social mobility for the upper middle class

Seriously.

In the Republicans’ defense, I suppose “rich get richer, poor get poorer” does count as social mobility.

Is that reality Paul Ryan grasped with both hands? I ... thought it was ... something else.

These are interesting times - this is the revaluation of all values - like the magnetic poles reversing. Nietzsche wrote about how, in degenerate societies, all values and morals fall away with one exception: Loyalty. When loyalty is the only value, certainly truth for it’s own sake has fallen out of fashion long ago.

So with loyalty as our sole remaining value, it’s ‘courageous’ to steal from taxpayers and hand the money to Wall Street - or in this case the insurance companies - so then they can write you big fat checks for your re-election campaign. My GOD, the COURAGE of Paul Ryan to dismantle the New Deal. Just WOW. That’s manly to steal from the poor to give to the rich.

Cowardice=Courage.

Waste=Thrift.

My FICA taxes = ‘Private’ gain for Big Insurance.

It’s easy to comprehend this logic. Up=Down. You just reverse the official and ostensible meaning to get at the real meaning.

Bo-Bo’s next book—CooFeus in Paradise: The New American Aristocrats And How They Got There

[CooFeus is Brooksie’s cutesy portmanteau for “Cool Feudalists”—these aren’t your stuffy old-fashioned manorial lords, y’see, but the kind who listen to indie rock and drink locally-sourced organic mead in their McKeeps]

Mr. Brooks was inspired to write the book in gratitude to a country where a mediocre writer can get a NYT column simply on the basis of his willingness to “toss the salad” of the ultra-wealthy.

Nah, they wouldn’t organize the fiefdoms geographically. Way too easy for the serfs to get together.

Never underestimate the hateful, self-undermining capacity of the American public…particularly among the older, whiter base of the Republican Party. Key to Ryan’s plan is that current boomers keep their Medicare and those who will get Medicare within the next ten years “I got mine, now screw you”...young people do not vote at the rate to protect self-interest and must rely on ethical older folk to stem the tide of hatefulness…

btw: brilliant post-great society scape; SO THIS!!!

“Is that reality Paul Ryan grasped with both hands? I ... thought it was ... something else.”

...and I thought there was supposed to be a flashlight involved too…

***

“Cowardice=Courage.
Waste=Thrift.
My FICA taxes = ‘Private’ gain for Big Insurance.”

I bet that could be turned into a few very powerful phrases that could represent the basic philosophy of AmCon, or the American Conservative Party (the only legal political party in America):

Cowardice is Courage
Waste is Thrift
Taxes Are Profit And Profit is Not Taxed
Privacy is Not Private
Continuous Warfare Brings Continuous Peace
Slaves Are Free and Free Men Are Slaves
Great Strength Comes From Great Ignorance

...works for me…

Never underestimate the hateful, self-undermining capacity of the American public…particularly among the older, whiter base of the Republican Party. Key to Ryan’s plan is that current boomers keep their Medicare and those who will get Medicare within the next ten years “I got mine, now screw you”

This is basically Brooksie’s brief: make the selfish subset of Boomers feel that they can retain their ‘60s cred through conspicuous consumption even after they’ve defected to the GOP and taken on the “I’ve got mine, Jack” attitude.

young people do not vote at the rate to protect self-interest and must rely on ethical older folk to stem the tide of hatefulness…

Most politically-aware Gen Xers have understood for at least a decade that this was coming down the pike, mainly because we understood that many of those older folk were reading Brooks and nodding along. Relying on Boomers to act on the progressivism of their youth has been a mug’s game since the 1980s.

”{black} is {white}”

I just requested a bunch of books by Orwell from the library: I’m sure they will depress me.

Graphic that neatly shows what Ryan’s so-called plan actually means in practice: http://stfuconservatives.tumblr.com/post/4392353287

Sometimes all I can say is, “fuck you, David Brooks.”

Here we go with the Boomer bashing again: really, how does it serve Democrats (or Democracy, for that matter) to smear with the same brush the Boomers who have voted Democratic (and Progressive) for the past 40 or more years?

Especially since it’s a myth that Boomers are all conservative assholes:

“the Democrats’ greatest advantages come among those in their 20s and baby boomers in their late 40s and 50s. Republicans, on the other hand, come closest to parity with Democrats among Generation Xers in their late 30s and early 40s and among seniors in their late 60s.”

http://www.gallup.com/poll/118285/democrats-best-among-generation-baby-boomers.aspx

So when will the Gen X bashing begin?

The Bush push to privatize Social Security was scotched by the seniors told it wouldn’t affect them. As someone who has fought any attack at either Social Security and Medicare—despite being told it wouldn’t affect me, personally—I’m looking forward to the same backlash.

“March 2011 poll by the Pew Research Center found 65% of Americans oppose cuts in Social Security or Medicare to bring down the deficit. Independents, the key voting block in national elections, opposed such cuts 61% to 35%. The GOP doesn’t get much help when the numbers are broken out by age: Pew found last fall that elderly Americans, who are more likely to vote than younger ones and are a key GOP voting block, oppose replacing Medicare with a voucher system, as proposed by Ryan, by 69% to 14%.”

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2011/04/05/why-mess-with-medicare/#ixzz1IlqXN2s6

If your irrational hatred of all boomer is based on our supposed priviledge, then that’s also a myth in this economy:

Boomers are nearly double the long-term unemployed than early 20 somethings.  And “That doesn’t count the underemployed, which afflicts even more people my age. They lost good paying jobs and are now toiling at part time work or contracting that pays substantially less than what they made before. Strangely, it turns out that nobody is eager to hire 50 year olds at the wages they spent 25 years working their way up to and they aren’t very excited about having a bunch of old duffers around the office or the factory when they can get young people to do it for much less and lower health care costs.”

And as Digby said, that can be a political time bomb for the Democrats, who ignore, or bash this usually reliable voting block:

“Here’s the political problem with this scenario. This is the baby boom and there is a huge number of them. You can ignore them and pretend that it doesn’t matter that this huge group is rapidly going through their meager retirement savings, but unless you are prepared to kill them, they’re going to be around for quite a while. And they are getting poorer rather than richer, what with the real estate and stock market crashes at the worst possible time in their lives—- they’re still putting kids through college and taking care of aging parents. It’s a real squeeze.

I know it’s fashionable for Democrats these days to write the baby boom off as a lost cause—- apparently, it’s assumed they’re all going to vote for Republicans forever because the oldsters [Greatest Generation] are all voting for them today. But it’s really not a good idea to let that happen—there are simply way too many of them and they will vote far more reliably than under 30s do. Older people are just more interested in politics—- especially when they are financially screwed and have no time to make the money back.”

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/squeezing-wrong-demo-theres-just-too.html

And as for Gen X fears that Medicare won’t be there for them, join the club, bub:

“Associated Press-GfK poll finds that baby boomers believe by a ratio of 2-to-1 they won’t be able to rely on the giant health insurance plan throughout their retirement.

The boomers took a running dive into adolescence and went on to redefine work and family, but getting old is making them nervous.

Now, forty-three percent say they don’t expect to be able to depend on Medicare forever, while only 20 percent think their Medicare is secure. The rest have mixed feelings.”

And again, it ain’t the boomers who support the Medicare-murdering voucher program:

“Overall, a narrow majority (51 percent) of Americans opposed the voucher plan. But those born after 1980 favored it by 47 percent to 41 percent, while seniors opposed it 4-to-1. A majority of boomers were also opposed, with 43 percent strongly objecting.

But are willing to make concessions to save the service:

The majority of boomers also favor raising their taxes to support Medicare, and “63 percent of boomers in the poll dismissed the idea of raising the eligibility age to keep Medicare afloat financially. But when the survey forced them to choose between raising the age or cutting benefits, 59 percent said raise the age and keep the benefits.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/29/national/main7195298.shtml

I see this plan as a cynical way to flatter the elderly who are going to be medicare elderly in less than ten years and who tend to vote. Ten years is two presidential election cycles and 5 House cycles.

This is what you’re going to hear from the under 55s if this passes:

“I want all the money I’ve paid into Social Security and Medicare which is taken out of my paycheck before I get it to be returned to me immediately.  Call me selfish, but I am only ok with this under the understanding that such money will be paid back to me upon my retirement and that people keep paying in and I get my benefits without reduction. This no longer exists.  Why the hell should I pay 15% so some greedy old cocksucker who thinks I don’t deserve civil liberties, good working conditions or a wage can fund their retirement and Viagra?  I can’t buy crappy insurance when I retire with that payout.  I need that 15% of my income now or very soon, not when I’m 65/70/102. Why should I trust any entity that will claim to save my money for me but will renege when I try to collect?”

And sadly, the Randites will vote to abolish that system completely. Ding dong the New Deal is dead.

