November 2, 1948: "Dewey Defeats Truman"

November 2, 1948: The most famous newspaper headline of all time? It might be the New York Daily News of October 30, 1975: "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD." Or it might be the one the Chicago Tribune (a proud Republican paper at the time) put up the morning after today's Presidential election.

As it turned out, despite all predictions and despite all polls, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, the Republican nominee, did not defeat the incumbent Democrat, President Harry S Truman. This made Truman, the 33rd President of the United States, the patron saint of every Presidential underdog since.

The problem is, Harry was smarter than most of them. Which is why he's enjoying himself so much in the photo above: He fooled 'em all.

But Dewey was dumb to have blown what should have been a sure win. How dumb was he? Well, maybe not that dumb:

Dewey remains the only major-party Presidential nominee

with facial hair since the Republicans nominated

Charles Evans Hughes in 1916.

The Republican Party didn't give him the support he needed, because they presumed he wouldn't need it. The polls all indicated a Dewey romp. 

Why? Because the Democratic Party had been splintered, from both wings. From the left: Henry A. Wallace, who had been Secretary of Agriculture in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1st 2 terms, Vice President in the 3rd, and Secretary of Commerce in FDR's 4th term before he died and it became Truman's 1st.

He was the darling of what's now called the progressive movement, but, then, it was an actual group named the Progressive Party. Aside from the name, it had no connection to the previous parties of that name, nominating Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 and Robert La Follette in 1924.

It was feared that Wallace would take the black vote. He did, but not as much as was feared. It was feared that he would take organized labor with him. He did, but with this, too, not as much as was feared. It was feared that his campaign would swing New York to Dewey. It did. It was feared that his campaign would swing California to Dewey. It didn't. And it was feared that losing New York and California, with a combined 72 Electoral Votes, would cost Truman the election. Even if Truman had lost California's 25 EVs, he still would have won.

From the right: Strom Thurmond, Governor of South Carolina, who welcomed the Southern Delegates who walked out of the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia (both parties held their Conventions at the Philadelphia Civic Center that year), following a pro-civil rights speech by the Mayor of Minneapolis, who was running for the U.S. Senate, and won: Hubert Humphrey.

Thurmond was happy to accept the Presidential nomination of the States' Rights Party, a.k.a. the Dixiecrats. A precursor to the 1968 independent candidacy of George Wallace (no relation to Henry), he managed to win his home State of South Carolina, plus Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and 1 Electoral Vote in Tennessee.

Later famously the oldest U.S. Senator ever,

Thurmond was just 45 years old at this point.

I don't think a picture of him looking young exists.

And Dewey himself seemed to be a great candidate. A crusading District Attorney in Manhattan, he had put some of the nation's nastiest organized crime bosses in prison, including the creator of the governing body of the American Mafia, "the Commission," Charles "Lucky" Luciano.

He was in his 2nd term as a successful, popular Governor. He had been the Republican nominee for President in 1944, running against wartime Commander-in-Chief Roosevelt, and had done well enough to earn himself a shot at a vulnerable peacetime President in Truman. And he was a young, good-looking guy: Just 46, and there was the thought that he could redeem the idea of mustaches after the bad reputation they had recently gotten from Adolf Hitler.

Surely, with Dewey popular, Thurmond splitting the formerly "Solid South," and Wallace moving New York and California from the Truman column to the Dewey column, Dewey would win. Interviewed in 1995, even Thurmond -- who wasn't even on the ballot in all 48 States, and knew he had no chance, but was very much willing to spoil things for Truman -- admitted, "I thought Dewey would win."

On the day before the election, the nation's foremost political columnist, Drew Pearson of The Washington Post -- no relation to the later black football star of the same name -- wrote that any chance of a Truman victory was "impossible," and his column printed the day after the election stated that Pearson had "surveyed the closely-knit group around Tom Dewey who will take over the White House 86 days from now." Another national columnist, Walter Winchell, reported that gambling odds were 15 to 1 against Truman.

