Alex Koppelman: Does Reid need a "history lesson" for slavery remarks?
[Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for the online magazine Salon.com]
The right is still pretty upset about a comparison that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid drew between those now opposing healthcare reform and people who fought against abolition, womens' suffrage and the civil rights movement. But Reid isn't backing down...
... Fund's line of attack was odd, and for more than one reason. For one thing, Reid never said it was Republicans who'd opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Fund gave it the inaccurate title of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill.) For another, making this sort of argument in a column titled "Harry Reid's History Lesson" is just ironic, because it betrays a lack of knowledge of the actual history of the Civil Rights Act and the years that followed.
Democrats did lead the filibuster of the Civil Rights Act, there's no doubting that, and that's something the party -- and especially Byrd -- has to reckon with. But there's a reason why President Obama is a Democrat. There's a reason why the vast majority of African Americans have voted Democrat for decades now, and it's not because they support the pro-segregation party.
The Civil Rights Act was the beginning of the end for the Southern faction that was once key to the Democratic party. Some Southern Democrats, like South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond, simply became Republicans. Others, loyal to generations of Democrats that came before them, hung on to their affiliation, only to become the last of a dying breed as Republicans -- using the Southern Strategy -- picked up the mantle of the party opposed to civil rights and ran with it...
Read entire article at Salon
The right is still pretty upset about a comparison that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid drew between those now opposing healthcare reform and people who fought against abolition, womens' suffrage and the civil rights movement. But Reid isn't backing down...
... Fund's line of attack was odd, and for more than one reason. For one thing, Reid never said it was Republicans who'd opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Fund gave it the inaccurate title of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill.) For another, making this sort of argument in a column titled "Harry Reid's History Lesson" is just ironic, because it betrays a lack of knowledge of the actual history of the Civil Rights Act and the years that followed.
Democrats did lead the filibuster of the Civil Rights Act, there's no doubting that, and that's something the party -- and especially Byrd -- has to reckon with. But there's a reason why President Obama is a Democrat. There's a reason why the vast majority of African Americans have voted Democrat for decades now, and it's not because they support the pro-segregation party.
The Civil Rights Act was the beginning of the end for the Southern faction that was once key to the Democratic party. Some Southern Democrats, like South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond, simply became Republicans. Others, loyal to generations of Democrats that came before them, hung on to their affiliation, only to become the last of a dying breed as Republicans -- using the Southern Strategy -- picked up the mantle of the party opposed to civil rights and ran with it...