40s is Silent Generation.  The Baby Boom started in 1937 and runs to roughly 1955; that’s the over-60s that vote reliably Republican.  Their movement from Dem to Republican in 1980 started the repeal of the social contract that they themselves sought to improve in the late 60s and early 70s.

And the Dems have permanently lost whites over 55 or so by nominating a black President.  They’ll never break 30% again with that generation.

I don’t worry at all.

I’ll just sit back and wait for the hipster Energy Policy, Economic Policy, and Education Policy to save us.

Judy, you seem to have missed some key qualifiers: “selfish subset ...defected to the GOP.” How that translates to “all Boomers” I’m not sure.

In short, this is not about you specifically.

This post is about Bo-Bo and Paul Ryan and those to whom they pander, to whom they’ve been pandering since the days of the “Reagan Democrats” (AKA Yuppie Boomers).

The latter aren’t Boomer progressives (from whom we hear very little anyhow in comparison to their conservative counterparts, even though they can throw some weight around). They also certainly aren’t the Xers or Millenials of any political stripe Ryan and Brooks are brazenly planning to screw over.

And as for Gen X fears that Medicare won’t be there for them, join the club, bub

Ah, but Ryan is trying to assuage that very fear for Boomers. Notice his proposed cut-off date. It doesn’t get more blunt than that, and the Dem establishment is just as likely to play the same pandering game in its own sneaky way.

But are willing to make concessions to save the service

For themselves, or for Xers and Millenials as well? That’s the question I’m asking.

I hear a lot of justified worry from Boomers about their retirement and their health care, but I don’t hear them worrying about what happens to those who come after them. The “ethical older folk” that Thealogian discusses would express some token concern for future generations.

By the way, this was priceless:

The boomers took a running dive into adolescence and went on to redefine work and family, but getting old is making them nervous.

No, I’m not laughing at the concept of Boomers getting old. We all get old. I’m laughing at the concept of a generation that thinks it’s so snowflake special that it thought that “running dive into adolescence” would last forever.

Shatki: I actually agree with the under 55s. Why should they pay into a retirement system that won’t exist for them when it was ripped from them largely by the people that won’t have their benefits reduced?

I see no reason for us to accept suffering of elderly in our generation for the benefit of the current users. If they’re going to abolish it, fucking do it and get it over with so we can see a massive public backlash.

Put some electricity back in that third rail and make them afraid to touch it again.

This is what you’re going to hear from the under 55s if this passes

You won’t hear it from me. Just as we need “ethical older folk,” we need ethical younger folk who aren’t going to pull the rug out from under the vulnerable. I’d like to think that most of my fellow Xers and Millenials share the view that saving Medicare in its current form is in our long-term interest as well.

But of course, we’re not talking about me but rather the broader generational cohorts, and there are certainly a lot of Xers and Millenials who’ll fall into the Randite trap you describe. Guess where a lot of them will have learned that message of generational selfishness and entitlement?

So when will the Gen X bashing begin?

Oh I bash the assholes of my generation all of the fucking time.  A good sized chunk of my generation was apparently raised to be a bunch of sociopathic assholes who think that the mantra “I got mine so FUCK YOU” is a moral imperative.

Of course you have to remember who raised the Gen Xer’s to be a bunch of selfish assholes.

...

Yeah.  That’s why the Boomers get so much grief.  You have your own group of selfish assholes that is much, much larger than any of you want to admit AND they raised a generation of assholes.

Those are some screwy years you’ve assigned to the Baby Boom, Punditus, just to make a (wrong) point.

1937 was still the Depression when the birth rate was suppressed by economics, then WWII sent all the younger men overseas.

The original baby boom is usually considered to begin when the majority of American men of fertility age returned to the U.S. after WWII and began building families en mass: hence the word “boom.”

“United States: The term “baby boom” most often refers to the dramatic post–World War II baby boom (1946–1964). There are an estimated 78.3 million Americans who were born during this demographic boom in births.[1] ... Years of duration vary, depending on the source (e.g., 1943–1960,[4] 1946–1964[5]).”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boom

However, nobody, but nobody, considers the original baby boom to the dates you’ve assigned to it, for no other reason, apparently, than to support your (incorrect) baby boom bashing.

“The Greatest Generation” is a term coined by journalist Tom Brokaw to describe the generation[1] who grew up in the United States during the deprivation of the Great Depression, and then went on to fight in World War II,”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greatest_Generation

Silent Generation is a label for the generation born from 1925–1945 notably during the Great Depression (1929–1939) and World War II (1939–1945)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_generation

They are your reliable Republican-voting boogie men and women—too bad that doesn’t fit your boomer-bashing myth.

And the Dems have permanently lost whites over 55 or so by nominating a black President.  They’ll never break 30% again with that generation.

Are progressives so married to the idea that those who vote aginst them are racist, that they are willing to give up elections over it?

Obama won 41% of whites 60 and over (kerry got 42) so why would dems fall below 30 for 55 and over? I assume the midterms were worse for dems, they almost always punish the ones in power,  but the repubs were playing new deal 3rd rail politics on the dems (death camps). This has always scared seniors, the major voting bloc of the new deal coalition. Ergo, bush’s freebe medicare pt D, to win them over.

Say what you may about Ryan, but he is the anti-Palin. He’s now touching that 3rd rail. All you have to do is scare seniors into believing the repubs want to dismanlte social security and bingo, you win.

I just did some reading up on Ryan’s plan. I read the CBO report, Ryan’s web site, and several blogosphere articles. I was surprised in particular to see Ezra Klein’s take on it. He says he disagrees with it, but hey, at least somebody’s trying.

I say bullshit to that. Ryan’s plan is same old, same old for the GOP. Massive spending cuts in order to transfer that money to the wealthy via tax cuts. They’ve been doing it since Reagan. Ryan’s plan is not some misguided attempt at a solution. It’s the same old attempt at sucking rich white dick.

NonyNony, to be fair it was the Silents who raised Xers. It was the Boomer Yuppies who set the “example,” though, during the 1980s and early ‘90s when they dominated the media and public discourse. A lot of them continued to set the example on a personal level in raising their kids—the Millenials.

And yeah, I’m happy to bash my generation of politically apathetic slackers and techno-utopians when the occasion arises. We’re no picnic. I must say I rather like the Millenials, but maybe that’s because I haven’t known them long enough.

So again, to be clear, it’s the Baby Boomers (the oldest of whom have just reached 65) who are, statistically, one of the two “Democrats’ greatest advantage”...“those in their 20s and baby boomers in their late 40s and 50s.”

Republicans, on the other hand, come closest to parity with Democrats among Generation Xers in their late 30s and early 40s and among seniors in their late 60s.”

http://www.gallup.com/poll/118285/democrats-best-among-generation-baby-boomers.aspx

But apparently, according to the bashers (for whom cognitive dissonance is a given), the Boomers are to blame for voting sins they don’t commit, and those that Gen Xers do.

Say what you may about Ryan, but he is the anti-Palin.

Nah, he’s just more clever and sneaky than her.

All you have to do is scare seniors into believing the repubs want to dismanlte social security and bingo, you win.

They’re not doing that, though. They’re saying they’ll do it 10 years from now. They’ll “compromise” on 15 years just to make sure no-one who counts (Boomers and older) won’t be scared, and to seem reasonable in that phony-baloney Brooks way.

Really, the question that Ryan has to be asked is “if your plan is so bloody great, why not do it now when the economy needs it most?” At that point he’ll be painted into a corner.

Oh, and if Ryan equivocates on that question, citing procedure and logistics, we can be just as “reasonable” and give him 5 years to bring an end to Medicare. At that point he’ll be touching that 3rd rail, with predictable and smoky results.

Silent Generation is a label for the generation born from 1925–1945 notably during the Great Depression (1929–1939) and World War II (1939–1945)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_generation

They are your reliable Republican-voting boogie men and women—too bad that doesn’t fit your boomer-bashing myth.

My parents were depression kids of the ‘silent generation.’ I’m 42. I must admit I have played the ‘blame boomers’ game before, but after discerning lots of the ages of commenters at, for example at Talking Points Memo, and “The Agonist” and other liberal sites, it’s clear that a solid majority of ‘liberal’ comments are coming from boomers. It was this way in the sixties too - there were plenty of ‘backlash’ types like Dick Cheney - they just got less attention. Actually, the ‘cliche’ of Gen X was the Micheal J. Fox ‘backlash’ figure who despised the counter-culture - remember that whole “Preppie” thing? It loomed large in my teen years.

It’s important to reach across the generations for solidarity; when we play the blame game, it play directly into the divide and conquer strategy that the nihilist, mercenary rethugs employ.

Medicare and Social Security are the modern institutions that continue the ancient social contract to “honor our father and mother.” Yet another concept that has been turned on its head by the ‘christianist’ rethugs.

