Talk Elections

I was recently thinking of a few ironies in the American landscape.  For example:


-- Massachusetts began life as a deeply conservative colony of Puritan settlers.  Today it is a deeply liberal state of predominantly Catholics.

-- The notoriously anti-immigrant states of Texas and Arizona used to be part of Mexico.

-- Las Vegas, a.k.a. 'Sin City', began life as a Mormon colony.


Anybody have any more?

Oklahoma being a hotbed of the ALP and CPUSA in the early 20th century

Yeah, that's a good one.

Another one is that the only two states to stay loyally Republican in 1912 are now polar opposite ends of the partisan spectrum a hundred years later.

John Kerry's best county in 2004 (unless you count DC) and Obama's third best county (again excluding DC) was also Coolidge's third best county in 1924.

In 1932 Hoover lost in a landslide, but did manage to carry Pennsylvania...thanks to his strength in Philadelphia and the immediate surrounding areas.

Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the union as sort of a "trade" agreement, with the expectation that Alaska would be a reliably Democratic state and Hawaii a reliably Republican one.

Connecticut 1965: No you can't have birth control
Connecticut 2008: Sure, gay marriage is cool

Vermont's impressive swing from hardcore Republican to hardcore Democratic, and that Patrick Leahy is the only Democrat they've ever elected to the Senate.

Before 2008 who would've ever predicted that the first black President and first President born in Hawaii would be the same person?

Or first black President and first President to have lived in Asia?

1970 Connecticut US Senate election:
You have the incumbent pro-war Democrat running as an Independent, Thomas Dodd, endorsed by his son Chris Dodd
You have the anti-war Democrat, who was endorsed by Joe Lieberman
And you have the winner, the Republican Lowell Weicker

2006 Connecticut US Senate election:
You have the incumbent pro-war Democrat running as an Independent, Joe Lieberman
You have the anti-war Democrat, Ned Lamont, endorsed by both Chris Dodd and Lowell Weicker
And you have some Republican no one cares about

Herbert Hoover was black?!

In 1960, the poorest county in the US, Jackson County, KY, had the highest percentage vote for Nixon in the US (91% I believe).

One of the highest trends against McCain in 2008, was a county called "Maverick" (TX).

1990 PA Gov: Casey (D) landslide, loses only Montgomery County.

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Considering it was a pro-life Democrat vs. a pro-choice Republican, the map is pretty fitting.

The conservative southern congressional district that elected a black Republican in 2010 nearly elected a lesbian Democrat in 2008.

Strom Thurmond jumping to the "Party of Lincoln" because of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The prominence of Mormon Democratic politicians, particularly in the U.S. Senate, given how lopsided the Mormon vote is for Republicans.

That Arlen Specter, a Jewish Republican from Philadelphia, was born in the same heartlandier-than-thou town as Bob Dole.

Arlen Specter was born in Wichita and Bob Dole was born in Russell.

The 'candidate of amnesty, abortion, and acid' whom Nixon buried in 1972 being from a Great Plains state and often coming across as some sort of Methodist preacher has got to count for something.

Of the 11 or 13 ex-Confederate states, Virginia swung from most Republican (1976) to most Democratic (2008).

My bad. Specter moved to Russell as a kid and graduated from Russell H.S.

Really! In that case the point stands. Weird.

DeKalb County was one of Carter's worst home state counties in 1976. Now it is one of Obama's best counties in the state.

Speaking of Mormon cities, San Francisco used to be predominantly Mormon.

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The "yore" and "of" is just the icing on the cake.

Oh yeah also "Goverment".

From the first presidential election Republicans competed in (1856) to 1988, Vermont voted for the GOP candidate in every pres election except 1964.  Vermont also elected all Republican governors from 1855 until the election of Democrat Philip Hoff in 1962.  However, Vermont has voted overwhelmingly Democrat in every presidential election since 1992.

In the first half of the 20th century, New Hampshire was probably the least Republican state in New England (albeit still pretty strongly Republican).  Now it's probably the most Republican (it's now a swing state).

Perhaps the greatest irony of all: blacks vote 90% Democrat, when the Democrats fought consistently throughout history against their freedom and equality and Republicans who fought for it.

Yes, it's quite ironic that blacks today care more about economic issues and which President had the Civil Rights Act passed than what positions the parties took in the 19th century. ::)

The land of the free nickname for a country of prudes.

Ah, this thread is unfortunate.

That's probably fake.

The reality is worse.

Those positions continues into most of the 20th century.  Johnson was an outspoken racist who only signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act because of public support for it.  Shortly after signing the bill, he was reported to have said to a group of Southern governors, "I'll have those nig**rs voting Democrat for the next 200 years."  He opposed nearly every civil rights bill before that, including voting againstthe 1957 Civil Rights Act and fighting to make it nothing but a nominal piece of legislation that meant little in reality.

