Posts Tagged ‘race card’

The Left’s Southern Article of Faith Collides with the Data. (updated and bumped and recovered from the Wayback Machine due to Cynical Publius)

Posted: August 10, 2026 by datechguy in dablog, elections, politics, race card
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Prologue (8/10/26)

Today on X I noted this post from a very excellent Cynical Publius

When I saw this tweet I instantly remembered my post where I researched all of this however that was one of the posts that disappeared when I started having major blog problems (we’ll talk about the why’s for those troubles some other times) but I spent an hour or two researching & found a tweet linking to the post & was able to find the updated and bumped version from 2020.

As this lie about the south suddenly changing side with LBJ is Gospel to the left to this day rather than simply reinserting it into the sport when it was first posted I figured it deserved a full new post so here is it, unseen for years my data on when the southern states actually went GOP.

(Note, this post was originally posted on Aug 17th 2017. However the subject came up during my appearance on fault lines radio this morning so I thought I’d repost and bump it so listeners could see the actual post and data I was referring to.)

If you are even slightly a leftist such as the folks I covered on the Boston Common this weekend one of the things that you believe without question is that the only reason why the GOP has control of legislatures in the south is because of a backlash over the civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965.
This has been an article of faith for years and it’s quite handy when you want to explain away uncomfortable electoral defeats. Why woo voters when you can simply cry “racism”.

It’s an easy to sell argument, after all the pre 1964 south was called the solid south for a reason. Through 1892 no former slave state (including border states) voted for a GOP presidential candidate. No state of the old confederacy voted GOP post reconstruction till Tennessee voted Harding 1920. Through 1955 when the fight for civil rights started looming large the GOP only managed to take states in the old confederacy two more times once when Eisenhower after winning World War to managed to take Texas, Tennessee, Florida, Virginia and once in the Herbert Hoover landslide of 1928 that added North Carolina to that list.

But the real power of the Democrats in the south wasn’t in presidential elections where they were outnumbered. It was in the state legislatures, where, with the exception of Missouri which was pretty competitive in the first half of the 20th century A republican speaker of the House in the old south and most of the old slave states (I’m missing data for Delaware) just didn’t exist.

And then came Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson

In 1957 Johnson in an effort “sanitize” himself on civil rights for a presidential run pushed through the first civil rights bill post reconstruction. When he became president after JFK’s murder in 1963 he managed to get the Civil Rights act of 1964 passed doing so with only 8 votes from the old confederacy in the house and none in the senate, he followed that up with the Voting Rights act in 1965 and declaring that he would secure the black vote for Democrats for the next 2 centuries (although he used somewhat different phrasing describing the black vote, employing a word rhyming with “trigger”).

It is at this point that according to our friends on the left that the old solid racist south (including many of the slave holding border states) decided to abandon the Democrat party and started voting GOP

However there is one problem that stands in the way of that argument: The facts.

As Tip O’Neill once said all politics is local and nothing better reflects the feelings of a local electorate than a vote for a state legislator. So if the left’s meme is to be believed it shouldn’t have taken more than a few two year election cycles for a combination of mass defections and outraged old racists to fill the south with GOP speakers in their houses. So let’s take a look at a chart that lists all the old slaveholding states and see how quickly those racist southerners and old segregationists managed to flip their states to their new favorite party.

[table id=1 ]

As you can see when the data is presented the left’s article of faith runs smack dab of a factual cliff.

With the exception of a two year period of in Tennessee when a democrat defector gave the GOP the house for one term, No state of the old confederacy elected a GOP house until 1995 and even with that happened in North and South Carolina, North Carolina flipped back to the Democrats the very next election and stayed there until 2011.

Of those states only one other (Florida) joined South Carolina as a solid GOP state in the 20th century five of the states flipped this decade. And think about it. If you believe our friends on the left then Alabama the state where Martin Luther King wrote is famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail and Mississippi the state where the famous case of the murder of civil rights workers dramatized in the film Mississippi Burning took place in the 60’s were so apparently so outraged over the Civil Rights act, the Voting Rights act and LBJ that their voters they waited nearly 2 1/2 generations to vote GOP.