Look the rich, old, white Republican voters are assholes, but I don’t think they’re sociopathic monsters down to a man (or comparatively rarer woman) A lot of them do have children and grandchildren who they think should get Medicare and SS too, even if they don’t want health insurance for the dark skinned rabble.

Middle class “entitlements” (in quotes because that word sucks but I can’t think of a better one) are still pretty tough to destroy.

But apparently, according to the bashers (for whom cognitive dissonance is a given), the Boomers are to blame for voting sins they don’t commit, and those that Gen Xers do.

Here’s a puzzle for you:

40-million Boomer voters total. 55% vote Dem, 45% vote GOP in an election (and 90% of all are willing to tell you about their political activism in the ‘60s)

20-million Gen-X voters total. 45% vote Dem, 55% vote GOP (or opt out entirely) in an election (and 50% of all are willing to tell you how they’re too cool for politics)

Out of a total population of 60-million voters in the above two generations, which generational cohort contributed the greater number of votes for the GOP victory in the election? The 11-million Xers who voted GOP, or the 18-million Boomers who did so?

Look the rich, old, white Republican voters are assholes, but I don’t think they’re sociopathic monsters down to a man (or comparatively rarer woman)

Nah.  That’s why they need rationalizations and stories about “welfare queens”.

And again, even the Silent Generation Republicans rejected the Bush push to privatize Social Security, even when told it wouldn’t effect them.

Even more unlikely that the more Democratic demographic of the boomers will accept that Medicare vouchers be applied to those younger.

And polls agree: nobody, but nobody in any of the age groups want vouchers, boomers among the least likely.

Overall, a narrow majority (51 percent) of Americans opposed the voucher plan. But those born after 1980 favored it by 47 percent to 41 percent, while seniors opposed it 4-to-1. A majority of boomers were also opposed, with 43 percent strongly objecting.

Again, a majority of Gen Xers support the destruction of Medicare, a majority of Boomers, don’t.

But the Boomers are willing to make concessions to save the service, even for those bashing them:

The majority of boomers also favor raising their taxes to support Medicare, and “63 percent of boomers in the poll dismissed the idea of raising the eligibility age to keep Medicare afloat financially. But when the survey forced them to choose between raising the age or cutting benefits, 59 percent said raise the age and keep the benefits.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/29/national/main7195298.shtml

It was the silly Time writer who stuck that “adolescent” line in, which I tried to edit before it published, realizing it would only be grist for the bashers.

Ya know, if only particular Boomers were being bashed on this website and other so-called Progressive blogs, it would be one thing: but no, it’s always a nasty generalization, fact-free in the case of those on this thread.

Y’all want to bash the Silent Generation of selfish fucks who vote Republican in the majority (and their selfish fuck Gen X children), fine by me.

At least that’s somewhat reality based.

But reflexive Boomer bashing is dangerous: driving Boomers away from the Democratic party, when they’re in the top two major demographics for Democratic voting, is insanity on a number of levels.

Demonizing and objectifying Boomers also can make it easier to cut the services they’re going to need soon: Social Security and Medicare.

And once Social Security and Medicare are gone for us, they’re gone for all of you.

So the majority of Baby Boomers vote Democratic—they’re among the top two demographics of Democratic voters—but they’re more to blame for Republican victories than the majority of the Gen Xers who voted Republican?

That’s your argument?

Here’s another set of figures for you to look up: the percentage of Baby Boomers who actually make it to the polls (in off elections, too) versus the Millenials, Gen X, etc.

I’ve read that Baby Boomers voting majority Democratic—as the Silent Generation dies off—will bring Democratic victories combined with the Millenials (especially, if we can get ‘em to the polls.)

Why you’d want to drive away, bash, and demonize the group that can drive Republicans from office, is beyond me.

But small minds can only wrap themselves around scapegoats, apparently.

But reflexive Boomer bashing is dangerous: driving Boomers away from the Democratic party, when they’re in the top two major demographics for Democratic voting, is insanity on a number of levels.

No-one’s trying to drive them away from the Dems. We’re just asking them to think of generations other than their own and say so explicitly when they do vote Dem, so that the Dem establishment isn’t tempted into the same “reasonable” measures that the GOP is proposing for Gen Xers and Millenials.

That’s your argument?

No, there’s no “argument” when it comes to numbers—I was just pointing out that you were leaving out the not insignificant factor of cohort size. I didn’t say “blame” (a moral judgement), I said “contribution of votes.”

Here’s another set of figures for you to look up: the percentage of Baby Boomers who actually make it to the polls (in off elections, too) versus the Millenials, Gen X, etc.

I counted the Gen Xers who voted for independents as effective GOP votes. I generously assumed that no Boomers in the scenario opted out of the two-party choice.

There is only one person to “blame” for the demise of the New Deal Coalition: MLK.

The collapse of Jim Crow completely altered the electoral map. Nothing else compares. As late as 64, southern congressional seats were 90–95% dem (house, senate). I mean Alabama went for Adlai Stevenson, making them more liberal than NY and MA. The reality is that the New Deal was built on Jim Crow. It literally went hand-in-hand with lynching and segregation. The segregationists were new dealers and FDR rewarded them, as did his heirs.

Post 64, the LW party could no longer rely on this monolithic block. That changed everything. How nice it was to be JFK and know Nixon had no shot in the south while you, a Catholic, did.  That just goes to show how deep the evil bond was.

You gave up that bond. Not completely. You still rewarded your segregationists, making one senate majority leader and another house speaker (in the late 80’s), and that explains why hardly any of them left (yes, its true). But you did at least give up the monopoly on the presidential level right away. You sold the New Deal for Civil Rights. Because the former was built on the denial of the latter, the current weakening of the former can be traced back to the rise of the latter.

It was the right thing to do, though. But all this handwringing over why its so much harder for lefties now strikes me as, what electoral-scholar Larry Bartels calls;  “a peculiar nostalgia for the racially coercive Democratic monopoly of the Jim Crow era.”

@typist: They’re mostly not monsters and most of them probably aren’t sociopaths. What they are is selfish beyond belief. Take a look at a group of teabaggers sometime. They’re not concerned with government spending. What concerns them is that the government isn’t spending absolutely everything it has on them and them alone. If they were promise they’d be the sole recipients of government aid, they’d be screaming to triple spending.

Most people that have a bunch of them in the family will tell you the same thing. They’re not evil, they’re just fucking godawfully selfish.

Especially since it’s a myth that Boomers are all conservative assholes:

“the Democrats’ greatest advantages come among those in their 20s and baby boomers in their late 40s and 50s. Republicans, on the other hand, come closest to parity with Democrats among Generation Xers in their late 30s and early 40s and among seniors in their late 60s.”

http://www.gallup.com/poll/118285/democrats-best-among-generation-baby-boomers.aspx

So when will the Gen X bashing begin?

Seems to me that the smallest gap between Democratic and Republican are at the ages where the earning potential is the highest until you reach the early 70’s.

But that would require critical analysis and an objective view of the presented data instead of hopping into defensive flaming at the slightest provocation.  Or perhaps it would take understanding “It’s not all about you!”

How many times do the facts have to be repeated?

It’s the retired, Silent Generation who vote majority Republican (and turn out in great numbers) combined with their children the Gen Xers, who are winning elections for Republicans, now.

As the Silent Generation dies off, the majority Democratic Baby Boomers combined with the Millenials can reverse that trend—or so I’ve read on at least one Progressive blog.

There’s no evidence—and certainly you’ve presented none—that Boomer Democrats aren’t “thinking of future generations.”

Here’s a fact that indicates the reverse: Boomers are strongly against the current plan for destroying Medicare, according to a recent poll, even though they’re being told it “won’t affect them.”

One of the problems whenever I see boomer bashing on progressive sites is that Boomers are being confused or conflated with the Silent Generation, who tend to be more racist, homophobic, reactionary, and crazy “conservative”—and vote more along those lines than the Boomers so.

This Silent Generation also turn out in greater numbers to vote, as seniors usually do. Majority Democratic Boomers are also even more likely to turn out as they age up, as seniors usually do.

This is good news for the Democratic party, providing they don’t drive ‘em away from the polls by humping the third rail of American politics, Social Security and Medicare.

Sorry, cynical, but what you wrote makes no sense whatsoever.

“Huh?” is about all I can muster, or it deserves.

No, if you criticize one Boomer—-or make factually accurate observations about the majority of Boomers—-you are saying every single one of them is an asshole.  This is the only group this is true for, by the way.

It’s not all about me: however, I seem to be about the only Baby Boomer who has bothered to stay on these threads after bashing.

I only get attacked personally after I answer—especially with facts and figures!—the general attacks on the Baby Boomer generation.

Spaghetti Monster knows, there are those with faults in my generation, as with any. But we’ve weathered 40 years and many disappointments with Democratic politicians (following the will of the Silent Generation, and now Gen X) without the majority of us turning Republican. And that’s something. Not everything, I’m afraid, but something.