More than 500 newspapers, accounting for over 78 percent of the nation's total circulation, endorsed Dewey. Truman picked up 182 endorsements, accounting for just 10 percent of America's newspaper readership, being surpassed by Thurmond, who got the remaining 12 percent from many Southern papers.

Alistair Cooke, writing in England for the Manchester Guardian, published an article on the day of the election entitled "Harry S. Truman: A Study of a Failure." For its 1st-ever television coverage of a Presidential election, NBC News had constructed a large cardboard model of the White House containing two elephants that would pop out when NBC announced Dewey's victory. Since Truman's defeat was considered certain, no donkeys were placed in the White House model.

As Truman made his way to his hometown of Independence, Missouri, 10 miles east of downtown Kansas City, to await the election returns, some among his inner circle had already accepted other jobs, and not a single reporter traveling on his campaign train thought that he would win. Some prominent Republicans, anticipating serving in a Dewey Presidency, had already bought homes in Washington.

But the Republicans got too complacent. Truman did win California after all, by a razor-thin margin of 18,000 votes. And there was no State that Thurmond threw from Truman to Dewey -- although Maryland was close enough, and its largest city Baltimore black enough, that Wallace, who got 10,000 votes there, might have thrown it to Dewey.

The Cold War was supposed to be Dewey's winning issue. Instead, it was Truman's, with the Truman Doctrine protecting Greece and Turkey from Communist takeover, the Marshall Plan aiding Western Europe before the Soviet Union could, and the Berlin Airlift preventing the Soviets from starving West Berlin into capitulation.

Also, after 16 years, voters still didn't trust the Republicans with the economy. Truman never mentioned Herbert Hoover, the last Republican President and the man who presided over the start of the Great Depression, by name, because they were on good terms. (Whereas Hoover was definitely not on good terms with FDR -- or with his own Republican predecessor, Calvin Coolidge.) So he blamed the Republicans in general for the Depression of the 1930s, and it worked.

Hoover at the 1948 Republican Convention in Philadelphia.

They continued to invite him to every Convention,

and he kept coming until 1960.

From their days as fellow members of the U.S. Senate, Truman was good friends with Alben Barkley, the Kentuckian who was the Democrats' Senate Leader, and had no problem accepting him as the nominee for Vice President. But he hitched his wagon to the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, effectively making the New Deal his platform (his 1949 State of the Union Address would update it for the times as "the Fair Deal"), and FDR's ghost his running mate.

Truman and Roosevelt, at FDR's Hyde Park estate,

after the 1944 Democratic Convention

Truman knew he could win, and he knew how he could do it: By going to the people themselves, in what the GOP derisively called "a whistle-stop campaign," a phrase Truman ran with, and explaining the truth to people where they were, and in terms they could understand -- without talking down to them, as Donald Trump does today. He connected with people the same way FDR did, even though they were very different men.

The crowds Truman got at the "whistle stops" were huge. Writers for conservative papers tried to say that it was just people coming out to the political equivalent of a vaudeville show. Walter Lippman, often called "the Father of American Journalism," pointed out that it took Truman away from Washington for 16 days, and inadvertently proved how little he mattered.

But Lippman had never left Washington. Nor had most of the tour's critics seen it. As would be said today, they remained inside their bubble. Or, as Bob Dylan would sing in 1965, "Something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?"

On Election Night, NBC announcer H.V. Kaltenborn announced, "Well, the President is leading by over a million votes in the popular vote, but we believe that when the country vote comes in, he will be defeated by an overwhelming majority." Indeed, at one point, he saw something that suggested that the election had swung to Dewey, and proclaimed him the winner.

On his way back from Kansas City to Washington, Truman stopped at Union Station in St. Louis, and was presented with a copy of that morning's Chicago Daily Tribune. The publication calling itself "The World's Greatest Newspaper" (hence the call letters of the radio station they founded, WGN) was published by "Colonel" Robert McCormick, the Rupert Murdoch of his era: A man who would tell any lie and spread any rumor, so long as it fulfilled his principle of electing more Republicans, so he could make more money.

