfully realign, that's probably true, but the racists did.