Fine. We're not in 'most of the 20th century' any more.

Al, you know I love you, but do you ever really say anything at all any more?

Only when there's something worth saying, as a general rule.

True, but the history still matters.  Remember, "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."  It's partially because of this history that I am a proud Republican.  And please don't give me these excuses like, "the segregationist Democrats all became Republicans" or "Republicans pandered to racists in the Southern strategy."  The only major segregationist to switch from Democrat to Republican was Strom Thurmond, and the Southern Strategy was an attempt to convince pro-civil rights Southern moderates to vote Republican as a protest against the segregationist policies of the Democrats:
 http://www.wnd.com/2002/12/16477/

This is an article by Pat Buchanan, the author of the Southern strategy, that covers this subject.
But I'm glad you mention economic issues.  The Democratic Party promotes a victim mentality for blacks to accept and that makes them dependent on the government for help.  In fact, FDR, the first Democratic presidential candidate to win a majority of the black vote (in his first reelection in 1936), promoted the New Deal to blacks with the slogan, "let Jesus lead me and welfare feed me."  Not only is this victim mentality racist, but it is the antithesis of true civil rights, which says that anyone regardless of race, sex, religion, ethnicity, etc. can succeed on their own because of the principle enshrined by our Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal."

Jesus H. Christ.

Look, precious few people in the last 40 years are willing to come out and state "Hey, I'm exploiting racism to advance my candidate's career!" Pat Buchanan is one of the few people in public view shameless enough to parade his racism around, and even he knows he has to pretend he doesn't mean it. The idea that the Southern Strategy was an enlightened civil rights-based approach is just... so... impossible to deal with.

1. No.
2. Regardless of who did and didn't individually switch, those people are no longer in the Democratic Party.


Actually, thinking of welfare as exclusively or even necessarily primarily a 'black thing' is racist, but whatever.

Welfare is not only a black thing, but Democrats through their campaigning to blacks, have made it appear as one.

In Nixon's first inaugural address (1969): he spoke out in strong support for civil rights at least twice.  He appointed more racial minorities than any of his predecessors (including LBJ), increased the civil rights enforcement budget, sped up the rate of school desegregation in the South, and much more.  It would have made no sense for Nixonnto go after the white racists in 1968 because the vast bulk of those voters were already supporting George Wallace.  (Interesting tidbit: in three of the five Wallace states, Hubert Humphrey beat Nixon for second, and in all of the Nixon states in the South, Wallace and Humphrey's combined total exceeded Nixon's, suggesting that Wallace was splitting the Democratic vote.)
None of those people are in the Democratic Party anymore because most of them are dead.  But for the sake of it, segregationist Ernest "Fritz" Holings (SC) was serving in the Senate as a Democrat as recently as 2004.  In 1993, he made a reference to African potentates at the Law of the Sea conference getting "a good square meal in Geneva" instead of eating each other.  He also has referred to Mexicans as "wetbacks" and a Jewish Senator as "the Senator from B'nai B'rith."  He never became a Republican (or a member of any other party, for that matter.)  Senator Robert Byrd (WV), a former Kleagle in the KKK who helped lead the filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, used the term "white nig**r" in a 2001 interview on Fox News.  At the time of his death in 2010, he was still one of the Senate's leading Democrats.

Actually no, that was Republicans through their campaigning against welfare.

The Dems did the same thing in the 1930s with the "let Jesus lead me and welfare feed me" slogan.  I support welfare as long as it makes people independent rather than dependent.  Anyway, I would like to get back on topic, please.  I have another irony: in 1932, Hoover lost every state outside the Northeast.  Now the Northeast tends to lean more Democrat in presidential elections.

The last former slaveholder to become President was Ulysses S. Grant.

From which gutter do all these mindless, mindless, mindless cretins crawl out of?

Also, as I hinted at earlier, Americans need to learn what irony means in order to defeat unfair stereotypes.

When was he a slaveholder? 

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you here, but African Americans are disproportionately recipients of welfare programs. If you for instance were to for cut government subsidized housing, the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of the world would be out screaming racism since blacks would be disproportionately affected. Likewise many Democrats assume that requiring voters to show a photo ID is racist because it would disproportionately affect African Americans. By this logic it is racist to say more blacks are on welfare but not racist to say more blacks are unable to afford a photo ID.

I'm just saying it goes both ways.

More blacks are on welfare as a percentage of blacks, but more whites are on welfare as a percentage of welfare recipients (then again, there are a lot more whites than blacks in contemporary America).

When he lived in Missouri (a slave state) on his father-in-law's farm.

Care to provide a cite for your claim?  All I have been able to find is that it was indeed a Depression-era slogan, but one coined by blacks themselves in thanks for no longer literally starving.  I came across nothing to indicate it was a party-invented slogan, let alone one used by FDR himself.