I find the idea of the “Southern Strategy” to be counter-intuitive as well as self-serving for its proponents. First, under what circumstances would you swap p

I find the idea of the “Southern Strategy” to be counter-intuitive as well as self-serving for its proponents. First, under what circumstances would you swap political parties? This is an exceptionally rare circumstance; I don’t see how it could ever happen in any kind of significant way. People change to third parties (eg whigs to Republicans) but leftists and rightists rarely “switch sides”. Party affiliations are a big basket of beliefs, not just single issue. It’s self serving in that the popular narrative is all the “bad” Democrats (southern racists who blocked school integration, civil rights, etc) all left for the Republican Party, leaving the Democrats racist-free. Pretty convenient. In reality I think that there was very little party switching; racism just became politically anathema in the civil rights era (which is one of the greatest things about America) and all the OG racists - the Robert Byrds etc. - had to stop being publicly racist. This and shifting cultural norms meant that Boomers were much less racist than previous generations and Gen X even more so.