"If the Turmoil Continues, History Suggests That It Will Be Another Significant Burden on Biden's Fight for a Second Term"

"Most media retrospectives of the 1960s celebrate the marchers, the protests, the peace signs along with the compulsory Buffalo Springfield lyrics ('There's something happening here/ But what it is ain't exactly clear'). The reality is those upheavals were an enormous in-kind contribution to the political fortunes of the right. And if history comes even close to repeating itself, then the latest episode will redound to Donald Trump's benefit."

Jeff Greenfield at Politico warns that the current student protests may lead to voter backlash.

Jill Filipovic at Slate writes that "the actual violence that has now played out at some protests makes clear that there is indeed a difference between emotional harms and physical ones."

And Frank Furedi at Spiked argues that the protests have been products of "safetyism" and "therapy culture."

"You Have to Have a Conscience in Order to Have a Crisis of Conscience"

"While Trump does not have such blood directly on his hands, he has campaigned and governed on the basis of racist dog-whistles about restoring a formerly 'great' America. Racial intolerance has been perhaps the only consistent part of Trump's political character; it runs unbroken from discriminating against blacks in his family’s apartment empire, to demanding the death penalty for the wrongfully convicted Central Park Five, to trumpeting the birther lie about Barack Obama, to urging the crowds at his rallies to rough up black protesters, to rhetorically defending neo-Nazis and Confederate symbols as president.
"And Trump's denunciations and policies against Muslims, Mexicans, Central American immigrants, and African 'shithole countries,' topped off by inciting anti-Chinese sentiment during the Covid-19 pandemic, make him a more expansive bigot than Wallace ever was."

In The Guardian, Samuel G. Freedman writes, "Stop comparing Trump to the infamous racist George Wallace. It's unfair to Wallace."

"The Wallace Vote Is Consolidating in Republican Ranks"

"We also know that the Wallace movement was not a one-off, or even a two- or three-off. It erupted in Patrick Buchanan's insurgent 1992 and 1996 Republican presidential bids. In 1992, recall, Buchanan previewed Trump's hostility to immigration and free trade, stole the Republican spotlight with a searing convention speech that declared a 'cultural war,' and contributed to the defeat of an incumbent Republican president. In 1996, shortly before winning the New Hampshire primary, Buchanan chortled over the chaos he was causing. 'This is too much fun, this is too much fun—we've got them all on the run,' he told a boisterous rally. 'The establishment in Washington is shaking in its boots at what's going on here,' he said. 'All the peasants are coming with pitchforks.' The Wallace vote erupted again in 2008, when Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, mocked intellectuals and elites in contemptuous tones that could have come straight from Wallace's own mouth."

Jonathan Rauch at The Atlantic connects George Wallace to Donald Trump.

"Poured Gasoline on the Fire of Racial Division"

"Many factors have contributed to today's tribalistic politics, but race remains the bedrock of that division. Transcending racism is essential if our government is to break out of its current paralysis. If we do not succeed and Wallace's legacy of dividing us by race continues to shape American political life, then perhaps he won after all."

Dan T. Carter and Paul Stekler in the Los Angeles Times connect George Wallace to Donald Trump.

"We've Been Here Before"

"The horror with which many citizens regard the Trump presidency is premised, in part, on the notion that its challenges are unprecedented and its morality antithetical to long-standing national values. So 'normalizing' President Trump has become a mortal sin, and 'that's not who we are' a rallying cry for those who view today's anti-democratic and nativist compulsions as aberrations along that long arc toward justice.
"Except this is normal. And it is who we are."

Carlos Lozada at The Washington Post reviews Jon Meacham's The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels and James Fallows and Deborah Fallows's Our Town: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America.

"Maybe Liberals Need to Keep Trying"

"Yet one of the lessons of the history I've just recounted is that liberals drove themselves into a dead end that nobody saw coming in 1948. The sense of superior moral standing that liberals derived from defending the rights of the marginalized often blinded them to the effect of their policies on white Americans (and at times on the marginalized themselves). This is hardly a new insight; the neoconservatives built a movement on it. Yet it seems piercingly relevant today. Donald Trump can speak the unfiltered language of George Wallace because so many white Americans feel victimized the way Wallace voters did 50 years ago. The fact that your racism is sincerely felt does not, of course, make you any the less a racist; but Trump voters also may have reason to feel that something precious is being taken from them. Maybe it behooves today's Democrats to take those grievances more seriously than they're inclined to. Maybe, to take one example, our current system of immigration, which delivers a wonderfully diverse world to cosmopolites and cheap workers to employers, is a raw deal for working-class whites."

