The Cao Chronicles: Still pimping bullshit

Our good friend Cao is now promoting the popular wingnut meme that Democrats are somehow bad people because the Democrats of past eras were racist. She trots out a series of quotes collected by one Bruce Bartlett to “prove” her point.

As usual, the reality is far different than how Cao and her fellow fringers would have you believe. Steve Benen makes the point far better than I could:

In a WSJ op-ed earlier this week, Bartlett pointed to “the 200-year record of prominent Democrats” who were “openly and explicitly for slavery before the Civil War, supported lynching and ‘Jim Crow’ laws after the war, and regularly defended segregation and white supremacy throughout most of the 20th century.” The piece included dozens of ugly quotes on race from “prominent Democrats,” drawn from Bartlett’s new book, “Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past.”

According to promotional materials, “Wrong on Race” will “set the record straight” on the Democrats’ “hidden past,” which includes being the “party of the Ku Klux Klan” and the “disenfranchisement of black voters.”

Ironically, Bartlett’s criticism of the Bush White House’s economic policies elevated his stature as a credible political commentator. The premise of his upcoming book seems intent on throwing that standing away with an argument that is both cheap and silly.

One need not have a doctorate in American history to know that the nation’s two major political parties have shifted significantly for the better part of nearly two centuries. The Democratic Party, in the first half of the 20th century, was home to two competing constituencies — southern whites with abhorrent views on race, and African Americans in the north, who sought to advance the cause of civil rights. The party struggled, ultimately siding with a progressive, inclusive agenda. Racists left the party, and joined the GOP.

With that in mind, it’s not that Bartlett’s quote collection is wrong; it’s that it badly misses the point. On race, Democrats changed and became the party of civil rights. Republicans, meanwhile, changed and became the home of racists who no longer felt comfortable in the Democratic Party.

Bartlett insists that the Democratic Party’s history must not be “swept under the rug as old news,” adding that if Dems believe Reagan’s racist appeals in 1980 still matter today, Democrats’ history has to matter, too.

As Yglesias noted, this also misses the point.

I don’t think the history should be swept under the rug at all. What I think is that the history reflects well on present members of the Democratic Party. The political views of the Southern Democrats were unconscionably evil, and the corrupt bargain national Democratic Party figures struck with them was a terrible thing. But in a series of intense political battles, the Democratic Party eventually broke decisively with that heritage, prompting breakaway segregationist campaigns in 1948 and 1968 and eventually leading the bulk of the white supremacist constituency to drift to the Republican Party.

The significance of the history of race in America — and of the centrality of the Democrats’ corrupt bargain with white supremacy to American political history — really shouldn’t be minimized. But what it shows is that the Democratic Party’s decision to embrace the civil rights movement and the Republican Party’s decision to embrace opposition to civil rights has been integral to the Republican Party’s political successes toward the end of the 20th century.

Quite right. My friend publius adds:

I’m not accusing [Bartlett] of racism. It’s far more banal than that. He just thinks he’s found a rhetorically clever way to bash the hated Democrats. His sin here is not racism, but indifference. The problem is not so much the dishonestly itself, but that this particular dishonesty shows a callous indifference to [historical reality]. Bartlett pretends to care, but isn’t really acknowledging the problem. Otherwise, he wouldn’t strain logic to (1) score points for the party with the wretched racial record and (2) wound the party who’s actually been trying to make these things better.

Bartlett’s central point seems to be that the Dems’ past has to matter. I’m very much inclined to agree — because that party broke from that past to become champions of civil rights. What matters equally is the Republicans’ present — the party not only welcomed the racists who left the Democrats, they became the party of the “Southern Strategy,” opposition to affirmative action, campaigns based on race-baiting, vote-caging, discriminatory voter-ID laws, Katrina, boycotting minority debates, and opposing legislative remedies to problems that affect the African-American community most.

So, who’s wrong on race?

I would add little to this, except to challenge Cao to answer two simple questions:

1. In the context of 20th century American politics, what was the “Southern strategy”, and which American political party employed it?
2. In the year 2000, which American political operative set up a poll that asked voters in the South Carolina primary, “Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain… if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?” Which political party did that operative work for?

Sit back, my friends, and watch Cao’s cowardice once again come into full bloom.