5 ms·

Ideologies in political parties have shifted enough that calling modern-day republicans and democrats the same as 40s republicans and democrats feels fraudulent

by munk-a 5y ago

Ideologies in political parties have shifted enough that calling modern-day republicans and democrats the same as 40s republicans and democrats feels fraudulent. Whether someone was in the wrong yesterday is less important than correcting the folks in the wrong today and doesn't excuse their current behavior in any manner. If things shift the other way and democrats start suppressing the vote I'll be just as outraged at them - regardless of whether "my guy is winning" or not.

dhritzkiv 5y ago
It's infuriating when people use the "democrats were the conservative party disenfranchising minorities" XX years ago like some sort of "ha - gotcha. Your argument is now invalid. I am very smart." revelation.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  Yup. As we all know, the modern day GOP voters famously support Lincoln and the actions of the Union Army.
coconut08 5y ago
to be absolutely clear i am not making excuses for anyone or anything. no matter who does it, trying to prevent your opponents from having access to voting is despicable. my point is to say that this isn't a party problem, a side problem or a group problem, it's a humans and power problem. people will just do stuff like this. the suggestion of the person i was responding to was that it's only a single group of people that are doing this specifically saying historically. my point is that it is a specific group right now, it was a different specific group in the past and it will be a different specfic group in the future and it's always bad. i think we almost entirely agree with each other.
- munk-a 5y ago
  I don't know if I totally agree with that though - while most parties in power around the world do take steps to cement that power though shady means it goes to a real extreme in the US - Canada certainly hasn't been free from election scandals[1]. Additionally, all sorts of authoritarians definitely do a lot worse than the US by wholly suspending elections or otherwise entirely rigging the system. That all said, for a democracy, America seems to be taking it to an extreme. And, in America at least, these voter restrictions have always historically minimized the black vote. So I do think there is one group that has been consistently quite happy with voting limitations - they aren't the republican party, but they currently find refuge under its wings. 1. This last election has been (IMO fairly) decried as a waste of taxpayer money and a move that endangered the public simply to strengthen Liberal dominance (even if it failed hilariously).
- vel0city 5y ago
  Its the same group of people though, they just changed which party they aligned with in the LBJ-Goldwater election in 1964. Take a look at the map of 1960 and a map of the election in 1968. They look the same, its just the colors got inverted.
every 5y ago
"When he signed the act he was euphoric, but late that very night I found him in a melancholy mood as he lay in bed reading the bulldog edition of the Washington Post with headlines celebrating the day. I asked him what was troubling him. 'I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come,' he said." -- Bill Moyers in his book Moyers on America on LBJ following the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill...
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  So long as we're posting second-hand quotes attributed to LBJ, here's one from Ronald Kessler: "These Ne**es, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference... I'll have them ni**rs voting Democratic for the next two hundred years."
  - paulmd 5y ago
    casual slurs aside, bettering the lives of your constituents is what politicians are supposed to do, why is that supposed to be some giant gotcha? Not just you, but in general, that is an underlying frame that many people routinely adopt - that making their constituents lives better is a dirty act designed to swing elections. God forbid people have an option to vote for someone who makes their lives better. Like: literally yes, please, actually do something that will make me want to vote for you for a generation. Unironically. I'm 100% serious. That's what you're supposed to be doing. And yeah, sure, politicians dole it out slowly so they don't have to do too much, that's not really a revelation either.
bena 5y ago
It also ignores that even then, there were Northern Democrats and Southern Democrats. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not pass along party lines. More Democrats voted to pass it than Republicans by numbers. Republicans only had 33% of the House and about 33% of the Senate. Now, Republicans did have a larger percentage of their members voting for. But when you split it by region, the picture comes clear. The old Union voted overwhelmingly to pass the act while the old Confederacy voted Nay. Northern Democrats outvoted all other groups by percentage and numbers for the act. And not a single (of the 12) Southern Republican voted for. So yeah, miss me with that "Democrats are the party of the Confederacy" stuff. The South was the party of the Confederacy.

by munk-a 5y ago

dhritzkiv 5y ago

It's infuriating when people use the "democrats were the conservative party disenfranchising minorities" XX years ago like some sort of "ha - gotcha. Your argument is now invalid. I am very smart." revelation.

UncleMeat 5y ago
Yup. As we all know, the modern day GOP voters famously support Lincoln and the actions of the Union Army.

coconut08 5y ago

to be absolutely clear i am not making excuses for anyone or anything. no matter who does it, trying to prevent your opponents from having access to voting is despicable. my point is to say that this isn't a party problem, a side problem or a group problem, it's a humans and power problem. people will just do stuff like this. the suggestion of the person i was responding to was that it's only a single group of people that are doing this specifically saying historically. my point is that it is a specific group right now, it was a different specific group in the past and it will be a different specfic group in the future and it's always bad. i think we almost entirely agree with each other.

munk-a 5y ago
I don't know if I totally agree with that though - while most parties in power around the world do take steps to cement that power though shady means it goes to a real extreme in the US - Canada certainly hasn't been free from election scandals[1]. Additionally, all sorts of authoritarians definitely do a lot worse than the US by wholly suspending elections or otherwise entirely rigging the system. That all said, for a democracy, America seems to be taking it to an extreme. And, in America at least, these voter restrictions have always historically minimized the black vote. So I do think there is one group that has been consistently quite happy with voting limitations - they aren't the republican party, but they currently find refuge under its wings. 1. This last election has been (IMO fairly) decried as a waste of taxpayer money and a move that endangered the public simply to strengthen Liberal dominance (even if it failed hilariously).
vel0city 5y ago
Its the same group of people though, they just changed which party they aligned with in the LBJ-Goldwater election in 1964. Take a look at the map of 1960 and a map of the election in 1968. They look the same, its just the colors got inverted.

every 5y ago

"When he signed the act he was euphoric, but late that very night I found him in a melancholy mood as he lay in bed reading the bulldog edition of the Washington Post with headlines celebrating the day. I asked him what was troubling him. 'I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come,' he said." -- Bill Moyers in his book Moyers on America on LBJ following the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill...

HideousKojima 5y ago
So long as we're posting second-hand quotes attributed to LBJ, here's one from Ronald Kessler: "These Ne**es, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference... I'll have them ni**rs voting Democratic for the next two hundred years."
- paulmd 5y ago
  casual slurs aside, bettering the lives of your constituents is what politicians are supposed to do, why is that supposed to be some giant gotcha? Not just you, but in general, that is an underlying frame that many people routinely adopt - that making their constituents lives better is a dirty act designed to swing elections. God forbid people have an option to vote for someone who makes their lives better. Like: literally yes, please, actually do something that will make me want to vote for you for a generation. Unironically. I'm 100% serious. That's what you're supposed to be doing. And yeah, sure, politicians dole it out slowly so they don't have to do too much, that's not really a revelation either.

bena 5y ago

It also ignores that even then, there were Northern Democrats and Southern Democrats. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not pass along party lines. More Democrats voted to pass it than Republicans by numbers. Republicans only had 33% of the House and about 33% of the Senate. Now, Republicans did have a larger percentage of their members voting for. But when you split it by region, the picture comes clear. The old Union voted overwhelmingly to pass the act while the old Confederacy voted Nay. Northern Democrats outvoted all other groups by percentage and numbers for the act. And not a single (of the 12) Southern Republican voted for. So yeah, miss me with that "Democrats are the party of the Confederacy" stuff. The South was the party of the Confederacy.