That’s simply not credible.

Now as this is such an article faith for our Democrat friends they will sooner imagine armies of ancient segregationists bussed from Nursing Homes on election day each years than believe the data.

Because there is a much more credible explanation as to why the left is losing the South that’s staring them in the face but that’s a post for later this week.

Update:  Heard back from the Delaware legislative librarian 9/21.  She was out on Friday but when she got back she kindly provided me both house and senate info from 1965 to present that I’ve used to update my table.  Many Thanks

The national media failed on Biden, the Chicago media failed on Mayor Brandon Johnson

Posted: December 22, 2024 by John Ruberry in crime, education, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.” Fyodor Dostoevsky. 

“‘Many are the strange chances of the world,” said Mithrandir, “and help shall oft come from the hands of the weak when the Wise falter.'” The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien.

A blockbuster story by the Wall Street Journal last week laid bare what most readers of Da Tech Guy have known since 2019. That Joe Biden was senile and in not in any way able to serve as president.

The mainstream media, which claims to be the protector of the public and the teller of the truth, either ignored, minimized, or on occasion, even verbally attacked people who claimed otherwise. 

We were right, they were wrong.

The optics and stakes are different in Chicago, and in one way, the stakes are higher, as opposed to the Biden so-called presidency. Because Brandon Johnson, who was a defund the police radical in 2020, is mayor of Chicago and he’s ultimately in charge of public safety 2.7 million Chicagoans.

And Johnson minimizes criminality. But he maximizes racial discord, frequently turning criticism of him as a bigoted attack.

After a mini-riot last year, which apologists call “street takeovers,” Branjo dismissed the lawlessness. “They’re young, sometimes they make silly decisions,” he said. Johnson also stressed that it was wrong to “demonize” these real-life droogs.

The Wall Street Journal says Johnson is America’s worst mayor.

Prior to his election as mayor, Johnson was Cook County board commissioner, which is a part-time job. The board is a rubber-stamp body for Cook County Board president, Boss Toni Preckwinkle, the chair of the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization, aka, the Chicago Machine.

Johnson was also a longtime paid organizer–and that means radical activist–for the far-left Chicago Teachers Union. It was their money–and their door-knockers–who put Branjo into the mayor’s office.

Yesterday, I saw this X post from former Chicago Tribune columnist, Eric Zorn, a liberal.

What an embarrassing failure @ChicagosMayor has turned out to be. This is shamefully hamhanded and uncollaborative.

Two days ago, in a classic Friday news dump stunt–and five days before Christmas–the Board of Education, all of whom were recently named by Johnson to replace the other members Johnson named, fired Chicago Public Schools CPO Pedro Martinez. That old board refused to fire Martinez, a Lori Lightfoot holdeover, because he stood his ground by refusing to take out a “payday” loan to pay for big raises for Chicago Teachers Union members.

Next month, per a new state law, a new board replaces the not-so-old board.

If Zorn warned about Johnson shilling for the Chicago Teachers Union over the needs of Chicagoans, I somehow missed it. I don’t recall a single mainstream, meaning liberal, Chicago journalist sounding the alarm that a leftist fox would soon be guarding the henhouse.

However, many Chicagoans, most of whom likely voted for Johnson’s moderate opponent, Paul Vallas, saw this disaster coming. There just were not enough of them to prevent this fiasco.

Martinez was fired Friday night, but he may stick around for six more months.

CPS bonds are already rated as junk.

The national media didn’t do its job vetting a sick old man running for president. And it mostly ignored Senile Joe’s many senior moments.

The Chicago media looked the other way as Branjo successfully campaigned for mayor.

But the warning signs were obvious.

A Chicago alderwoman, Silvana Tabares, summed up Johnson and his Board of Education debacle perfectly.