We also helped create a more progressive country than we were handed by the Silent Generation, and helped create the Millenials, who will do an even better job of it, I hope.

The numbers can turn statistically toward (better) Democrats when the Democratic Majority Baby Boomers can march to the polls with the Millenials, and the Gen Xers won’t have a giant lump in the anaconda of the Silent Generation Republicans to sway elections to crazy ass Republicans.

I remember when Democratic politicians governed like Democrats, and there’s nothing I want more than to see that day again.

However, unless you hold responsible those who actually voted us into the fix we’re in—the Silent Generation, Gen X and white men (check the statistics)—instead of insisting on scapegoating the Boomers, you’ll postpone that day further on.

Sorry, Amanda, but you’re wrong on that score—both in the general and the specific.

I’m surprised you allow the amount of boomer bashing that you do, doubt you’d allow any other group to be bashed similarily, but I suspect a generational blindness.

The reality is that the New Deal was built on Jim Crow. It literally went hand-in-hand with lynching and segregation.

How does that follow?  FDR had to placate Southern segregationists, to be sure, but the New Deal was hardly the cause of lynching and segregation.  Those were in place long before FDR was in office—under both Republican and Democratic presidents.  No one wanted to deal the political shitstorm that would come from challenging segregation, even if they wanted to.  New Deal programs did not seriously challenge lynching and segregation, but they didn’t promote it either, as far as I know.  Do you have some proof to back up that assertion?

I agree that the Civil Rights movement led to the fracturing of the New Deal political coalition—and that the Republican party opened its arms big and wide for the racists and segregationists who left the Democrats.  Such is the nature of politics.

@judibrowni—check the stats; the Baby Boom was started by the vacuum cleaner,* not the end of WWII.  WWII was a blip.  Home Economics was the reason for it.  Children are what economists call a normal good; people get more when they’re cheaper.  It faded once career opportunities for women increased, birth control got more common, the social safety net expanded, and education became more common.  That made kids simultaneously less valuable and more expensive again.

The boomer bashing is a function of Amanda and I being the first generation to make less than our folks due to the Reagan Revolution.  There is some bitterness.  It’s probably best to raise a token protest, then let it ride.  My 2c.

*a suite of home maintenance technologies including the washing machine, the vacuum cleaner, double sinks, etc.

Manju, whatever you’re smoking, dude, you might want to back off it for a while. 

Your understanding of the Great Political Party Swap that occurred in the wake of Johnson’s successful push for Civil Rights legislation leads you (quite willingly on your part) astray.

While you’re all upset (not really, but for the sake of your argument) about the last few of the racist conservative Democrats who clung onto their Democratic Party membership to the bitter end, you completely ignore the most important truth:  Most of those (meaning nearly all of them) conservative Democrats who supported segregation and Jim Crow switched over to being conservative Republicans.

So while you try to hang them on the current Democratic Party, you’re really criticizing the current Republican Party for welcoming those assholes with open arms.

I bet you’re one of those idiots who thinks Fascism and Socialism/Marxism/Communism are all liberal political philosophies…and then then thinks Goldberg’s outhouse “reading” material explains current Democrats.  Idiot…

You’ve got that reversed, Punditus.

Vacuum cleaners didn’t impregnate American women en mass after WWII ended, the young men who had been overseas for 4-5 years did when they returned home, to a country lifted out depression which made it economically viable to have children again. The GI Bill gave those men the opportunity to get higher education, and loans to build houses.

No birth control pill made it difficult for women to plan careers in those years, and women were literally thrown out of professions when the men returned. And there was active discrimination against them, in any case. Barrier forms of birth control have a higher fail rate, and there was no legal abortion to counter accidental pregnancies, businesses fired women for taking breaks for pregnancies (Betty Friedan, for one), or wouldn’t hire or promote women of the age for pregnancies.

Blue collar salaries for men could support a whole family, blue collar salaries for women didn’t, for the most part.

It’s no coincidence that the availability of the birth control pill coincided with Second Wave feminism.

“The vacuum cleaner evolved from the carpet sweeper via manual vacuum cleaners. The first manual models, using bellows, came in the 1860s, and the first motorised models came in the beginning of the 20th century.” which may coincide with the Suffragette movement, but it’s more likely that the great waves of feminism were tied to birth rate (more female than males born those generations, so that the women would need to make their own living outside marriage) and ,most especially, the birth control pill and legal abortion, which finally gave women control over when—or whether—they would have children.

Yes, I know the younger generation resents the previous for their perceived failings (as I did the Silent Generation)—but it’s dangerous for progressives to demonize the Baby Boomer generation, both for the Democratic Party, and the general good.

And there’s no reason to envy the Boomer generation economically.

It’s the Silent Generation who were the last to benefit by pensions across the board: businesses eradicated them for boomers, and then their 401Ks were wiped out by the stock market crash, at a time when there’s no time to make them up.

The Silent Generation also benefited from retiring with mortgage free homes (the interest on my Silent Generation father’s G.I. bill mortgage: 2%), foreclosure city for the Boomers, and everyone below ‘em.

Twice the number of Boomers make up the longterm unemployed than the early ‘20s workers, and that doesn’t count those forced out of professions into jobs paying a third as much.

No job, or McJob, and no work-connected health insurance: try $1,000 a month for a junk policy in the individual market for someone in their 50s.

And yet, still voting Democratic, in the majority. Unless Democrats and Progressives force them out, or discourage them from going to the polls.

you completely ignore the most important truth:  Most of those (meaning nearly all of them) conservative Democrats who supported segregation and Jim Crow switched over to being conservative Republicans.

Mike,

We’ve had this discussion before. Another commentator mentioned Strom Thurmond and repeated a racist falsehood: “All the Dixiecrats/southern Democrats jumped to the Republican party…” I said this is demonstratively false and you were so gobsmacked you popped in to call me a troll. I then demonstrated that virtually all the segregationists stayed within the Dem party.

I don’t really blame you for not being aware of these fact then. This is the lefty version of the civil war was not about slavery. its hard to admit that your most firmly held beliefs were just propaganda, racist propaganda at that.

I noticed you never conceded the point in the other thread and thats OK. But to repeat the falsehood now and ratchet up the rhetoric, even though you know its false strikes me as worse than what Haley Barbour. At least he apologized when the truth of the Citizens Councils was pointed out to him. 

The bottom line is that which you call “the most important truth” is demonstratively false. Indeed, the opposite is true. “Nearly all of them” stayed with the democratic party. Opinions that follow from this falsehood are not worth debating any more than its worth debating someone who says slavery never really existed.

” I said this is demonstratively false

And yet, you were wrong. Demonstratively. But you Keep. Banging. This. Drum.

Go home. No one is interested in you and your virulently pro-Confederate Republican party.

In my reading of history, conservative Democrats became conservative Republicans, between ~1960 and ~1990, with most of the transition occurring in time to get (that disgusting) Ronald Reagan elected in 1980.

In your reading, apparently Strom Thurmond stayed a staunch Democrat until he (finally) left this mortal coil, and this (bogus) experience can be somehow extended to cover all other current Democrats, even though those Thurmond-style Democrats became Republicans (just like good ol’ Strom did).

(And no, the (past) existence of Robert Byrd does not (somehow) prove that present-day Democrats are all ex-KKK and socially conservative.  But I’m sure you’ll try to bring it up again anyway…)

Otherwise you’ll have to claim those Democrats were spirited away in flying saucers, or something, because those traditional old (Southern) conservative Democrats ain’t in the Democratic Party anymore and haven’t been since Nixon and Reagan welcomed them into the Republican fold.

What was “The Solid South”, meaning Democratic, back in the day (it just started to break up after WWII, with the Dixiecrats, etc.) has become “The New Solid South”, which is Republican.  Those are undeniable facts.  They happened.  Look at election results and see a sea of read across the South.  And those who don’t have some agenda to push (like hatred of the New Deal and FDR and all the social programs that resulted) will acknowledge those facts and accept them. 

Others, apparently like you and a large portion of the teabagging morons, want to live in some fantasy America where Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms were Democrats to the bitter end and still hold sway in the party that selected Barack Obama, and where the current Republican Party still bears some resemblance to the “Party of Lincoln”.  (I don’t know about you, but I suspect that Lincoln wouldn’t be too keen to consort with gentlemen who still fly Confederate flags, still go on and on about “States Rights”, swear their states have the right to leave the US if they don’t like federal policies, and are the philosophical, and often literal, descendants of the Confederate rebels Lincoln swore to bring back into the Union - which he did at the cost of his own life…)

Good luck with that…

How does that follow?  FDR had to placate Southern segregationists, to be sure, but the New Deal was hardly the cause of lynching and segregation

Captain,

You answered your own question. “FDR had to placate Southern segregationists…” Now, you framed FDR’s actions in the passive sense. One could say Goldwater had to placate Southern segregationists too, so he voted against the 64 cra. But lets face it. These men chose to ride to power on the backs of black folks. They didn’t have to do anything.

