“Dirty work somebody’s got to do”─ Laura Flanders on Selfa’s ‘Democrats’

An uncomfortable, untouchable third-rail telling of status-quo makers and regressives, slaveholders and neoliberals

Excerpting, minor editing by Carolyn Bennett


“In the 1960s, the Republican Party formally adopted the 'Southern Strategy.'

“The Southern Strategy was a deliberate strategy by the Republican Party of the 1960s concocted to win elections in Southern states by exploiting anti-Black racism among southern white voters.

“These voters were previously loyal to the Democratic Party because the Democrats defended slavery and segregation." http://thyblackman.com/2011/06/30/4th-of-july-yes-independence-day/
 

Comments on Lance Selfa’s
The Democrats

 A Critical History (2012 revised edition)  

For those who wonder where is the democracy in the Democratic Party ─ and why U.S. elections rarely seem to change anything ─ this book explains the ‘where and the why.’  

The Democrats: A Critical History exposes history: from its genesis as the Party of slaveholders to the neoliberal Democratic Leadership Council; and describes the Democrats’ role diverting desire for substantive change. 

With a new, duly-deserved chapter on the Obama Era, The Democrats reveals the many ways in which the establishment Democratic Party has not just dashed progressive hopes over centuries but served as a distraction from the desperately needed work of making real change in the United States. 

The Democrats … debunks the notion that the Democratic Party is a progressive force, and that it can be pushed to the left by its voting base. 

… A smart, readable history of the Democrats that recalls the party’s allegiance to capital 

 

Sources and notes 

Author of The Democrats: A Critical History (2012 updated edition) Lance Selfa is a columnist on U.S. politics with Socialist Worker newspaper, an editor of and contributor to International Socialist Review. He also edited another book, The Struggle for Palestine (2002). 

Selfa appeared this week on KPFA’s “Letters and Politics.” http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/83639

The Democrats: A Critical History in paperback: 260 pages; Haymarket Books; Revised edition August 7, 2012; English language

http://www.amazon.com/The-Democrats-A-Critical-History/dp/1931859558
http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/The-Democrats-A-Critical-History
http://www.labusas.org/forum/showthread.php?t=156609
http://www.politifake.org/report_mostvotes.php
http://www.politifake.org/obamas-week-review-obama-disasters-never-end-politics-12711.html

 

"In the 1960s, the Republican Party formally adopted the “Southern Strategy.” The Southern Strategy was a deliberate strategy by the Republican Party of the 1960s concocted to win elections in Southern states by exploiting anti-Black racism among southern white voters. These voters were previously loyal to the Democratic Party because the Democrats defended slavery and segregation.

"These same voters left the Democratic Party in droves after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965," .http://thyblackman.com/2011/06/30/4th-of-july-yes-independence-day/


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