Re: Politics OT-Re: Books Banned in Utah.

Paul S Person wrote:

On Thu, 22 Aug 2024 16:57:51 -0400, William Hyde
<wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
 

Paul S Person wrote:

On Wed, 21 Aug 2024 14:32:41 -0700, Bobbie Sellers
<blissInSanFrancisco@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
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<snippo>
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Back in the 80's, my mother (a knee-jerk Republican: mention "Kennedy"
and her right knee would jerk and she'd say "Chappaquiddick") confided
in me that the only reason FDR served four terms was because the Dems
had /suspended the two term limit/ so he could do so. The reality, of
course, is that the two-term limit came later, mostly to prevent a
recurrence of a four-term Presidency.
>
As I've said before about the Republican Party: the rot runs deep,
very deep indeed.

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I think I have covered that.
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But the Democratic Party was racist until Kennedy Time.
He was the only president I ever bothered to gaze upon in
San Diego not long before I got kicked out and he got murdered.
My friends in Sacramento were absolutely destroyed by the
assassination but I was too intent on surviving with a UD. And
so once more I was out of step with the mood of the time. I
am really good at that.

>
The Southern Democrats ("Dixiecrats") were. How badly that tinged the
rest of the party I have no idea.

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As Caro describes it in "Master of the Senate" the Southern Democratic
Caucus was segregationist, with (IIRC) twenty two votes, with at the
time two southern democratic senators being against segregation.
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That was not enough to avoid cloture of a filibuster.  But they cut a
deal with western (but not west coast) republicans.  In return for
southern support of federal funding for western infrastructure, the
western and midwest republican senators would not support a cloture
vote, thus giving the south the power to filibuster anything.
>
It was this alliance that killed, e.g. the original 1957 civil rights
bill, though it was supported by east and west coast republicans,
northern democrats, by Eisenhower and Nixon.
>
Humphrey, Jackson, and other liberal senators were glad to get something
called "civil rights" passed, and LBJ needed it for his presidential
ambitions, but in actual fact the act achieved nothing.

 Actually, I read an article (how long ago and in what source I do not
know) that LBJ fought to get the provisions on voting tried in
/Federal/ courts rather than /State/ courts. The jury pools were
different, and the Federal juries were less likely to side with the
accused when African-American voters were being suppressed.
 IOW, he (and others) ensured that the law had some /teeth/.

LBJ was in a tough situation.  He owed everything, even his senate seat, to deeply conservative democrats.  He had the strong support of the segregationist caucus.  To be president he needed some liberal credentials, and this bill was a major part of that.  But 90% of the original bill had to be discarded to gain the acquiescence of the southern democratic caucus.
It failed, though.  Liberals and moderates did not take to him.  He never understood that when you destroy people as he did Leland Olds, for example, other people actually remember. So he had zero chance of the nomination in 1960.
Caro was not able to find a record of any prosecutions under this law. Certainly there weren't many.
William Hyde