No one wanted to deal the political shitstorm that would come from challenging segregation, even if they wanted to.

Not true. Polls show that Jim Crow was ready to go as early as the 1930’s and lynching even before that. There were 2 gruesome lynchings in FDRs first term. The naacp used them to try to finally end lynchjings in the south. Polls showed a whopping 70% majority even in the south supported te bill. Publically, and this is one of the more interesting aspects of Jim Crow, almost all the segregationists came out in favor of the bill. Its was actually shameful not to be against lynching. Even the White Citzens Councils expressed horror and, like the assholes they were, used it to justify jim crow (it protects blacks).

The bill sailed thru the house with strong bipartisan support. The Senate was overwhelmingly for it but the southern dems filibustered, even though they were publically for it as well. Historians have long wondered how it was that the bill did not pass. The consensus is that there was a “gentleman’s aagrement.” Had FDR come out to support the bill, it would’ve went thru. But the south was a Roosevelt base. FDR did not need a single dixiecrat or repub vote to get the new deal thru, but he did not want to risk this support.

We know now that dixiecrats were never going to leave the party (well, not MikeEss) so even the excuse rings hollow. A sad chapter in progressive history.

New Deal programs did not seriously challenge lynching and segregation, but they didn’t promote it either, as far as I know.  Do you have some proof to back up that assertion?

The New Deal promoted segregation. Racially discriminatory policies were written into it. Here’s Adolp Reed writing in the Nation as proof:

“But the fact is, most New Deal programs were anything but race-neutral–or, for that matter, gender-neutral–in their impact. Some, like the initial Social Security old-age pension program, were established on a racially invidious, albeit officially race-neutral, basis by excluding from coverage agricultural and domestic workers, the categories that included nearly 90 percent of black workers at the time. Others, like the CCC, operated on Jim Crow principles. Roosevelt’s housing policy put the weight of federal support behind creating and reproducing an overtly racially exclusive residential housing industry. ”

I agree that the Civil Rights movement led to the fracturing of the New Deal political coalition—and that the Republican party opened its arms big and wide for the racists and segregationists who left the Democrats.  Such is the nature of politics.<em>

Yes, but a half-truth. The dems fought hard for those racists to stay. Indeed, virtually all the segregationists remained within the party.

Mike and Tyro:

Lets get to the heart of the matter. Mike originally protested me debunking this claim:

“Strom Thurmond was one of many examples.  All the Dixiecrats/southern Democrats jumped to the Republican party either in 1964 when the Civil Rights Act was passed, or in 1972 when George McGovern was the Democratic candidate for president.  During those 8 years congressional representation in the south went from 100% Democratic to mostly Republican.”

Another commentator added this,

“To their Robert Byrd, I raise them a Strom Thurmond, a racist Democrat who decided to become a racist Republican roughly when the GOP decided to become the natural home for racists in the United States.”

Mike has doubled down on this flasehood today, asserting without evidence:

“conservative Democrats who supported segregation and Jim Crow switched over to being conservative Republicans.”

“Most of those (meaning nearly all of them) conservative Democrats who supported segregation and Jim Crow switched over to being conservative Republicans.

”

He reiterates again:

“those Thurmond-style Democrats became Republicans”

And again:

“a large portion of the teabagging morons, want to live in some fantasy America where Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms were Democrats to the bitter end”

Notice, the last assertion by Mike is a strawman, as if I claimed Strom or Jesse remained Dems. Nonetheless, Strom in particular is an important datapoint. He was a major-league segregationist and he switched parties. So all one needs to do is look at the others and see where they end up. Did “nearly all of them” switch, as Mike believes or not. The data is easily accessible.

Lets start with the “Thurmond-style democrats” as Mike puts it. There were 21 southern dems who voted against the 1964 cra. 18 of these assholes actually filibustered the bill, along with one repub (john Tower). By virtue of the role the senate filibuster played in maintaining the Jim Crow regime, these were among the most powerful segregationists in the land. As progressives, I’m sure you can appreciate my emphasis on power in relation to racism.

I don’t have the time to find the whole list of these individuals online, but here is what I can offer you off the top of my head:

1. Gore
2. Fulbright
3. Byrd
4. Eastland
5. Smathers
6. Ervin
7. Russell
8. Long
9. Stennis
10. Holland
11. Harry Byrd
12. Hill
13. Sparkman
14. McClellan
15 Talmadge
16 Thurmond

Everyone knows about Strom. But who else of “those Thurmond-style Democrats became Republicans”? Mike and Tyro.  Please name names.

Obviously, that’s a rehetorical question. I know that none except Strom switched. If we look at the 87 southern dems in the house that voted against the bill, same story (about 2 or 3 swithed). If you look at the famous govenors, ie Maddox, Wallace, Faubus, hardly anyone swtiched. Thats why dems maintained a lock on the south on the state and local and congressional level all the way until 1994.

All the southern dems who voted against the 64 cra stayed Dem until their dying day, except for Thurmond. The liberal dems rewarded them for it too, so the party of Jim Crow lasted well beyond 64…though this is not mutually exclusive with the repubs southern strat…if anyone thinks I’m trying to deny that. I’m not. Indeed, I’m calling out denialism on the left. You need to cut it out.

Regarding the Presidency, who won the Southern States during and after 1980?  Republicans.  Not every single state, not every single time, but you can’t deny The South is conservative Republican today.

Who won the Southern States before that?

Let’s look (data source):

1900: Bryan(D) v McKinley(R)

Southern States for Bryan: Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia

1928: Hoover(R) v Smith(D)

Southern States for Smith: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina

1932: Roosevelt(D) v Hoover(R)

Southern States for Roosevelt: All of them.  Roosevelt only lost Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, and Delaware.

1936:  Roosevelt v Alfred Landon

Roosevelt almost took every single state in the US.

1940: Roosevelt v Wendell Willkie

Roosevelt lost Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine.  He won all the rest.

1944: Roosevelt v Dewey

Roosevelt won the same states as 1940, except he lost Ohio, lost Wisconsin, won Michigan, won New Hampshire.

1948: Truman(D) v Dewey(R) v Thurmond(Dixiecrat)

Thurmond won Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina.  Truman won all the rest of the Southern States.

1952: Stevenson(D) v Eisenhower(R)

Stevenson got Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina.

1956: Stevenson v Eisenhower

Stevenson won Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina.

1960: Kennedy(D) v Nixon(R)

Kennedy won Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina.  Mississippi pledged its electoral votes to a third party candidate.

1964: Johnson(D) v Goldwater(R)

Thing are starting to shift.  Goldwater gets Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina.

1968: Humphrey(D) v Nixon v George Wallace

Humphrey takes Texas.  Wallace gets Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia.  Nixon gets Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky.

1972: Nixon v McGovern

Nixon wins every state except Massachusetts.

1976: Carter(D) v Ford(R)

Carter wins the whole South.

1980: Reagan(R) v Carter

Reagan wins the whole South except Carter’s native Georgia.

1984: Reagan get the whole South.

1988: Bush Sr.(R) gets the whole South.

1992: Bush Sr. v Clinton(D)

Bush gets Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia.  Clinton gets Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky.

1996: Clinton v Dole(R)

Clinton gets Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Florida.  Dole gets Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia.

2000 (next data source): Gore(D) v Bush Jr.(R)

Bush gets the whole South

2004: Kerry(D) v Bush Jr.

Bush gets the whole South

2008: Obama(D) v McCain(R)

McCain get the whole South except Florida, North Carolina, Virginia.

Can someone even as dense as you are, Manju, not see the party shift in the South, from being exclusively Democratic to being almost exclusively Republican?  Why is this so hard for you to understand?...

I guess my response to Manju is: what’s your point?  Even if all this is true, so what?

I’ll speculate:  could it possibly be, “both sides are bad, vote Republican?”

Regarding the Presidency, who won the Southern States during and after 1980?

Mike,

Why are you talking about presidential elections after 1980 when I am challenging you on this assertion?

“Most of those (meaning nearly all of them) conservative Democrats who supported segregation and Jim Crow switched over to being conservative Republicans”?

You originally started calling me names when I took on this assertion:

“Strom Thurmond was one of many examples.  All the Dixiecrats/southern Democrats jumped to the Republican party either in 1964 when the Civil Rights Act was passed, or in 1972 when George McGovern was the Democratic candidate for president.  During those 8 years congressional representation in the south went from 100% Democratic to mostly Republican.”

