xenon13 wrote:
The Democrats and Republicans have effectively switched places over the decades. Important events in the swap would be William Jennings Bryan winning the 1896 Democratic nomination which served to move the party to the left, though a rural-based left before socialism was associated with godlessness. Theodore Roosevelt promulgated a more progressive (though imperialist) Republican administration after the McKinley assassination but his successor Taft's making himself a small government laissez-faire type, his ability to win the nomination in 1912 and Theodore Roosevelt's running that year as a Progressive helped move Progressives away from the Republicans whose next presidents were of the supply side bubble economics type. It was only with FDR that these progressive were solidly in the Democratic camp and then the southern whites were hived off of the Democratic camp with civil rights and Nixon's southern strategy in 1968 and 1972. The northeastern elites in the Republicans became stigmatised as "Rockefeller Republicans" and this camp weakened over the subsequent years.
Yes. Imagine trying to explain this to Europeans, who typically have "a conservative party", and a "labor" party ( left and right- simple and easy to choose).
For example try explainng the post War Black Civil Rights Movement:
"thats when Blacks fought for equal rights and got help from their greatest ally- the Democratic Party.
An ally they desperately needed to overcome the worst and most implaccable enemy of the Black Civil Rights Movement: the Democratic Party!"
Or try explaining how the Party of Lincoln, who launched the "War of Northern Agression" to conquer the Whites in the South has now become almost esclusively a Party of Whites in the South! Or why that party, which was founded on the sole issue of opposing Slavery, has virtually no support from the modern descendants of the slaves lincoln freed.