Several years ago, I was working with a claims adjuster on a case. He happened to be black, he was exceptionally good, and I enjoyed working with him. But at one point we saw a political advertisement on TV regarding a local election. The person in the ad was white. This guy immediately said, “as a Black man, I could never vote for a Republican.”

At the time, Democrats were routinely getting a huge percentage of the Black vote. I have sometimes seen this in excess of 90%. This always surprised me, because my own research regarding the history of the Democratic Party shows that for decades, it was the party of racism. The first Democratic President, Andrew Jackson, was racist. It was the Democratic Party in the South that ultimately led to the Civil War. It was the Democratic Party in the South that passed all those Jim Crow laws. It was Democratic Senators from the South that signed the Southern Manifesto. It was Democratic Senators, including Robert Byrd, a former member of the Klu Klux Klan, who desperately tried to stop the Civil Rights Act with a filibuster.

It should be pointed out that the racist Democratic Senators were from the South. This does not mean that all Democrats were racist. But it does mean that it is impossible to ignore the long history of institutionalized racism within the Democratic Party.

The question, for me, was why on earth would anyone assume that overnight Democrats became pure as the driven snow and Republicans became racist. The answer, sadly, is that they just lied about this and far too many believed the lies. I have heard liberals repeat the myth that all those Southern Democrats became Republicans and that the Republican Party took on the mantle of racism. The problem is that this is simply not true. Most Dixiecrat Senators died as Democrats. Two, Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, became Republicans. The Republican Party did not accept them until they renounced racism.

If you go to Washington D.C., you will find buildings named after racist Southern Democrats. Earth to liberals, it wasn’t Republicans who gave such high honor to racist politicians. The Russell Senate Office building was named for former Senator Richard Russell, Jr. Among other things he co-authored the Southern Manifesto, with Strom Thurmond. He filibustered the Civil Rights Act, and when it passed anyway, he led a Southern boycott of the 1964 Democratic National Convention.

For decades, two groups of voters have always supported Democrats. Black voters and Hispanic voters. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum. The Democratic Party is, finally, losing support among these communities. Part of this is because the unemployment levels for minority groups improved, for the first time, while Trump was President. But more importantly, the brilliant economic strategy employed by the Biden Administration has been bad for everyone but devastating for minorities.

The real problem is that the policies proposed by Democrats are increasingly devastating for minorities. There is an enormous difference between pretending to be your friend and actually paying attention and listening to your concerns. If recent polls are accurate, and Democrats lose any significant percentage of minority voters, they will be in serious danger of getting wiped out in the mid-term elections.

Let’s just hope that Republicans are smart enough to pay attention.

TDM