Obviously, if you want to know whether or not those who supported Jim Crow—like Strom Thurmond or even Jesse Helms, as you argued—-switched to the republican party, you look at, well, the Strom’s and Jesse’s of the world: Wallace, Byrd, Gore, Holland, Faubus, Maddux, etc…

Instead, you’re fast forwarding decades later,

ignoring state, local, and congressional races…which demonstrates ignorance since it was the senate (filibuster), governors (wallace, faubus), and local authorites (Bull Connor) that enforced Jim Crow more than the Presidency

(although some Prez’s clearly enabled it)... and declaring that “those Thurmond-style Democrats became Republicans.”

Well, to be fair, you didn’t repeat your assertion above, but you have yet to take it back.

screwed the formatting up at the end:

Instead, you’re fast forwarding decades later, ignoring state, local, and congressional races…which demonstrates ignorance since it was the senate (filibuster), governors (wallace, faubus), and local authorites (Bull Connor) that enforced Jim Crow more than the Presidency (although some Prez’s clearly enabled it)... and declaring that “those Thurmond-style Democrats became Republicans.”

Well, to be fair, you didn’t repeat your assertion above, but you have yet to take it back.

So what you’re saying, if I get you correctly, Manju, that it’s the former-southern-democrats turned Republicans who are the right wing crazies now agitating for feudalism? Not really sure what your screeds your writing have to do with the topic, false as they are.

Not really sure why you’re defending a confederacy that defected for the anti-civil-rights republican Barry Goldwater, but there you go. But keep banging that drum. and trying to deny that the modern Republicans are the neo-confederate party.

One of the problems with people like Manju is that they’re trying to cleave to the republican party because they feel it will give them a social veneer of respectability with attendant class benefits. One of the things they have to run away, from, however, is the fact that modern republicans are always going to be tarred with the stink of the confederacy and their modern angry hostility to civil rights. Thus they’re attempt to look at the democrats and screech, “No, YOU are!”

The confederates signed up for barry goldwater, richard nixon, and (quite explicitly) ronald reagan, and it’s been that way ever since. They’ve always been a violent, crowd. Trying to refashion yourself as a respectable person by being an anti-worker, pro-torture, violent republicans isn’t going to make you anything other than a freedom hating, worker-hating, advocate of the modern confederate republican party, much as you might try to deny it.

And don’t even get me started on Manju’s crazed ravings about how Martin Luther King, Jr. was anti-union and his attempts at claiming that workers’ rights activists (!) were wrong to look to MLK, Jr. as one of their supporters—a man who had no time for the right wing foolishness that Manju is obsessed with. No get the hell out of here and stop spamming the thread you republican-loving, ignorant, brooks-reading doofus.

Can someone even as dense as you are, Manju, not see the party shift in the South, from being exclusively Democratic to being almost exclusively Republican?  Why is this so hard for you to understand

We can talk about this if you like since there is a lot of cutting edge statsistical research now available…all of it left of center: Bartels, Gelman, etc.

Obviously you are not familiar with these intellectuals so you have some liberal happy-land simpleton narrative (the segregationists became republicans 30 years later!!!) but I’d be happy to give you a crash course. And yes, racism is a factor in the switch.

Be that as it may, you must be careful not to draw a moral equivelence here. Thats denailism too, though not as bad as the earlier stuff. The south that was delvered to FDR, JFK, Stevenson, etc was built on lynching and political violence. Here is a piece on FDL that demonstrates why your comparison is ill-informed:

It is a popular today to say that the South has switched from voting Democratic to Republican. Many people are fond of looking at previous electoral maps. Hey, isn’t that funny – the states have completely switched parties. It’s like the Republicans have recreated the Solid South.

That statement is unequivocally false. Most people have no idea how unbelievably Democratic the Solid South was. For half a century, Democrats in the Deep South did about as well as the Communist Party did in Soviet Union elections.

http://my.firedoglake.com/inoljt/2010/04/10/the-solid-south/

One of the problems with people like Manju is that they’re trying to cleave to the republican party because they feel it will give them a social veneer of respectability with attendant class benefits

Incorrect. I vote Dem. And its not about me. Stick to the facts.

. For half a century, Democrats in the Deep South did about as well as the Communist Party did in Soviet Union elections.

The reason Republicans have been unable to replicate that solidity to the same degree is because blacks are able to vote, now. Whites are still voting 90% republican in many elections. You are OBSESSED with banging this drum, Manju, and it’s totally unclear why. It’s as thought you’re in some way trying to deny the reality of who you really are—you’re an apologist for the modern day confederate party as embodied by the republicans. Embrace it—love it. Stop trying to deny who you are and the moral compromises you’ve signed on to by trying to project onto the democratic party the moral failures that you yourself embraced. And for the love of Pete stop shitting on the thread.

The reason Republicans have been unable to replicate that solidity to the same degree is because blacks are able to vote, now.

And who prevented blacks from voting, Tyro? The people who benefitted. Liberal like yourself…who look the other way when racism benefits them.

This is why JFK and LBJ fought to effectively kill Ike’s long-forgotten 1957 civil right act by inserting a jury-trial provision. Ike wanted judges to be able to issue a contempt citation when whites, after being found guilty of violating voting rights (of black and republicans usually),  violated a court injunction to stop.  But knowing damn well all-white juries would never convict a white for refusing to allow blacks to register to vote, democrats,  including 2 future presidents, inserted this amendment. 

segregationist James Eastland (Democrat from Mississippi) was very grateful to kennedy for sending the bill to his notorious Senate Judiciary Committee. He became an early supporter of his presidential campaign.

Kennedy took the south.

Again, Manju, I’m not clear what your ultimate point is here.  What are you trying to accomplish?

Although, to be fair, this debate has derailed what looked to be yet another 200-plus comment thread about blaming/defending baby boomers.  Seriously, if I never again see one of those threads it will be too soon.

The collapse of Jim Crow completely altered the electoral map. Nothing else compares. As late as 64, southern congressional seats were 90–95% dem (house, senate). I mean Alabama went for Adlai Stevenson, making them more liberal than NY and MA. The reality is that the New Deal was built on Jim Crow. It literally went hand-in-hand with lynching and segregation. The segregationists were new dealers and FDR rewarded them, as did his heirs.

Post 64, the LW party could no longer rely on this monolithic block. That changed everything. How nice it was to be JFK and know Nixon had no shot in the south while you, a Catholic, did.  That just goes to show how deep the evil bond was.

You gave up that bond. Not completely. You still rewarded your segregationists, making one senate majority leader and another house speaker (in the late 80’s), and that explains why hardly any of them left (yes, its true). But you did at least give up the monopoly on the presidential level right away. You sold the New Deal for Civil Rights. Because the former was built on the denial of the latter, the current weakening of the former can be traced back to the rise of the latter.

It was the right thing to do, though. But all this handwringing over why its so much harder for lefties now strikes me as, what electoral-scholar Larry Bartels calls; “a peculiar nostalgia for the racially coercive Democratic monopoly of the Jim Crow era.”

People beat me to it but I really need to point this out, the democratic party has roughly been twice the size of the republican party since the inception of republicans and even going back to their precursor the whigs.  Fundamentally the democratic party grew out of Jefferson’s “Republicans” who became “Democrats” under Andrew Jackson.  The party was the party of small business and small landholders.  As the party aged through Van Buren, Polk, and Buchanan the Democratic party took on it’s more modern look, a northern aspect that was largely liberal as it included immigrants and other more radical elements and a southern aspect dominated by slaveholders and other small farmer types who couldn’t afford to play with the Whigs (who were in essence the party of large industry). 

Up to the civil war the west was really an undecided place, many democrats, few whigs, but nobody really identified with either party to the east.  Thus when the republicans showed up having absorbed the whig remnants while forming an ethos around “Free Labor” (in comparison to Slave Labor) they sucked up members.  After the civil war the south viewed the republicans as enemies of their antebellum world and desperately clung to the democratic party even harder.  As the ages progressed we had a series of democratic and republican presidents who were largely liberal by today’s standards while having a defining character of racism until arguably the first Roosevelt came into office.  Followed by a known racist, a crook, and a quiet conservative Massachusetts governor.  When FDR entered office the New Deal was built out of the progressive support developed in the 1920s under characters like Al Smith and such.  The New Deal didn’t reinforce racism as much as it kept the patchwork of southern hostility from boiling over until the US could recover.  In essence to call out the racists would have created more strife than it was worth at the moment. 

After the Second World War the civil rights movement drove conservative democrats into the arms of big business as long as they would support the racist agenda.  In many cases racism has an adverse effect on economics but since it gained them substantial white support in the region the party of business opted to take on the racist/conservative tinge of the southern US.  If anything we see the modern conservative republican come to power not due to civil rights but in spite of it.  Reagan was able to be elected because the south propelled him into office on his veiled statements of racist support. 