“You’re not just firing a CEO. You are intentionally clearing a way to saddle taxpayers with billions in costs, and the district and yourselves personally with costly litigation,” the alderwoman said. “You are being used. The mayor is a walking conflict of interest.”

I saw it coming and so did many others: Johnson is indeed a walking conflict of interest.

The Chicago media is an embarrassing failure.

Which brings me to this point: Is the local media in other towns and cities as bad as it is in Chicago?

Are these “guardians,” like Brandon Johnson, in fact foxes guarding the hen houses?

There is a glimmer of hope. Crain’s Chicago Business, the primary local media minimizer of urban mayhem, last week called for Johnson’s resignation.

Perhaps Crain’s can now honestly report on crime.

Oh, once again, I need to remind you, taxpayer-funded media is an abominable idea.

And finally, thanks to the Journal, we know now that Biden was president in name only, a triumvirate of advisors was running our country.

Who’s really running Chicago? Is it Stacy Davis Gates, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, who hoped to run for mayor herself?

Gates’ son, you should know, attends a private school.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Alexander Stephens and the Nikole Hannah-Jones’ of the World. Kindred Spirits

Posted: December 29, 2023 by datechguy in culture, race card
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Bart Maverick: Well it still smells of a con game but there’s too much money in the come-on.

Madame De Chauvrier: So?

Bart Maverick: Madame there isn’t a grifter alive who puts real gold in his “goldbrick” not over a million dollars worth.

Maverick Diamond in the Rough 1958

Now that the Civil war is suddenly in vogue thanks to Nikki Haley’s gaffe it’s worth noting a few things that are basic facts.

The south was fighting to preserve slavery, all you have to do is read the newspapers of the time to know this is true but if you really want to understand this, don’t take my word for it, take the word of the Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens:

The new [confederate] constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. 

Alexander Stephens: Crossroads speech

Keep an eye on that link we’ll be going back to that speech a lot in this post.

What would have been more accurate to say was that the North was not fighting to end slavery, although there were many in the union ranks who believed in its abolition. As Lincoln himself put it in his letter to Horace Greeley:

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less  whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

This believe it or not is something that even Nikole Hannah-Jones of the phony narrative of the 1619 project understands and states publicly showing that every now and again when a person is trying to sell a salted mine or a fake narrative it’s necessary for a person to make sure there is enough gold in their gold brick or a bit of truth in the come-on to be able to make the sale.

Of course Hanna-Jones likely had little use for the final sentence of Lincoln’s letter

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.

And I suspect that she thought even less of Alexander Stephens words concerning what the founding fathers thought of Slavery and the black race in that same Crossroads speech:

But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”

All emphasis mine

This completely contradicts the narrative of the left on what the founders thought. Furthermore unlike Hanna-Jones, Stephens was in a real position to know what the founders thought not only because the founding of the country was still in living memory at the time of this speech but because he was one of the most educated men of his time:

Take a note of what he says here. He not only states that Jefferson and most of the leading statesmen were opposed to slavery and considered wrong on every count and that said idea was the prevailing idea of the time, but that those founding fathers held that idea based on an assumption of the equality of the races.

It’s important to note here that his was not mere rhetoric. Stephens despite poor beginnings was not only well read in an age were illiteracy was common, but well educated (Top of his college class) a successful lawyer, married to the daughter of a Revolutionary war colonel but at the time of this speech had been an elected representative in the state of Georgia and congress for over a quarter of a century. Few men in the entire nation were in a better position to know the history and the sentiment of the Founders than he.

The real irony is that Hanna-Jones argues for advantages and reparations and special privileges for Blacks in education, and the workplace and by law because they can’t make it in the biased “white” world. Stevens would and did agree completely with this argument:

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

And he not only stated this but he noted that their opponents in the North arguments against slavery would be correct if they did not subscribe to what he considered a false premises of racial equality.

One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. 

emphasis mine

Is this not the same argument that the Nichole-smith and folks from DEI are making? Blacks must have separate graduations, gays must have separate graduations, they must have separate spaces, all of this is pretty much the argument that Stephens made that Blacks can’t complete on a level playing fields.

