Professor Dean's Course in Alternative History

Here's Howard Dean's take on the reason American blacks are ditching the Democrats:

There's a new generation of African-American leaders and a new generation of African-Americans. We can't go out and say could you vote for us because we were so helpful during the civil rights era.

Umm ... no. No, you can't go out and say that, because it would be a wild distortion of history.
Unless, Dr. Dean, you mean helpful like these Democrats?


George Wallace
When this Democrat was inaugurated governor of Alabama in 1962, he declared, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever." In a flip-flop that should make John Kerry jealous, Wallace later said that he hadn't read the speech before giving it. That didn't stop him from becoming a poster boy for racist hold-outs just one year later, when he stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama to block black students from entering the school. And despite that little bit of nauseating public relations work he still made a strong showing as candidate in Democrat presidential primaries in 1964 in Wisconsin, Maryland, and Indiana. In fact, his racism never hurt him much among voters. He won broad support in both the 1968 and 1972 Democrat presidential primaries.


Lester Maddox
Maddox became famous for driving black college students out of his restaurant at the point of a gun. He subsequently parlayed his fame into the governorship of Georgia, as a Democrat. How Dean interprets this as being "helpful during the civil rights era," I'm not quite sure. Maddox would later be praised by Jimmy Carter as the "essence of the Democratic party."


Robert Byrd
Senator Byrd voted against the Civil Rights Act. He also belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. Helpful? I doubt it. Perhaps he was a secret double agent.


Bull Connor
Bull Connor worked in Wallace's Alabama as the public safety commissioner of Birmingham. He ordered the use of attack dogs and fire hoses against civil rights demonstrators. Wikipedia gives us a sense of how Dean may see this as helpful:

The spectacle of this being broadcast on national television helped to catalyse major social and legal change in the South and helped in large measure to assure the passage by Congress of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, so ironically Connor's tactics helped to bring about the very change that he was opposing.

Oh, brother. Maybe soon the NAACP will come to its senses and have a statue of Connor erected in Birmingham. Wikipedia also fails to mention that he was a staunch Democrat.


Ernest Hollings
Hollings is an interesting case, in that the Democrats attempted late in his Senate career to use his position in the party's ugly past to manufacture a new rationale for their lukewarm support for civil rights. According to Hollings' Alternative History, Democrats weren't really resistant to civil rights for blacks. It was just a political deal between the segregationists and the Democrat party (now conveniently parsed into two distinct groups for your voting pleasure). The story goes like this: the misguided segregationists say to the well-intentioned-but-politically-frustrated Democrats, "We’ll go along with all your programs, if you’ll go along with our segregation." The heart-of-gold Democrats grit their teeth and make a deal with the devil for the sake of social programs. Brer Rabbit must come in here somewhere.


Jesse Helms
You may be wondering what he's doing here. Helms was a Democrat until 1972, when he capitalized on a split in the North Carolina Democrat Party by switching party affiliation and taking enough votes away to win as a Republican in a state that was 73 percent Democrat. Segregationist Democrats may not have been able to see past skin color, but they sure could see past party affiliation. Helms won another four terms as Republican senator from a state where Democrats have a two-to-one advantage.


Al Gore, Sr.
Senator Gore voted against the Civil Rights Act. That was helpful.


J. William Fulbright
Senator Fulbright voted against the Voting Rights Act. That was helpful, too. President Clinton said he considered Fulbright one of his mentors.

In case all this seems insubstantial to you, consider this:

The Congressional Record shows that Republicans voted in higher percentages for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than did Democrats. In the House of Representatives, 80 percent of Republicans voted yea (138 to 34) compared to 61 percent of Democrats (152 to 96). This means that 39 percent of House Democrats voted against the Civil Rights Act.

In the Senate, 82 percent of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act (27 to 6), while 69 percent of Democrats supported it (46 to 21). If Senate Republicans had opposed the bill with the same strength, it would have failed, despite the fact that the Democrats held a nearly two-to-one majority.

Click here for an in-depth look at the history of the Civil Rights Act.

In 1965, Democrats and Republicans had to choose sides over the Voting Rights Act. And again the Republicans came out in greater percentages in support of equal rights. More than 80 percent of House Republicans voted yea. Ninety-four percent (!) of Senate Republicans voted for the bill. More than a quarter of Senate Democrats voted against it. This is history--documented history. Not Howard Dean's version of history.

Over the last five years, support for Republican candidates among black voters has increased--and increased substantially in some southern states. The number of black voters identifying themselves as Republican has nearly doubled since 2000, while the number identifying themselves as Democrats has decreased by more than ten percent.

Howard Dean is not going to reverse this trend with lies. How stupid does he think we are?