The single reason that the “red” state has developed in these rural zones is because the population is overwhelming white and aging.  We already see places like Georgia starting to turn purple and probably 2016 or 2020 be a blue state.  Innovative states where a multi-racial citizenry is developing is turning blue and places like the upper-midwest and west are turning blue as the culture mingles with Canada and just in generally stops taking on so many southern ideologies. 

Fundamentally our society is going to look dramatically different in perhaps a decade or two.  The old south’s ideology while passed down no doubt will still exist but those who had lived before it and through it will have passed opening the door for the post-civil rights era children to take a new look at race and untie the “conservative” attitudes from the pro-business ones they’re currently held tied to.

Again, Manju, I’m not clear what your ultimate point is here.  What are you trying to accomplish?

Actually, the original point was that the demise of Jim Crow changed the electoral landscape. Nothing else compares to this event.  So the baby-boomers are inconsequential.

Now, I phrased this demise in a way that did not deny what it was…a racially coercive monopoly benefitting the more progressive party. I cited a lefty scholar (Bartels) saying the same thing so no one can accuse me of being a Jonah Goldberg type idiot. Once one accepts the nature of Jim Crow, then we can talk about the repubs southern strategy.

Mike did not like this and put forth a meme designed to whitewash lib-dem’s role in maintaining the racist regime; “Most of those (meaning nearly all of them) conservative Democrats who supported segregation and Jim Crow switched over to being conservative Republicans.”

I would not let that stand anymore than I would let a republican tell me the citizens councils fought the Klan (Haley Barbour). I would think calling out ahistoric crap like that would be self-evidently justified on an anti-racist site. But I think a lot of people here still have yet to grasp the magnitude of the evil.

Other than that I just like civil rights history and hate to see it shitted on like Tyro and Mike are doing. I can link you to me doing this to repubs since Tyro made this about me. But its clear to me that they’ve never even read Robert Caro, a popular scholar who bought this revsionism out of academia, so they think I get my info from glenn beck or somebody. I am a tad surprised by the resistance since most people to the left of the dem party are aware of these facts. I’m probably the wrong messenger. Maybe, I’ll see if a ciivl rights scholar with street cred would bother to come on this site and weight in. a lot of these guys answer emails.

Manju,

All right, then.  Thanks for the response.  I think, however, that your use of “you” when referring to the Democratic Party of half a century ago is a bit offputting.  Hard not be defensive when one is accused personally of enabling segregation and lynching.  Just sayin’.

The single reason that the “red” state has developed in these rural zones is because the population is overwhelming white and aging.

I dunno—rural states like Kansas have pretty much always been Republican. Same with the Dakotas. On the other hand, the state of Vermont was always Republican until the late 20th century, and are now solidly Democratic. I might put Maine in the same category. I don’t think there’s a “grand unified theory” that explains their Republicanism in the context of the civil rights movement.

Trying to associate Al Smith, Hubert Humphrey, and FDR as the vanguards of segregation is really stretching it, too. Manju seems to be consciously trying to ignore the fact that FDR was quite popular with blacks. But he insists on banging this drum and over and again for basically no purpose. It’s his obsession—you see him pop up in threads on all sorts of blogs like this. I don’t know whether he’s trying to play the clever teenager shtick, or he’s actually really that blindly ignorant. Next he’ll probably argue something crazy like claiming that MLK, Jr. was not a supporter of unions… nah, he couldn’t be that much of an ignoramus.

When FDR entered office the New Deal was built out of the progressive support developed in the 1920s under characters like Al Smith and such.  The New Deal didn’t reinforce racism as much as it kept the patchwork of southern hostility from boiling over until the US could recover.  In essence to call out the racists would have created more strife than it was worth at the moment.

This is awfully generous to the President who gave us Tuskegee and put a former Klansman on scotus. The anti-lynching movement had developed considerable support even in the south, and even if you think the nation wasn’t ready to end segregation, it was certainly ready to put an end to this phenomena, as I outlined above. Plus the progressive movement and racism were more intertwined than the first take on civil rights history let on. Prof David Southern has done some extensive research on this. Woodrow Wilson’s rep has been tarnished with almost everyone outside the wildly partisan crooks and liars crew, due to his role in segregating the US govt and helping restart the 2nd Klan.

Reagan was able to be elected because the south propelled him into office on his veiled statements of racist support. 

A tad too reductionist but fair enough. That’s how interpret welfare queen and states rights too. Here’s what missing from your narrative:

The man he beat won the south too. James Eastland endorsed him (obviously, mike is wrong about moist of the segregationist switching). He had history as a minor segregationist (local schools, I think).  His official biographer admitted Jimmy Carter would say, “things that the segregationists wanted to hear.” Dogwhistle?

His campaign distributed a photo of his opponent being embraced by black basketball players to a Ku Klux Klan rally. He cited Lester Maddox as a hero. When he ran for President, he talked of “ethnic purity” “black Intrusion” and “alien groups” in defense of preventing the federal government from getting involved in stopping housing discrimination, or as he put it, “natural inclination of people to live in ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods…”

States Rights? This strikes me as surpassing Reagan’s Neshoba County Fair moment.

The single reason that the “red” state has developed in these rural zones is because the population is overwhelming white and aging. 

Actually no. There has been a lot of research here. Congressional scholar Nelson Polsby hilariously cites air-conditioning. You see, the first southern House seats to flip were those with the highest concentration of immigrants from the north. The immigrants stayed because of air-conditining.

You will also notice that it is the borderline segregationist states that went first (to Ike as Stevenson took the deep south). Richard Johnston of the University of Pennsylvania and Byron Shafer of the University of Wisconsin argue, as the NYTimes puts it:

“the shift in the South from Democratic to Republican was overwhelmingly a question not of race but of economic growth. In the postwar era, they note, the South transformed itself from a backward region to an engine of the national economy, giving rise to a sizable new wealthy suburban class. This class, not surprisingly, began to vote for the party that best represented its economic interests: the G.O.P. Working-class whites, however — and here’s the surprise — even those in areas with large black populations, stayed loyal to the Democrats. (This was true until the 90s, when the nation as a whole turned rightward in Congressional voting.”

Larry Bartels research backs this up and Andrew Gelman’s adds an interesting twist. If you google them you will see they are non-rwingers and their research is considerable. I highlighted the part debunking the whats the matter with Kansas narrative, as dems often assume the working class are the racists ones (even on this blog, as I’ve addressed it before).

trying to associate Al Smith, Hubert Humphrey, and FDR as the vanguards of segregation is really stretching it, too.

Tyro makes up a phrase, associates it with me, and says I’m stretching it.

Manju seems to be consciously trying to ignore the fact that FDR was quite popular with blacks.

Ok, I’ll address this. It’s the political equivalent to “some of my best friends are black”. Orval Faubus once took home 80% of the black vote while running against a pro-ciivil rights republican (a Rockefeller). This was after Little Rock and the 101st airborne and before he renounced segregation. Black leaders stood up to denounce him but still black folks voted for him.

This was how things worked. Carter used to brag about winning both the Maddux vote and the Black vote. The truth is, most voting is not about racism. Its about perceived economic interest.

I have relatives in India for example who actually chose to work in the middle east. In short, its considerd modern day slavery. They kleft a relatively free country to live as 2nd or 3rd class citizens, with little by way of rights.  But they do it for the money. When people protest the regime uses Tyro’s excuse. After all, the Indians chose to go there. “We are quite popular with indians.”

The oppressed do not always deal with their oppression in ways that make it things black and white. Jim Crow is a lesson in this. Dems should stop using their popularity with Blacks to whitewash their racism.

Next he’ll probably argue something crazy like claiming that MLK, Jr. was not a supporter of unions…Needless to say, this is Tyro’s construction.

I think Manju is just distracting us from the point of the post, which is that the rich will keep the poor divided in order to more easily own them.

This is why you never hear Republicans talking about how great Abraham Lincoln was.

Except completely out of context. Republicans like to compile lists of awesome past Republicans, deliberately ignoring the fact that many of them were Republican in name, but not in any way politically similar to modern Republicans. Such lists always prominently feature Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, and I assure you that neither of those people would put up with the modern GOP’s bullshit.

Of course, the Republicans will also claim that MLK would totally have voted for Bush Jr., so, y’know.

I think one of the things which people forget is that almost everybody was racist as fuck as recently as the early 80s.  Kind of the same way that almost everybody was sexist as fuck.

One of the few truly good things which has happened in this country is the promulgation of the idea that tribal identifications based on race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. are foolish.  That basic idea—that we need to judge people almost exclusively as individuals to make good decisions—just wasn’t part of the mainstream discourse until the mid 70s at the earliest.  Remember when Michael Jackson wasn’t going to be played on the radio because only one black man gets on the radio at a time?  This happened during our lifetimes, folks.

