When Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he supposedly told an aide, “We (Democrats) have lost the South for a generation.” If he really said that, he missed it by a couple of generations. After 50 years, the South is still solidly Republican. That’s a price Johnson and the Democrats paid for doing something morally right.
In recent years, too, Democrats have traded victories in policy for electoral ones. The passage of the Affordable Care Act, combined with a still struggling economy, led to the Republican wave of 2010. Add in the battle over marriage equality and the 2014 election became another sweeping victory for the GOP.
Democrats have paid a steep price at the ballot box for victories that provide equality and protection for members our society. History will tell us they were prices worth paying. Health care reform is very much a work in progress but it’s already given access to care to 20 million Americans. The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act effectively ended the horrendous Jim Crow era and the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage quality begins treating members of LGBT community like everybody else, at least as far as family structure is concerned. These fights are far from over, but, in the aftermath of these victories, the battlefield changed for the better.
The next fight that could cost Democrats in elections is the fight over Confederate monuments. It’s certainly past time for them to be removed from public property, but the battle could be painful if Democrats make it a central part of their message moving forward. According to an NPR/PBS/Marist poll, 62% of Americans think “statues honoring leaders of the Confederacy” should remain in place. A plurality of African-Americans, 44%, agree with this sentiment.
I doubt that more than 60% of Americans sympathize with the Confederacy. It’s just that the vast majority of them don’t care. Removing Confederate statues is not something they think about. Those statues are relics of the past that hold little symbolism for most people anymore.
And that’s where Democrats get in trouble. If they make the 2018 election a referendum on removing statues, they will look like they’re out of touch with the majority of people who are more worried about jobs, wages and their personal economic security. The knock on Democrats is that they’re more attentive to the concerns of activists than those of middle class Americans.
The monuments need to be moved, but Democrats should tread carefully. The battle over monuments is not comparable to the ones for civil rights, marriage equality or health care. The primary focus of their message moving toward 2018 should remain economic. A Democratic victory at the polls next year is the fastest way to move those statues.
Donald Trump and the Republicans want very much to be talking about the monuments and the Civil War. It plays to their base and distracts from their failures. It also highlights their criticism that Democrats spend too much time calling people racists and too little time worrying about the middle class.
Since the tragedy in Charlottesville the discussion has been more about the reemergence of the white supremacist movement and its relationship with Trump, to his detriment. Now, he’s trying to shift the conversation to monuments. It’s not a difficult pivot. Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, said yesterday, “If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.” After 2016, Democrats should heed his warning.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Since you have written this article there have been polls and they do indeed indicate indifference to the issue. It is as a person said ” a statue that sits at the courthouse and I do not really see hate or heritage I see marble. I only go to the court house to pay the occasional traffic ticket so I do not really think about it. I don’t see why we ever put it up but since it is up I see no reason to take it down I think people need to worry about real issues.” This is what you are fighting and there is a lot of it out there. I also have seen that most the country does not like the Klan or the Nazis, I dont think much of the country ever did. But when you take those two groups out the equation they do not really like liberal protesters either. To people on the left who wish to make an argument they need to understand this Ronald Reagan was a very popular President and he most likely always will be. Donald Trump is not a popular president and I doubt he ever will be. The party needs to understand that fighting the Reagan legacy is pointless just like still trying to fight so many of yesterdays fights is. But fighting to right here and right now is very important.
Yes, the monuments are important, but getting into a non-stop battle over them is counterproductive. I would also say it has to be handled locally, or it will become a national albatross thrown at anyone, any thought, any policy that is remotely progressive or liberal. Far better a serious conversation about why so many people are falling further and further behind in an economy with such low unemployment. That issue affects poor whites, as well as people of color.
I recsll in the late 60’s being part of an effort to start a union for the employees of a state university in a southern state I won’t advertise. It was my first experience at trying to read a budget for anything, but I plowed through pages of material I half understood because I was certain that upper level staff at that university had received a substantial raise in that budget a couple of months earlier. I was right and I also found the pay scales for the grounds and janitorial staff, which was a primary target of the union effort. It did not take a genius to figure out what color person held which jobs. One had only to look around the campus. Those of color got no raise; the whites got a nickle, which even percentage wise was a pittance compared to the president and his staff’s raises. Fortunately, the information on those pages was very clear and simple. It was very effective in getting two groups, who never really saw their plight as similar, to come together and begin to talk.
Eventually there was a union, although I left and do not know how successful it was. I am certain that it did not eliminate racism, but I like to believe it eased some day to day friction and perhaps made a few lives a bit better. Today the divisions seem harsh and extreme, but are they actually any worse than in the late ’60s? To some extent, I think they are. The economic fears from 2008 and the real loss of jobs that were never regained, combined with social media, has contributed to extremes. A blunt acknowledgement of that from the Democrats is necessary before those individuals will listen. And I doubt Bernie Sanders is the right choice for that for most of them. Not sure who is, and that is also a major problem for the Democrats. My gut feeling is that need alone reinforces the necessity for working locally where it is more likely that voices will be found that can cross that age, style, geography (and sometimes gender) divide.
Democrats would be smart to take the list of accomplishments in Thomas’ article and start reminding everyone of them. I don’t know how they convert the business community, which insists on believing they do better with the GOP. Personally, I would challenge that group to explain how they will continue to have customers if wages continue their slow stagnation. This economy is based on people buying. Exports are not an answer. The math does not work, and the majority of businesses in this country do not export their products or services.
Hoping that the GOP will implode is NOT a strategy, and dull, boring slogans are precisely that.
Tom,
Moving with care is rarely an error,
However, here’s a thoughtful piece by a recognized scholar, my gracious, at UNCCH of all places, that I think helps place a bit of context on the monuments issue:
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/the-big-idea/2017/8/18/16165160/confederate-monuments-history-charlottesville-white-supremacy
I believe we do need to understand that these statues were NOT broadly supported (among whites, need I say) symbols honoring memories of local “heroes”. The preponderances of these symbols were NOT erected until the outcome of the rebellion was over by upwards of a half century.
For context, how many, do you think, of your readership has any knowledge of Wilmington in 1898?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_1898
worth a glance, fellow North Carolinians. 😉
Uncle Grumpy
Looks like we won’t have Steve Bannon to kick around anymore. One neo-Nazi down but many more to go.
Bill Moyers, who was LBJ’s press secretary, confirmed during a Thursday night appearance on MSNBC that President Johnson did, indeed, say the Democratic Party had lost the South because of the Civil Rights Act. History will judge that President Johnson and our country made the right decision, despite the political cost, and the same can be said for the Affordable Care Act. Now we are in jeopardy of having both of those landmark pieces of legislation undone in the name of hard-hearted ideology and political expediency.