But the Trib had violated what would later be called the Felix Unger Rule: "You should never assume, because, when you ASSUME, you make an ASS of U and ME." The result was the most famous headline in newspaper history, and Truman was delighted to see his old enemy the Colonel make an ass of himself. After all, it wasn't enough for the Colonel to have his paper say, in a huge headline, "DEWEY WINS" or "DEWEY ELECTED." He wanted to rub it in, telling the President he hated so much that he had lost: "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN." Oops.

At a celebratory dinner in Washington a few days later, Truman threw the guests into laughter, imitating Kaltenborn's clipped delivery. He also thanked those who had stood by him, and those who should have: "The September Democrats and the October Democrats... and the Monday Democrats, and the Tuesday Democrats, and the Wednesday Democrats!"

Ever since, Ol' Harry S has been the patron saint of political underdogs, of the people who are told they can't possibly win.

(There's no period on his middle initial, since it legally didn't stand for anything, as his parents couldn't agree on whether to name him after one of his grandfathers, Anderson Shippe Truman or Solomon Young. So his entire middle name was the letter S, with no period. His mother's brother was Harry Young, and the name was "Harry," not "Henry" or "Harrison." His legal name was "Harry S Truman.")

Even Republicans cite him as an inspiration. As Truman himself would have said, "Well, that's just political conversation." Or, as his only child, Margaret, who became a noted writer of mystery novels after a failed singing career, put it while editing one of her father's books, and seeing the words "political conversation" written down, "My father originally used a shorter word here, but decided to change it." Clearly, Margaret was too much of a lady, even then, to say what the word was. Just as clearly, the word was "bullshit."

Truman did love him some of what I like to call "George Carlin words." Legend has it that Harry and his wife Bess (formerly Elizabeth Wallace) toured a greenhouse, and Harry, a former farmer himself, told the owner, a woman, that she "must have used some good manure." The owner pulled Bess aside and said, "Can't you get the President to say, 'Fertilizer'?" And Bess said, "It's taken me this long just to get him to say, 'manure'!"

Truman won 24.1 million votes, Dewey 22.0 million, Thurmond 1,175,930, Wallace 1,157,328. Popular vote share: Truman 49.5 percent, Dewey 45.1, Thurmond 2.41, Wallace 2.37. States: Truman 28, Dewey 16, Thurmond 4, Wallace none. Electoral Votes, with 266 being a majority: Truman 303, Dewey 189, Thurmond 39, Wallace none. Wallace got 8.2 percent of the popular vote in New York, 4.7 percent in California, and in no other State did he get more than 4 percent.

After the election, a study by the University of Michigan revealed that "14 percent of Truman's voters, or 3,374,800, had decided to vote for him in the last fortnight of the campaign." In the last 2 weeks.

Gallup and Roper also did an analysis of the votes: They "learned that one voter in every seven (6,927,000), made up his mind in the last two weeks before the election. Of these, 75 percent picked Truman."

The Democrats also swept back into power in Congress, taking 75 seats in the House of Representatives and 9 in the Senate. Notable newly-elected Senators included Democrats Humphrey, Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, Paul Douglas of Illinois, and Bob Kerr of Oklahoma. Only 2 new Republicans were elected: Margaret Chase Smith of Maine (making her the 1st woman to serve in both houses of Congress) and Robert Hendrickson of New Jersey. Indeed, of the 91 Republicans newly elected to the House in 1946, more than half of them went down to defeat.

Charles Bennett of Florida was the last Congressman elected in 1948 still continuously serving, retiring before the 1992 election. However, Sidney Yates of Illinois, elected in 1948, left the House in 1962 to run for the Senate. He lost, but regained his House seat in 1964, and remained until retiring before 1998.

The truth was, it wasn't that close. People who voted for Dewey were basically voting for him simply because he was the Republican nominee. Outside New York State, he was not especially popular. Even people who met him didn't find him personally likable. In 2 elections as the Republican nominee for President, he only won a total of 288 Electoral Votes, barely enough to win 1. This time, the non-Republican vote was 54.3 percent. Truman had made the election a referendum on the Republicans, and it worked in his favor. 

The polls had gotten it all wrong. Radio comedian Fred Allen used a horse racing metaphor: He said that Truman had become the 1st man to lose in a Gallup and win in a walk. 