James S. Traub at The Atlantic uses the career of Hubert Humphrey to trace the post-World War II history of the Democratic Party.

Jamelle Bouie at Slate disagrees with Traub.

"Right-Wing Nationalist Populism Is Nothing New in America"

"Looking to the future in his 60 Minutes White House exit interview, Bannon said, 'The only question before us' is whether it 'is going to be a left-wing populism or a right-wing populism.' And that is the question, he added, 'that will be answered in 2020.' Give the devil his due: He does have the question right. But there is every reason to fear that our unending civil war will not be resolved by any election anytime soon in the destabilized America that Trump will leave behind."

Frank Rich in a 2017 New York article looks at Trumpism "After Trump."

"Trump Is the Conclusion of That"

"So, yes, Trump is the logical conclusion of a lot of things the Republican Party has been doing. Really, I think Nixon, for all his sins, was also the father of a lot of this with the Southern strategy, which was based on, you know, getting whites in the South to shift from the Democratic Party, which they had been in for almost a century, to the Republican Party based on resentment over the gains of the civil rights movement. And that's really planted the seeds for the transformation of the Republican Party into what we see today."

Eric Foner talks on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, Nermeen Shaikh, and Eddie Glaude.

Populist Persuaders

"Trump and Sanders both reflect the growing public dissatisfaction with the political consensus that supplanted New Deal liberalism after Ronald Reagan's landslide victory in 1980. In Europe, it's called 'neo-liberalism.' In the United States, it might more accurately be called 'market liberalism.' Forged in reaction to the protracted economic slowdown that began in the 1970s, it has prioritized growth over equity—with the promise, as Reagan put it, that a 'rising tide would lift all boats.' It has promoted free trade and capital mobility (including outsourcing), labor mobility (including immigration), tax reductions on business and the wealthy, deregulation of finance, and fiscal restraint (to keep taxes down). It has retained, but punched large holes in, the 'safety net' created under the prior New Deal consensus.
"The consensus of market liberalism was put in place by Reagan and a new generation of Republican conservatives, backed by traditional GOP business interests and members of the white working class. Although many Democrats initially resisted market liberalism, the 'new Democrats' led by Bill Clinton soon embraced the emerging consensus on business tax cuts, free trade, increased immigration, and financial deregulation. American politics entered a new stage of normalcy."

John B. Judis in The New Republic argues that the Donald Trump campaign and the Bernie Sanders campaign may be harbingers of party realignment.

Isaac Chotiner at Slate interviews Judis about Judis's new book, The Populist Explosion: How The Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics.

"He's Discarded the Dog Whistle in Favor of a Bull Horn"

"These cynical methods are precisely what the leaders of the Party of Lincoln have spent the last decade trying to bury. Speaking before the NAACP national convention in July 2005, Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Ken Mehlman acknowledged the party's 'Southern Strategy' and directly apologized: 'I am here as Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.' In 2010, Michael Steele—the first black head of the RNC—admitted in a talk with students at DePaul University that Republicans had given minorities little reason to vote for them: 'For the last 40-plus years we had a Southern Strategy that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South.' Following Mitt Romney's 2012 defeat, RNC chair Reince Priebus presided over what came to be known as 'the autopsy report,' which laid out a roadmap for Republican candidates, emphasizing that future electoral success depended on reaching out to ethnic minorities and young people.
"Trump seems to have missed the memo."

Robert P. Jones at The Atlantic discusses how Donald Trump "has resurrected divisive GOP campaign tactics that target and alienate minorities."

Here's to the Year of Richard Nixon

Julian E. Zelizer at The Atlantic and Jonathan Chait at New York wonder if 2016 is becoming 1968.

"The Fastest Growing Political Party in California"

"The American Independent Party's roots date back to 1967 when George Wallace, a segregationist, launched his ​second​ run for the White House. Wallace, ​who had run as a Democrat in 1964, helped create the new party and ran on its ticket.​ Today, that party exists only in California.
"'We're not segregationist anymore,' said Markham Robinson, who serves as chairman of the American Independent Party's executive committee. 'What we are now is a conservative, constitutionalist party.'"

John Myers, Christine Mai-Duc, and Ben Welsh in the Los Angeles Times report the results of an investigation of AIP membership that found that "[n]early three in four people did not realize they had joined the party."