George W. Bush called it the: Soft bigotry of low expectation.

I call it “racism”, racism for fun and profit. Well fun and profit for those who make a living off the DEI grift, but for the vast majority of actual students of color who are going to have to make it in a world that doesn’t give a damn about DEI but skills and results It’s a sentence to failure, that ironically will be blamed on racism.

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Solid Advice, Where’s Ali and Stacy for that Matter? Reaping what they sow, Let’s Make a Deal and the Joys of a Good Book Under the Fedora

Posted: January 29, 2023 by datechguy in abortion, crime, culture, nfl, opinion/news, Sports, tech, Uncomfortable Truths, under the fedora
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Robert Stacy McCain in noting the race hustle that is going on in Memphis give a piece of solid advice to those who are elevated to sainthood after death only without an examination of their lives to discover “heroic virtue” as the church does:

Don’t resist arrest in Memphis

Just once I’d like to the see the parents in one of these cases say: “I loved my son but he was a thug who got what he deserved.” That kind of declaration would save lives, but doesn’t generate generational wealth.

Speaking of Stacy it’s been many weeks since Elon Musk stated that conservatives who had been banned by the previous regime would be restored but there is still no sign of the @RSMCCAIN account on twitter that used to have 80K+ followers, me among them, however I notice that Ali Alexander has been suspended again. I have no idea what his underlying “offense” was but from what’s being reported the twitter code is practically designed to suspend people on its own.

It’s a great reminder of the wisdom of the start of Psalm 146:3-4

Put no trust in princes,

in children of Adam powerless to save.


Who breathing his last, returns to the earth;

that day all his planning comes to nothing

These type of problems have to be solved by ourselves

I used to feel bad for people in Minnesota for the type of government they managed to get saddled with. I had always presumed that they were sensible midwest folk who had just let the left get too strong a foothold in cities.

And then I see thigs like this:

The Minnesota Senate today passed a bill to enshrine in Minnesota law a right to abortion without limits at any time during pregnancy. Senators approved the bill, H.F. 1, by just a one-vote margin, 34-33. Gov. Tim Walz is expected to sign the sweeping measure into law.

Abortion to the day before delivery? No problem in Minnesota!

It’s news like this that makes me think that Minneapolis voters are reaping what they have sown from their worship of St. George of the fentanyl, after all why should the parent who vote to allow the murder of their kids even to the day before their birth be safe on the streets?

The Cry is “racism” as the Carolina Panthers hired Frank Reich, an experienced coach with a long record for the open job rather than elevate the interim coach of color who had played .500 ball with a .500 team as the man in charge.

Wigdor LLP, the New York City-based law firm that represents Wilks in his discrimination suit against the NFL, was “disturbed” by the Panthers’ hiring process.

“We are shocked and disturbed that after the incredible job Coach Wilks did as the interim coach, including bringing the team back into playoff contention and garnering the support of players and fans, that he was passed over for the head coach position by David Tepper,” the firm said in a statement.

I’ll make a deal with Wigdor LLP. I’ll start worrying about the supposed underrepresentation of blacks among NFL head coaches (10% of the league when blacks represent 11% of the population of the nation) when the NFL address the overrepresentation of blacks among those who play the game making six to eight figure paychecks annually (70% of the players when blacks represent 11% of the country).

Sooner or later an undrafted or released player will sue on those ground claiming “racism” and the fun will begin.

Finally as my wife has been picking up extra days at work to supplement her gardening budget for 2023 I have rediscovered the joys of going to a restaurant with a good book and slowly enjoying a meal while I read.

This week it was Commodore Hornblower by CS Forester I had a first edition sitting on my shelf but a book is not meant to sit on a shelf it’s meant to be read.

It’s amazing how relaxing such a thing can be and it’s a rather large contrast to all the cell phones around me.

Who ever thought reading a good book would be such a radical act?

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