The Partisan Divide on Issues

[Bob Butler 54]

(02-05-2021, 02:13 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The Parties have not changed much. Trump has taken Republicans further to the right, and has only brought out the simmering bigotry that was there since the sixties, including from the Southern strategy and the Goldwater candidacy.

During the Gilded Age and through the FDR, Truman, Ike period, the Democrats remained supporters of Jim Crow.  They were progressive in many ways, but remained the party of the south to the Republican party of the elites.  When LBJ went for the black vote, supported the civil rights movement, supported the war on poverty, things began to shift.  It had been a conflict between the party of the elites and the party of workers, between the party of the south and the party of the north.  It shifted when the progressives became progressive on race too.

With the southern strategy, the elites and the racists came together in the same party.

For years the combination of elite money and racist votes kept the Republican unraveling party dominant.  It seems now the money and votes aren’t working.  Black Lives Matter has brought the majority firmly against racism, and the money hasn’t helped enough.  What we are seeing today is in part the worst of the racists hanging with Trump.  Black Lives Matter won.  The racists are making a big stink trying to keep themselves alive.

Many racist organizations were involved in the capitol insurrection and supporting Trump.  The reds are not so much against democracy, but for white supremacy in America and the Republican Party.  Democracy is just less important to them, an accidental casualty they believe they can work around.

Biden has a bunch of easy to hit issues: COVID, the economy, systematic racism, red violence, and global warming.  Taking action on each of them is popular enough.  The Republican Party of obstruction, of not solving problems, is on the wrong side of each problem and the problem solving mood of a crisis.  If he can make significant gains overall, and he should, he will pick up the ground he need for a clear majority in 2022.  

Racism won’t go away.  It is too long imbedded in the culture for that.  But it looks like the war between the elite and racists elements of the Republican Party will destroy both.

At least I hope so.