So it’s easy to see the Democratic coalition as Really Racist, until one compares it to the Republican coalition.  This is compounded by the fact that the Dixiecrats were really a separate Party which used the name Democrat on the local ballots but voted Republican on the national scale. 

Look at these elections:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1960
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1964
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1968

In 1960, Kennedy lost Alabama and Mississippi to a wasted Third Party vote, despite them being nominally Democratic strongholds.  By 1964, they just voted for Goldwater’s racism.  And in 1968, the South defected from Humphrey’s candidacy strongly enough to give Nixon the Presidency.  Carter was the last gasp of the Southern Democrats; after that, the Deep South would remain Republican indefinitely.

What’s my point?  That the Dixiecrats are really a third Party who shifted their allegiance between the Dems and Republicans until Nixon’s Southern Strategy gave them enough power in the Republican Party that they settled into their home.  Now the Dixiecrats run the GOP, and we’re back to two parties.  Only the Dems’ insistence on nominating a weak-willed black President has given the GOP temporary new life.

The weird thing about Baby Boomers losing their pensions is that they took them away from themselves.  I dunno, man.

So it’s easy to see the Democratic coalition as Really Racist, until one compares it to the Republican coalition.

There are racists in the republican coalition but repubs never descended into the sheer evil that dems did.  Only the Dems put real active segregationists in their VP slot: FDR, Kennedy, Stevenson, all did that. Only a Lib-dem president put a former kkk member on scotus (fdr). Only a Lib-dem endorsed the KKK (Woodrow Wilson). Only a lib-dem was a former kkk member (Truman). Only one party enjoyed a racially coercive undemocratic monopoly: Democrats. 

This is compounded by the fact that the Dixiecrats were really a separate Party which used the name Democrat on the local ballots but voted Republican on the national scale. 

Then you don’t know what Jim Crow is. It was a virtual one-party state, both locally and nationally. During the Jim Crow era, the south either voted dem or went to a 3rd party. There was never an instance from the civil war to 1964 that dems won locally but repubs won nationally in the south.

This is basic history. As the FDL link states “Most people have no idea how unbelievably Democratic the Solid South was. For half a century, Democrats in the Deep South did about as well as the Communist Party did in Soviet Union elections.”

In 1960, Kennedy lost Alabama and Mississippi to a wasted Third Party vote, despite them being nominally Democratic strongholds.  By 1964, they just voted for Goldwater’s racism. 

I agree with you about “goldwater’s racism”. But not a word about Kennedys? Why do you think Malcolm X said the chickens were coming home to roost. Because he knew JFK benefitted from lynching, and that’s why he refused to stop it. Malcolm X understood what many white liberals did not. Allow me to explain.

Lib-dems take JFK at his word. If you listen to his speeches, JFK was a staunch civil rights advocate. So then, how did he win the South? How did he get an early endorsement from arguably the most powerful segregationist in the land: James Eastland?

He put a segregationist in his VP slot, first of all. And make no doubt about it, Kennedy wanted a segregationist VP. When he thought LBJ was going to be touched by scandal, George Smathers was his 2nd choice. And here you have a dogwhistle within a dogwhistle. LBJ was mild enough to pass as not one in the north but harsh enough that southerners knew they could trust him to guide Kennedy. Which was working out great until LBJ got into the driver’s seat, ironically.

LBJ and JFK could parade their civil rights cred in the north, by virtue of voting for the 57cra. But it was behind the scenes where these men practiced their evil. This is a dogwhistle:

Using procedural tactics, LBJ stopped a republican scheme to bypass the filibuster (even Caro misses this, so I’ll provide the reference upon request) that would’ve delivered the 64cra in 57. He then uses the filibuster to justify gutting the bill (hey, it won’t pass unless we make it toothless) and JFK went along, voting to send the bill to Eastland’s notorious judiciary committee. Eastland takes note and vouches for Kennedy in the South. Voters in the north don’t hear this.

Dogwhistles are made necessary by the fact that the blower is ashamed of what he’s blowing. Indeed, one of the oddest aspects of Jim Crow was that even the most vicious segregationist often needed this deniability too. You will find that even Robert Byrd voted for the 57 and 60 cras, making his position rather indistinguishable from Kennedy’s at the time. Mind you, this is the same man you would later take to the senate floor in ‘64 and spew out something about black brains being smaller than white ones. Even he didn’t want to be seen as racist. Think about that.

This partially explains why hardly any dixiecrats ran into the arms of Reagan’s party, despite Dems having a 90–95% monopoly of reps at the time, which is quite astonishing when one thinks about it.

The dog-whistles long told Dixiecrats that they could trust northern liberals. That bond never actually broke.

Juan might never ask you to be his girlfriend, even though he takes you out regularly, but Johannes might think that you’re a couple after two mediocre dates and get offended when you tell him you don’t know how you feel yet.  Richard might get jealous that you’re seeing other people, Rob might book two dates for the same night.

OMG, what horror!  Adults having to actually have straight-forward adult conversations?  Unthinkable!

Seriously, I think 90% of relationship drama could be avoided by people just talking about things.  I have a friend who will go on an about whether Juan wants something more serious than FWB, or if Rob thinks they should be exclusive.  She’ll analyze their thoughts for hours, trying to figure out what they are thinking.  And I always tell her “Why don’t you just ask him?” 

Yes, I know that it’s not always easy to just be straightforward in our culture, but if you can’t manage to have an adult conversation, how the hell can you manage an actual marriage?  Even if both partners follow their scripts, there will be times when you have to make decisions together or figure out what the other wants, and then you’ll be right back to that old choice of mind-reading vs. an actual conversation.  There’s no way to avoid serious conversations, and if it’s something that terrifies you so much that you wet your pants thinking about it, then you absolutely should not get married until you mature a little.

The website is really screwy so somehow my previous post (#87) got posted on the wrong thread.  Sorry!

I saw Brooks on Real Time and he described the Tea Party as something like “using Abbie Hoffman means to achieve Norman Rockwell ends.” And I thought, “Okay, A) Norman Rockwell is fiction, and B) If you think going back to the real 1950’s society and restricting every right and freedom currently enjoyed by everyone who isn’t a straight white man is an absolute moral outrage, maybe you shouldn’t make them sound all cutesy. But if you really don’t give a fuck because you’re awful, then by all means, do everything you can to mainstream that shit because you’re the “reasonable” conservative.”

It’s not just that—the real Norman Rockwell was a staunch advocate of free speech and other American values, even for the (gasp) lower classes.  And even (double gasp!) economic freedoms being equally important as political ones.

http://www.best-norman-rockwell-art.com/four-freedoms.html

The Teabaggers would have horrified Rockwell, not that it matters what he thought in a general sense.

Manju: If you’re using a pre-New-Deal coalition Dem (Wilson) to try to discuss the current political situation, then we’re done.  You’re not interested in the history.  Which is fine!  But I am, so there’s not much to discuss.

Punditus Maximus:

I used Wilson because he’s as clear-cut a Progressive as one will find among Presidents. I know Liberals like to default on ideology when it comes to this subject, since (imo) its more fudgeable than Party identification. So I thought I was doing you all a favor by adopting your own methodology.

In other words, Liberals are more likely to object to me holding them responsible for say James Eastland than they would Wilson, since Eastland did not share Wilson’s progressive ideals, despite being a Dem. I disagree with this criteria since Eastland was critical to JFK’s election and was put into the line of succession by lib-dems in the 70’s, but that is the excuse Libs use to hold republicans responsible (ideological similarity).  Ergo, the myth of the “swtich” among the Eastlands, as exemplified by Strom Thurmond (who actually did switch).

History trumps ideology, imo. I don’t really care if the segregationists shared the lefts new-dealerism or the right’s anti-communism. I care who supported them when it came to segregation. But that’s not the opinion of many on the left, who think FDR, Stevenson,  JFK , etc are excluded from blame because they allegedly did not share the segregationists larger political ideology.

You seem to agree since you say you’re interested in history.  Wilson was the only pre-new-deal dem I included in my takedown, so I don’t think it changes things between us much anyway.

they allegedly did not share the segregationists larger political ideology.

FDR, who signed the order to desegregate the defense plants

Truman, who desegregated the Armed Forces at a time where there was much internal objection in said Forces to that order

JFK, who could’ve done more and whose martyrdom precludes many from thinking straight about his Administration, present company accepted

Thanks for reminding us about their lockstep devotion to the segregations POV.

There was a nasty strain of racism in the Progressive movement, but that had been mostly dropped by the 30s, and the racial horrors of WWII finished it.  At this point, the Progressive movement is deeply committed to rectifying past abuses and judging by individual qualities.

FDR sent the California Japanese-Americans to internment plants at the same time that he allowed the 442nd to fight in Europe and (as mentioned above) desegregated the defense plants.  Is it just maybe possible that it’s complicated and that we’ll have to take averages and comparisons, rather than cherry-pick anecdotes?