it is 1905, youre a rural southern poor....

[WalterMitty]

how do you explain your presidential voting over the last decade:

1892: cleveland
1896: bryan
1900: bryan
1904: parker

yes, they are all democrats, but very different democrats.

i guess what im asking is, wouldnt mckinley and TR do better in the south if the poors would have analyzed the positions of the candidates, rather than re-fighting the civil war?

[12th Doctor]

I would probably vote for which ever politician railed the most against Abe Lincoln.

[Rob]

i guess what im asking is, wouldnt mckinley and TR do better in the south if the poors would have analyzed the positions of the candidates, rather than re-fighting the civil war?

No. Remember that the GOP was the party of Big Business; also, they tended to favor voting rights for southern blacks.

[WalterMitty]

i guess what im asking is, wouldnt mckinley and TR do better in the south if the poors would have analyzed the positions of the candidates, rather than re-fighting the civil war?

No. Remember that the GOP was the party of Big Business; also, they tended to favor voting rights for southern blacks.

maybe in theory.  but i dont think either mckinley or roosevelt went out of their way for black voting rights.

[dazzleman]

how do you explain your presidential voting over the last decade:

1892: cleveland
1896: bryan
1900: bryan
1904: parker

yes, they are all democrats, but very different democrats.

i guess what im asking is, wouldnt mckinley and TR do better in the south if the poors would have analyzed the positions of the candidates, rather than re-fighting the civil war?

Maybe, but the south after the civil war is a perfect example of what happens when people put their bitterness of the past, and their desire to hurt other people, above the drive to do well for themselves.

This is one of the most destructive human tendencies, and we see examples of it all over the world today, in the middle east, Africa, and in some segments of our own society.

That desire to harm other people, and blame them for your own misfortune, is highly self-destructive, and leads to poor results, as we saw in the post-civil war south, and in countless other places and situations.

This way of thinking is not one that lends itself to rational analysis.

It is no accident that the south has done much better since they started to abandon their main focus from the first 100 years after the civil war.

[Erc]

If you're from the South, you vote for Democrats.  You start voting for other guys, you open the door for a lot of 'nasty' stuff, so it was thought.  The supposed spectre of the 'black rule' during reconstruction was still pretty heavily hanging over the South--especially in 1905.

Plus, the better the Democrats do in any race, the more influence the South has congressionally.

Although by 1905 most states have some amount of disenfranchisement going on, so you may not even be able to vote...


This certainly wasn't guaranteed, though...everyone in the South hated Cleveland after his second term---and I wouldn't be surprised that, if Cleveland had been renominated in 1896, a significant portion of the South [South Carolina and Mississippi excepted] would have voted for some independent candidate, probably Tom Watson.

[Sam Spade]

Also don't forget that what inspired many of the Jim Crow laws across the South was the development of another party, the Populist party, during the 1880s.  It made a very strong impression in Southern politics in those years leading up to 1896. (read the book on Tom Watson, for example).

The Democratic party in the South was so afraid the Populist party developing huge wings that this indirectly led to disenfranchisement of the blacks and supporting the nomination of WJ Bryan to break the party's back.

The Democrats were very careful after this to make sure any breaking from the party in the South was no longer tolerated after this.