If Dewey hadn't been so complacent, he would have realized that Truman was reaching the hearts and minds of the people. And he might have gone out to answer Truman's charges against him and "that do-nothing Republican 80th Congress." Maybe the Republicans, as a party, blew it for Dewey. But he also blew it for himself.

No friend of Truman's, or any Democrat's, Time magazine boss Henry Luce named Truman his magazine's Man of the Year for 1948, as he had for 1945. I suspect it was more for the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Airlift than it was for the election.

Truman could have run for what would have amounted to a 3rd term in 1952, but didn't. He went back to Independence, where he built, opened, operated, and lectured at his Presidential Library, until a broken hip in 1965 put an end to his public life. He died in 1972.

Vice President Barkley ran a half-hearted campaign to succeed Truman in 1952, but, already 74 years old and a Southerner, he knew he had little chance. He died in 1956.

Dewey was elected to a 3rd term as Governor of New York in 1950, and left office after that 3rd term. The New York State Thruway is also known as the Governor Thomas E. Dewey Thruway. Despite being 17 years younger, he died in 1971, a year before Truman.

Wallace drifted into obscurity, and wrote books about farming, his specialty. He died in 1965, of Lou Gehrig's disease. Thurmond returned to the Democratic fold, was elected to the Senate in 1956, became a segregationist leader, switched to the Republican Party after the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and kept getting re-elected to the Senate until 2002, when, approaching his 100th birthday, even he had to admit that he wouldn't survive another term. He died the next year.

Truman's Presidential Library opened in Independence, 10 miles east of downtown Kansas City, on July 6, 1957. The USS Harry S Truman is a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, CVN-75, a.k.a. The HST, in service since 1996. There are high schools named for Truman in Independence (naturally), New York City (as part of the Co-Op City complex in The Bronx), the suburbs of Philadelphia (Levittown, Pennsylvania), Detroit (Taylor, Michigan) and Seattle (Federal Way, Washington). And there is a Truman College in Chicago.

Statue, U.S. Capitol Building

Truman remains the only President born in Missouri, or representing it in politics. Aside from Ulysses S. Grant, he remains the only one to have lived there for a significant amount of time; and, unlike Grant, it was for his entire life.

He has been played by Robert Vaughn in The Man from Independence in 1974, James Whitmore in Give 'em Hell, Harry! in 1975, E.G. Marshall in Collision Course: Truman vs. MacArthur in 1976, Ed Flanders in MacArthur in 1977, Harry Morgan in Backstairs at the White House in 1979, Walker Edmiston in J. Edgar Hoover in 1987, Richard Dysart in Day One in 1989, Gary Sinise in Truman in 1995, David Patrick Kelly in Flags of Our Fathers in 2006, and Bob Gunton in Project Blue Book in 2019. (UPDATE: He was played by Gary Oldman in Oppenheimer in 2023.)

Charles F. Brannan was the last surviving member of the Truman Cabinet, serving as Secretary of Agriculture in the 2nd term. He lived until 1992.

As for Dewey, in 1964, the New York State Thruway, which he got built as Governor, was officially renamed the Governor Thomas E. Dewey Thruway, although most people in the State call it just "The Thruway."

Robert McCormick died in 1955. The Tribune dropped "Daily" from its name in 1963, and began its shift away from doctrinaire conservatism in 1969. Still, it didn't endorse a Democrat for President until 2008, with home-State Senator Barack Obama.

*

November 2, 1948, like all modern Election Days in America, was a Tuesday. The baseball season was over. There were no football games played. The NBA season had started the day before, but there were no games on this day. And the NHL also had no games scheduled. So there were no scores on this historic day.

July 2, 1964: The Civil Rights Act Becomes Law

July 2, 1964: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. Among those attending the signing ceremony is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., then the nation's leading civil rights activist.

Angry over various events holding African-Americans back, President John F. Kennedy gave a nationally-televised speech on June 10, 1963, asking Congress for a bill that would ban racial and religious discrimination "in facilities which are open to the public: Hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments."

