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Originally Posted by SamInTheLoop
Thanks for the filling in the actual policy details that prompted this jaw-dropping shift in the MS vote over one cycle. One of those historic facts that the brain still has trouble believing even with repeated documentation and explanation.
Even without the details, one just knew it was widespread racism in the electorate behind it in one shape or form.
Perhaps this was also an early precursor and unfortunate long-term electoral strategy 'instructive' for Rs for the eventual rolling out of their Southern Strategy....
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Absolutely a precursor. Those Southern Democrats were conservative on most issues and tolerated FDR because he advanced a level of infrastructure programs that helped bring the rural South into the 20th Century. The thing is, a great amount of them also opposed other New Deal legislation but Roosevelt pacified them by not pushing stronger on civil rights issues.
Which is funny because FDR was a Yankee Liberal. But it was actually the semi-Southern Truman, who was a member of the KKK when he was a young man, who didn't seem to care two shits about what southern politicians thought of him. FDR was a consensus builder, Truman was the exact opposite.
The split was only temporary.
Strom Thurmond, who had run as a Dixiecrat in 1948, rejoined the Democratic Party when he decided to run for Senate in South Carolina. At the 1952 convention, the Southern Democrats were seated and John Sparkman of Alabama was selected as the party's vice presidential nominee, which helped sooth over any lasting anger from the 1948 election.
Against Eisenhower, Adlai Stevenson II (who was pressured to accept the nomination by Truman) of Illinois, won back the South against Eisenhower.
But the margins were nowhere near what they had been prior to Truman.
Stevenson won Mississippi with 60% of the vote. To show how much had changed post-1948, even Al Smith, the Catholic Democrat from New York, who lost in a landslide to Hoover in 1928, won Mississippi with 82% of the vote.
Stevenson won most the South but, as I said, it wasn't by the same margins as prior to 1948. Tennessee went to Eisenhower, as did Virginia. In 1956, with Stevenson again running, Kentucky went Republican and has remained Republican for the most part.
In 1960, Kennedy did about as poorly as Truman in the South, despite LBJ being on the ticket, as Mississippi and Alabama gave their electors to Virginia Senator Harry Byrd, while Kennedy was able to carry Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, he lost Florida.
That was the last election, until Carter in 1976, the Democrats won a majority of the Southern states.
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