The Whole World Is Watching

"Republicans brayed that Democrats, who were happy to align themselves with the forces of social change in 1960 and 1964, had by 1968 been subsumed by them. The low-tax, anti-government rhetoric that defines modern Republicanism has its roots in the simmering white resentments that emerged in the late nineteen-sixties, animated by the belief that the federal government had become a tool for redistribution of white wealth into the hands of undeserving black and brown communities. Donald Trump represents the full expression of that belief."

Jelani Cobb at The New Yorker connects the 2016 presidential campaign to 1968.

As does Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo.

As does Rick Perlstein at In These Times.

Stand Up to Make America Great Again

"Both candidates prospered by milking their followers' sense of powerlessness. But there's even more Wallace-begat-Trump wisdom to directly glean from Carlson’s scholarship. Wallace was, Carlson writes, 'a master at knowing how to feel out and exploit discontent.' Wallace, like Trump, delighted in the presence of hecklers at his campaign events because he was skilled in turning the crowd against them. Like Trump, he excelled at exploiting the media, famously standing in front of the schoolhouse door, barring integration at the University of Alabama in the summer of 1963 and giving a five-minute speech for the TV cameras. Hours later, Wallace submitted to presidential orders, but what his followers remembered was his defiance. When Trump refuses to apologize for his bad manners, correct his plentiful mistakes, or bow down to anybody, he's echoing Wallace. When Trump sends up his opposition with a jab or joke, he adds a wink or knowing nod, just as Wallace did."

Jack Shafer at Politico compares Donald Trump to George Wallace.

"Kennedy’s Finest Moment"

"But he quickly spun that news into a plea for national unity behind what he, for the first time, called a 'moral issue.' It seems obvious today that civil rights should be spoken of in universal terms, but at the time many white Americans still saw it as a regional, largely political question. And yet here was the leader of the country, asking 'every American, regardless of where he lives,' to 'stop and examine his conscience.'       

"Then he went further. Speaking during the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation—an anniversary he had assiduously avoided commemorating, earlier that year—Kennedy eloquently linked the fate of African-American citizenship to the larger question of national identity and freedom. America, 'for all its hopes and all its boasts,' observed Kennedy, 'will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.'"

 

Peniel E. Joseph in The New York Times marks the fiftieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy 1963 speech on civil rights. 

Alabama Death Wish Boogie Woogie

The Los Angeles Times publishes obituaries for civil-rights activist James A. Hood, baseball manager Earl Weaver, baseball player Stan "The Man" Musial, director Michael Winner, journalist Hans Massaquoi, journalist Stanley Karnow, singer Leroy "Sugarfoot" Bonner, singer Patty Andrews, and former NYC mayor Ed Koch.

Civil Cobra Onions

The Los Angeles Times reports the deaths of former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, hair stylist Vidal Sasoon, car designer Carroll Shelby, and bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn.

Populist Parties?

"This shift in emphasis is connected with the shift in the social base of the Democratic Party from the working class to an alliance of the wealthy, parts of the professional class and the poor. And progressive redistributionism also reflects the plutocratic social structure of the big cities that are now the Democratic base. Unlike the egalitarian farmer-labor liberalism that drew on the populist values of the small town and the immigrant neighborhood, metropolitan liberalism tends to define center-left politics not as self-help on the part of citizens but rather as charity for the disadvantaged carried out by affluent altruists. Tonight the fundraiser for endangered species; tomorrow the gala charity auction for poor children."

Michael Lind in Salon wonders if a populist wave will benefit Democrats or Republicans.

The Rest of the Story

"While broadcasting the news at WENR-AM in Chicago's Merchandise Mart in 1951, Harvey became friends with the building's owner, Joseph P. Kennedy. With a recommendation from the Kennedy-clan patriarch, the ABC Radio Network began using Harvey as a substitute newsman. In time, network affiliates began calling for more Harvey news broadcasts.
"'If it were up to Madison Avenue, I still don't think I'd be on the networks,' Harvey later told the Chicago Tribune. 'It was grass-roots support that brought me where I am. It's also ironic that the Kennedys, with whom I was not in agreement on so many things, had only their daddy to blame.'"

Dennis McLellan in the Los Angeles Times writes an obit for conservative broadcaster Paul Harvey.

The American Political Tradition

U.S. News & World Report presents a special report on "Great Moments in Campaign History."