There were 3 key hurdles to the bill's passage. Many Congressional committees were then chaired by powerful Southern Democrats, unwilling to help civil rights. The bill had to pass the House Judiciary Committee. Fortunately, it was then chaired by Emmanuel Celler, a Jewish New Yorker, who got it through. The next step was being passed by the House Rules Committee, then chaired by Howard W. Smith, a racist from Virginia.

And before that could happen, Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Johnson, his Vice President and a Texan who favored the bill, became President, and demanded that the bill pass.

Smith knew the rules of the U.S. House of Representatives as well as anyone. But so did Celler, who had a plan: He filed a petition to discharge the bill from the Rules Committee, and move it directly to the House floor, for a vote by the full House. That required the support of a majority of House members.

When the Winter recess began, Celler was 50 votes short, but letters, telegrams and phone calls were coming in to members on the fence. Smith "read the room," and realized that he would be utterly humiliated if the bill was discharged, so he told the Rules Committee members they could vote their conscience, and it passed.

On February 10, 1964, the full House voted 290-130 to pass it. It went on to the Senate, and Southern Democrats filibustered it for 54 days. But Northern and Western Democrats, and Republicans who were conservative but believed that civil rights could be good for business, worked on breaking the filibuster.

In particular, 2 Senators led the way: Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, the Democrats' "Whip"; and Everett Dirksen of Illinois, the Republicans' Leader. Each man's personal popularity was enough. Indeed, it was Humphrey, as Mayor of Minneapolis and a 1st-time candidate for the Senate, who had addressed the 1948 Democratic Convention, and said the Party should move on from States' rights to protecting human rights.

On June 19, 1964, the Senate passed the bill. The vote was 73-27. The Senators who voted No:

* Democrats: Lister Hill and John Sparkman of Alabama, William Fulbright and John McClellan of Arkansas, Spessard Holland and George Smathers of Florida, Richard Russell and Herman Talmadge of Georgia, Allen Ellender and Russell Long of Louisiana, James Eastland and John Stennis of Mississippi, Sam Ervin and Everett Jordan of North Carolina, Strom Thurmond and Olin Johnston of South Carolina, Albert Gore and Herbert Walters of Tennessee, Harry Byrd and Willis Robertson of Virginia, and Harry's cousin Robert Byrd of West Virginia. So, 21 "Dixiecrats."

* Republicans: Norris Cotton of New Hampshire, Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa, Edwin Mechem of New Mexico, John Tower of Texas, Milward Simpson of Wyoming... and Barry Goldwater of Arizona.

The only Southern Senator of either Party to vote for the bill was Ralph Yarborough of Texas, an ally of LBJ's, who was with him in the car behind the one carrying JFK, Governor John Connally, and their wives when JFK was assassinated in Dallas. One of the reasons JFK went to Dallas in the first place was because, after Tower won LBJ's Senate seat, becoming the 1st Republican Senator in the South since Reconstruction, Texas' Democrats were split between factions led by Yarborough (a liberal) and Connally (a conservative who would later switch to the Republicans).

Robert Byrd, the Senate Majority Leader from 1977 to 1988, had belonged to the Ku Klux Klan during World War II, more for its opposition to Communism than its hatred of blacks, Catholics and Jews. He later called joining the KKK "the greatest mistake I ever made."

In his last book, the 2008 Letter to a New President -- he knew that fellow Senator Barack Obama was a rising star, but did not yet suspect that he would become said new President -- he wrote, "I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times... and I don't mind apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened."

Ervin never renounced his anti-civil rights votes, but redeemed himself somewhat with his Chairmanship of the Select Committee investigating Watergate in 1973 and '74.

Thurmond had been Governor of South Carolina in 1948, and briefly left the Democratic Party to run for President on the ticket of the States' Rights Party, all former Democrats. From that point onward, Southern Democrats who opposed civil rights were known as "Dixiecrats." Thurmond launched a filibuster designed to stop the Civil Rights Act of 1957, lasting a little over 24 hours, setting a record previously held by Huey Long of Louisiana, Russell's father. When the CRA of 1964 became law, Thurmond became the 1st major Democratic official in the South to switch to the Republican Party.

