We just lost the Democratic Party for a generation.” Lyndon B. Johnson after signing the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Interestingly, almost all Congressional Republicans voted against the bill. There were a variety of insane arguments against the bill, similar to the lunatic and disingenuous arguments against Obamacare or the ACA.
One of my favorites was the argument that White barbers would be forced by the act to cut Black men’s hair. These White barbers had been cutting White men’s hair their whole life, and since Black men are a different species than White men, there is no way that these brilliant White barbers could possibly figure out the myriad intricacies of cutting a Black man’s hair.
LOL.
It did pass, however, and we not only lost the Democratic Party for a generation (actually it took some time), we are still losing the Democratic Party to this very day. And a lot of the rise of the Republican Party can be boiled down to just one word: race.
