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Comment by dc-programmer | Hacker News Reader

I said conservatives. I am adequately informed about the mid-20 century party re-alignment of the Dixiecrats. It’s not the semantic gotcha you think it is because politics is not a team sport to me.

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

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If it's not a team sport for you, you fooled me. I'm engaging with you because you are hyper-partisan.

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.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat

"The Dixiecrats' presidential candidate, Strom Thurmond, became a Republican in 1964"

The national parties didn't meaningfully realign, that's probably true, but the racists did.

Thank you for pointing this out. Also while re-align is probably an incorrect word, there definitely has been an essential transformation of both parties. The new deal coalition and Clinton’s third way have little in common.

It’s not. I don’t care about the blue team. If a yellow team popped up tomorrow that actually cared about the well-being of the public and not corporate interests I would vote for them instead.

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

(I made an edit on my previous)

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?

Yes I’d co-sign the core of what your saying here. It’s pretty alarming actually. And social issues are being used as a wedge/relief valve/distraction to avoid bringing too much attention to where things are materially going. I do believe that many economic issues are deeply related to some social issues and that’s where we might disagree.

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

In the course of this, I read [0]. The whole thing is shocking, really.

If you come up with something, ping me in a thread.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfranchisement_after_the_Rec...

I first read about the more disturbing (i.e. waved over in school) details of reconstruction a few years ago in Grant’s biography (really good btw as was Chernow’s Hamilton). One of the most shocking events was https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_1... and also the New Orleans massacre. The klan would violently put down attempts by black peoples to assert themselves politically and would kill the Republicans who helped them in the process.

Thank you. I found it on libbyapp.com. I loved Whitman's epigraph at the beginning!

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.

> It's a mystery to me why the blacks switched to voting Democratic.

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.

You keep talking about American political parties that OP never one mentioned.

I love how Democrats like to claim there was a “realignment” of the parties in the civil rights era, but then claim The mantle of FDR, who was President decades before the civil rights era. Also, Roe was decided by 7 Republicans, against the dissent of a Democrat, 40 years after FDR.

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.

Don’t think I said I am a democrat. I might vote that way sometimes as a harm reduction strategy though. I’ve seen what happens when Republicans get power (millions dead in Middle East, world historical wealth inequality, destruction of public institutions - don’t want to hear how moderate Dems aided in these, I know)

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

Advocating for the common man (as in human, I get it) is stymied by hyper focus on the uncommon. I don't mean ignore any minority, but the opposite tactic, the coalition of smaller, disparate identitarian groups convinced to coalesce in explicit opposition to perceived majority, well, it ain't the wisest choice imo.

Keywords: identity, marginalized, disproportionately, underserved.

Can’t tell if I’m missing a reference if I’ve been arguing with AI this entire time.

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

Haha nah not a bot, not even a properly paid fascist republitard shill, just a regular dummy who doesn't belong on HN because I'm too dumb to do tech so I end up commenting on general purpose threads where I can hopefully inject some humility and realism.

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.

The wording seemed a little generated to me at first that’s all. I’d largely agree that moving to the left economically is the only real choice. It’s the only way democrats can become competitive again in rural areas

> Don’t think I said I am a democrat

HN seems to be incapable of differentiating between national political parties and wide, more genal political ideologies.

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