Gore was running for re-election, and was, by his own later admission, afraid to vote for the bill. He had previously voted for the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960. His re-election secure, he went on to vote for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall as the 1st black Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. He lost his next bid for re-election in 1970, but that's been attributed to his opposition to the Vietnam War, rather than to his pro-civil rights votes. His son, usually known as Al Gore, would also be elected to both houses of Congress, serve as Bill Clinton's Vice President, and be the Democratic nominee for President in 2000.

Robertson was the father of Marion G. "Pat" Robertson, the Virginia Beach-based televangelist who ran for the Republican nomination for President in 1988, and has been a major figure in "Christian" conservatism ever since, often on the back of various forms of bigotry. (UPDATE: Pat died in 2023.)

Cotton -- no relation to current Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas -- also ended up voting for every other Civil Rights Act from 1957 to 1968, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as well as the 24th Amendment, banning poll taxes. (Gore was not present for the vote on that Amendment.) He voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he said, on the grounds that part of it was unconstitutional.

Goldwater, like Cotton, claimed the bill was unconstitutional. Although he was the conservative movement's favorite son at the time, he had never previously been accused of racism. Indeed, in Arizona, a State then with few Black people, he had been praised by Hispanics and Native Americans for his efforts on their behalf.

Hickenlooper was the great-uncle of John Hickenlooper, now a Senator from Colorado, previously that State's Governor and Mayor of Denver -- and a Democrat. Simpson was the father of a later Senator from Wyoming, Alan Simpson.

The bill the Senate passed was slightly different from the one passed by the House, so the House had to approve it again. That took until July 2, and the vote was 289-126. Now, it headed to the President's desk, and LBJ wasted no time: He called in the media, and he called in key figures, including Dr. King, and the Attorney General, who was also the previous President's brother, Robert F. Kennedy.

It was Johnson who began the tradition of the President using a different pen to sign each letter of his name, including the period after the middle initial B. This way, he could give out 15 ceremonial pens -- 6 for "Lyndon," 2 for "B.," and 7 for "Johnson" -- and 15 different people could truthfully say, "I have the pen that made this bill a law."

On the film, he can be heard telling RFK to give pens to his deputies, Nicholas Katzenbach and Burke Marshall, as well as to take one for himself. The best-known photograph of the ceremony, shown above, shows LBJ giving a pen to MLK.

A generous gesture, given that LBJ and RFK couldn't stand each other, for reasons that don't matter here. RFK resigned as Attorney General on September 3 -- he probably would have if his brother lived, anyway, to run the re-election campaign -- and ran for a U.S. Senate seat from New York. He won it -- but won by a smaller margin than Johnson did in the State.

By this point, Goldwater had already secured the Republican nomination for President, beating out pro-civil rights candidates like Governors Nelson Rockefeller of New York and William Scranton of Pennsylvania, and former Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts.

But people who cared about civil rights -- for or against -- didn't care why Goldwater voted against the Act, only that he did. Southerners who would never have voted for the nominee of "the Party of Lincoln" before this voted for Goldwater, because he voted the way they wanted. And Midwesterners and Westerners that would have normally voted Republican went for Johnson.

On Election Day, November 3, Johnson won 61.0 percent of the national popular vote, still an all-time record, while Goldwater got just 38.4 percent. Johnson won 44 States with 486 Electoral Votes, Goldwater 6 with 52. Goldwater won Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana and Georgia, all in the South; and his home State of Arizona, barely, with 50.4 percent, a winning margin of 4,782 votes.

He came close in some other Southern States. He got 48.8 percent in Florida, 46.1 in Virginia, and was the 1st Republican in the 20th Century to top 40 percent in Tennessee, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Arkansas.

He also got 49.1 percent in Idaho, 47.4 in Nebraska, 45.1 in Utah and 45.0 in Kansas. But if he had won every State where he got at least 45 percent, that still would have given him only 98 Electoral Votes. Even if he had won every State where he got at least 40 percent, including California (40.8, then with 40 EVs) and Illinois (40.5, 26), he still would have had only 199, well short of the necessary majority of 270.

