The Public Professor

“All politics is local,” former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill used to say.

It’s an adage as old as American democracy.  Everything begins with the local voters who put you in office, and ends with the movers and shakers who return your loyalty.  So it doesn’t really matter what the outsiders think.  If you’ve got a sound local power base back home, you’re good to go.

That is, until now.  Because the infamous 2010 U.S. Supreme Court case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has changed everything.

Citizens United tilted the playing field in many ways.  One aspect of the decision that has outraged many is the notion that corporations are now entitled to constitutional protections of free speech that were designed for people, not institutions.  It’s a deep affront to our republic.

But the practical developments emerging from the case are still unfolding, and they have the potential to reshape American politics, as the current race for a U.S. Senate seat in Nebraska demonstrates.

When Blue Dog Democrat Ben Nelson announced that he was retiring from the Senate after two terms, Republicans smelled an opportunity.  Though often misunderstood by outsiders as a thoroughly red state, Nerbaska only bends that way consistently in presidential elections.  In fact, both parties are generally competitive in statewide elections.

The Democrats quickly saddled up with Bob Kerrey, a former Nebraska governor and U.S. senator.  For Republicans, it seemed likely to come down to two well-established state politicians with strong local power bases: State Treasurer Don Stenberg, and State Attorney General Jon Bruning.  Both are longtime fixtures in Nebraska politics and hail from the more populous eastern part of the state.  The primary was this past Tuesday, and the winner was     . . .    neither of them.

In a development the Lincoln Journal Star newspaper is calling “unprecedented,” and that is now getting national media coverage, the Republican nomination was captured by Deb Fischer, a far lesser known state legislator from the little western town of Valentine. Read more »

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In the last post, we saw how Democratic Party national unity, which was occasionally tenuous, depended on Northerners’ willingness to look the other way on Jim Crow segregation.  But in 1946,  Harry S. Truman became the first Democratic President to look it squarely in the eyes.

That was the year Truman appointed a commission on civil rights.  In 1947, it issued a report entitled To Secure These Rights, which condemned segregation, particularly in the armed forces.  Truman followed up with an executive order desegregating the military in early 1948.  Even though the move did not directly affect the South, such a challenge to the legitimacy of segregation was too much for many Southern Democrats to stomach.

Truman faced a revolt within his own party as he ran for re-election during 1948.  The Solid South fractured.  South Carolina Democrat Strom Thurmond formed a third party, popularly known as the Dixiecrats, and ran against Truman on a single-issue platform of segregation.  “All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches, and our places of recreation,” he roared

Thurmond to stole nearly 40 Southern electoral votes, though Truman still managed to hold on against Republican challenger Thomas Dewey.  But the lesson had been learned, and Democrats would make few moves against segregation for nearly twenty years.  When the Civil Rights Movement finally forced Democratic President John F. Kennedy to take action, he did so slowly and cautiously.

Ironically, it would be his successor, Lyndon Johnson of Texas, who helped strike the coup de grace against Jim Crow. Read more »

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In the last post, we saw how the Democratic Party created a Southern stronghold after the Civil War that was built on white supremacy and essentially unrivaled.  Democrats were also successful in the North, particularly in the burgeoning cities, where they catered to immigrants and workers.  Together, the Northern and Southern wings formed a powerful though perilous national coalition.  So long as Civil Rights did not intrude upon the national party’s agenda, Northern Democrats could rely on pulling every Southern state in national elections, thereby creating a formidable electoral bloc.

For the most part, the Northern Democratic wing played along.  It abandoned Southern African Americans to brutal, racialized oppression, just as the Republican Party had in the 1870s.  Those few Southern blacks who could vote, overwhelmingly continued to check the Republican box, supporting the party of Lincoln, and  underscoring that truism that in the South, Democrats were the party of white supremacy.

The Democrats’ unified regional coalition was perhaps best represented by two term president Woodrow Wilson.  On one hand, the former Princeton University president and New Jersey governor was a typical Northern politician who promoted the era’s progressive policies.  On the other hand, he was a Virginia native and a Southern apologist regarding the Civil War.  He even used the White House to debut the most successful piece of racist film propaganda in American history: D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. Read more »

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More so than any other region in the nation, the American South has been dominated by a single political party since the Civil War.  Amazingly, however, by the turn of the 21st century, the region’s party affiliation had actually swung from the Democrats to the Republicans.

This post begins a short history, in three parts, of how that happened.  And the story begins with human bondage.

It is no oversimplification to say that slavery was the single most important issue leading to the Civil War.  Not only was slavery the driving force, but none of the other relevant issues, such as states’ rights or expansion into the western territories, would have mattered much if not for their indelible connection to slavery.

During the tempestuous ante-bellum era, the South was divided among the nation’s two major parties.  The Democrats traced their roots back to Virginian slave owner Thomas Jefferson, and they emerged as the first modern American political party during the presidency of Tennessee slave owner Andrew Jackson.  In the South, Democrats were generally favored by small, yeoman farmers.

Meanwhile, the Whigs had succeeded the now defunct Federalists, and they advocated a stronger central government committed to economic development.  The Whigs were more popular in the North, but they were able to maintain an important Southern branch.  However, as sectional tensions stemming from slavery increased across the nation, the Whigs crumbled.  Initially, this left the Democrats as the only American political party of national standing. Read more »

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Richard Grenell, a former communications director at the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration, resigned yesterday from his position as an aide to presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.  Why?  Because he’s gay, and well, apparently that’s just too much for the Romney campaign to stomach as it continues to court right-wing homophobes.

Yesterday on my Facebook page, I half-joked that perhaps Romney actually has decent values, but betrays them willy nilly as they are trumped by his fawning cowardice.  First he thought universal healthcare was good, now he doesn’t.  First he thought regulating firearms was reasonable, now he doesn’t.  First he thought the government shouldn’t interfere with women’s healthcare decisions, now he does.  First he thought there was no problem hiring a homosexual.  So much for that. Read more »

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Kevin Baldwin recently posted an article at 3 Quarks Daily about the harrowing experience of his wife and small child surviving a near-fatal car accident six years ago.  It’s quite a good read, and touches on issues ranging from the complex emotional and personal trauma of the event, to the absolute savagery of modern American health insurance.  Critics of that industry who read the piece will be swept up in anger and righteous indignation.  Supporters of the industry, if they have any conscience and honesty, will feel embarrassed; or else they’ll offer the kinds of tired, mealy-mouthed excuses that should earn them a crisp slap.

But it’s not until near the end of the piece that Baldwin reveals why his wife’s minivan was crushed from behind by a flatbed truck that actually sped up as she was turning into a driveway.  It was because the truck driver was distracted.  You guessed it.  He was talking on the phone.

3 Quarks Daily has an international readership, and in the comments section to Baldwin’s story, some wondered why there aren’t laws in the U.S. about using your phone while driving, as there are in most European countries.  In fact, we actually have many laws on the subject, but that’s part of the confusion.  There is no uniformity.

Most driving regulations in the United States are local and state statutes, not federal law.  Federal regulations typically only cover federal highways.  So aside from the interstates, you have a panoply of laws all around the country.  In some places you can do just about anything you want.  In some places you can talk but not text.  In some places you can talk, but only with a hands-free device.  In some places it depends on your age or even what kind of vehicle you’re driving. Read more »

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