I had no idea that the South used to be a Dem stronghold, or just how badly Dems have been slaughtered in landslides.
There has never been a true Dem landslide of 400+. Clinton came closest, but there's been nothing to match the total wipe outs inflicted on Dukakis and McGovern.
And Abe Lincoln was a Republican. "Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
That signing was basis of the GOP Southern Strategy.
The history of American politics is largely a history of conservative industrialists and capitalists with brief periods of pretty strong liberalism thrown in when things got way off track.
The Dems were the party of slavery and, later, Jim Crow right up to the 1960s. Johnson said, just before he signed the Civil Rights Act, "We've lost the South for a generation." It's been three generations, actually. Might finally start to see some daylight tomorrow (ironically, with a black nominee). Dems did the right thing and paid for it by losing a lot of for forty years.
But, really, we've been in a conservative swing for forty years. Prior to Nixon, it was a liberal swing, even under guys like Ike. Now we seem to be at the very front end of the next realignment, which looks like a liberal one. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