To be fair, the false perception that Goldwater was racist was not the only reason he lost. But it didn't help. As no less than Jackie Robinson, a Republican who had worked for Rockefeller, put it, "It would make everything I worked for meaningless if baseball were integrated, but America's political parties were segregated."

Johnson knew it, too: "I think we have just given the South to the Republican Party for a generation." It's now been 3 generations. There have been blips since, but:

* Virginia has voted for the Democratic nominee for President in every election since 2008. But, before that, it hadn't voted for one since 1976, Jimmy Carter; and not for a non-Southern Democratic nominee since 1948, Harry Truman.

* Georgia voted for Joe Biden in 2020. Other than that, they haven't voted for the Democratic nominee since Bill Clinton in 1992.

* Florida last voted for the Democratic nominee in 2012, Barack Obama.

* North Carolina last voted for the Democratic nominee in 2008, Obama. Other than that, they haven't voted for the Democratic nominee since 1976; and not for a non-Southern Democratic nominee since 1948.

* Arkansas, Tennessee and Louisiana last voted for the Democratic nominee in 1996, Bill Clinton. Arkansas last voted for a non-Southern Democratic nominee in 1956, Adlai Stevenson; Louisiana in 1952, Stevenson; and Tennessee in 1948. Tennessee didn't even vote for native son Al Gore in 2000, although that's been attributed to guns as much as to race. This is also the case for West Virginia, which was a reliably Democratic State until 2000.

* Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina last voted for the Democratic nominee in 1976, and haven't voted for a non-Southern Democratic nominee since 1960, John F. Kennedy.

* Oklahoma last voted for the Democratic nominee in 1976, and hasn't voted for a non-Southern Democratic nominee since 1948.

We will never know how many of the 21 Democrats who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would have done so if they weren't afraid of their respective electorates dumping them for more racist candidates in Democratic Primaries, or switching to Republican candidates. The two Mississippians, Eastland and Stennis, were true believers in segregation. Thurmond, however, did begin to hire black staffers in 1971.

What we do know is that racism, like all other forms of bigotry, is an inherently conservative trait, and the American Southeast remains conservative. And when conservatism meant switching from Democratic to Republican, they did, and have stayed as such.

And what has voting Republican gotten them? Extended poverty and lousy services.

Neil Young may be Canadian, and didn't gain American citizenship until 2020, specificially so he could vote against Donald Trump, but he was right: "Southern man, better use your head." And Lynyrd Skynyrd were wrong: A Southern man does need him around, anyhow.

The last serving Senator who voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was Ted Kennedy, brother of Jack and Bobby, who died in office in 2009. The last surviving Senator who voted for it was Birch Bayh of Indiana, who lived until 2019. The last serving and the last surviving Senator who voted against it was Robert Byrd, who died in office in 2010.

*

July 2, 1964 was a Thursday. Scandal-ridden baseball star Jose Canseco, and his identical but far less successful twin brother Ozzie, were born on this day.

It was the off-season for the NFL, the AFL, the NBA and the NHL. But nearly a full slate of Major League Baseball games was played, with every team except the Chicago White Sox and the Washington Senators scheduled:

* The New York Yankees beat the Kansas City Athletics, 4-3 in 15 innings at Yankee Stadium. Despite the game's length, only 1 home run was hit, and not by somebody you might expect, like Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris or Joe Pepitone. It was Bobby Richardson. (Mantle and Maris did both get 2 hits in the game.)

Richardson led off the bottom of the 15th with a groundout. But Mantle hit a triple to left field. With the winning run on 3rd, and 1st and 2nd open, the A's intentionally walked Tom Tresh and then Pepitone, hoping for a forceout at any based, preferably an infield-to-home-to-1st double play. Instead, Hector Lopez -- appropriately for the day, both Black and Hispanic -- singled to left to bring Mantle home with the winning run. Rollie Sheldon started for the Yankees, but the winning pitcher was Steve Hamilton.

