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

Paul S Person wrote:

On Sat, 24 Aug 2024 18:32:03 -0400, William Hyde
<wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
 

Paul S Person wrote:

On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 19:11:16 -0400, William Hyde
<wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
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Paul S Person wrote:

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

>
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.
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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.
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IOW, he (and others) ensured that the law had some /teeth/.

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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.
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Caro was not able to find a record of any prosecutions under this law.
Certainly there weren't many.

>
I wouldn't have been able to comment on it if someone else hadn't
brought it up. Bing was obsessed with the Civil Rights Act of 1965
(which, IIRC, LBJ was also instrumental in getting passed, this time
as President).
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The article considered the 1957 bill to be an important step. I don't
recall if it discussed how it was used.

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It was an important step indeed.  First, because powerless as it was in
application, it was the first civil rights act passed since 1875. The
segregationists would never have let it pass did they not think that LBJ
was one of their own.
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And while its provisions may never have been enforced, they were now
there in law, which made their expansion a possibility.  It may well be
that simply by existing it had some effect on potential malefactors.  I
don't know.
>
Also, the original 1957 bill formed much of the material of the 65 bill.
LBJ would have liked to pass the 57 bill as it was originally written -
and that would have gone a long way to repair his reputation among
moderates and liberals - but that was quite impossible then.

 All this is very interesting.
 1957 was, of course, back when politics was the art of the possible.
 Now it is the art of screaming, yelling, and
holding-my-breath-till-my-face-turns-blue.
 I hate to sound like every other ancient curmudgeon, but that appears
to be where I am.

If you have an interest in  political history I strongly recommend Caro's books, both the one volume book on Robert Moses and the (so far) five volume work on LBJ.  The sixth of which is in a race with "The winds of Winter" to determine which will come out when I am too senile to read it.
The above is covered in "Master of the Senate" which is more about politics and less about LBJ personally than the earlier books.
William Hyde