* The New York Mets lost to the Houston Colt .45s, 7-1 at Colt Stadium in Houston. The next season, the Colts moved into their new home, the Astrodome, and changed their name to the Houston Astros.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Boston Red Sox, 15-9 at Fenway Park in Boston. Harmon Killebrew went 2-for-5. He didn't hit a home run, but Tony Oliva, Rich Rollins and Don Mincher did. For the Red Sox, Carl Yastrzemski went 3-for-4 with an RBI. Boston homers were hit by Felix Mantilla and Dick Williams -- who, 3 years later, would manage the Sox to the "Impossible Dream" Pennant, led by Yastrzemski's Triple Crown and Most Valuable Player performance.

* The Los Angeles Angels beat the Baltimore Orioles, 10-6 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. In defeat, Jackie Brandt hit 2 home runs, and Brooks Robinson went 1-for-5.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago Cubs, 7-0 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Jim Maloney pitched a 4-hit shutout. Marty Keough hit a home run, Frank Robinson went 1-for-2 with 2 walks and 2 RBIs, and Pete Rose went 3-for-4 with 2 RBIs. For the Cubs, Ernie Banks went 1-for-4.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians, 9-1 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Al Kaline went 2-for-3.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Milwaukee Braves, 4-3 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Hank Aaron went 1-for-4, and Joe Torre went 0-for-4.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 3-2 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* And the San Francisco Giants beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-5 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Willie Mays drew a walk and scored in the 1st inning, but was injured, and had to leave the game. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-3.

March 12, 1956: The Southern Manifesto

Southern Senators, led by Strom Thurmond of South Carolina

March 12, 1956: The Declaration of Constitutional Principles is signed, by 19 members of the U.S. Senate and 82 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, all from States that had been in the Confederate States of America.

Since there was not a goddamned thing about it that was constitutional, it became known as the Southern Manifesto, allowing people on the right side of the struggle for civil rights to do what these rednecks had been doing to them for years: Comparing them to Communists.

The main author was Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. In 1948, as his State's Governor, he had briefly left the Democratic Party to run as the nominee for President of the States' Rights Party. From that point onward, Southern Democrats who opposed civil rights were known as "Dixiecrats."

It was written in response to the unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, 2 years earlier, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, declaring that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

The Declaration included these words: "The unwarranted decision of the Supreme Court in the public school cases is now bearing the fruit always produced when men substitute naked power for established law."

This was a bald-faced lie: The decision was warranted, and it was a strike against naked power, in the form of "Jim Crow" laws that overturned established law.

It also said: "The original Constitution does not mention education. Neither does the 14th Amendment nor any other amendment. The debates preceding the submission of the 14th Amendment clearly show that there was no intent that it should affect the system of education maintained by the States."

This was true, but it covered up the text of the 14th Amendment: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This is known as the Equal Protection Clause.

It also said: "This unwarranted exercise of power by the Court, contrary to the Constitution, is creating chaos and confusion in the States principally affected. It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding."

This was a lie: There had not been friendship. And the Court's decision didn't create confusion; it clarified the law.

Three Democratic Senators from Southern States did not sign: Albert Gore and Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, and the Majority Leader, Lyndon Johnson of Texas. In the House, 16 of 21 Democrats from Texas refused to sign it, including the Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, and a future Speaker, Jim Wright. Also refusing to sign were 3 of the 11 Democrats from North Carolina; and 1 of the 7 from Florida, Dante Fascell.

The following year, Thurmond launched the longest filibuster the Senate had yet seen, in a vain attempt to stop the Civil Rights Act of 1957. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, he became the 1st Dixiecrat to switch to the Republican Party. There would be many more.

Thurmond turned out to be the last-serving member who signed the Southern Manifesto, serving until 2003, shortly after his 100th birthday, and dying a few months later. The last surviving signer was Richard Poff of Virginia, who died in 2011.

The last-serving member who refused to sign was Jack Brooks of Texas, who served until 1994. The last surviving refuser was the aforementioned Jim Wright, who died in 2015.

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March 12, 1956 was a Monday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. No games were scheduled for the NHL. There was 1 game played in the NBA: The Syracuse Nationals beat the St. Louis Hawks, 97-92 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis.