So then it’s 37 of the previous 44 presidents who were bland white Christians, plus one more who was Catholic. Not exactly a diverse group.
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He only got 14 electoral votes in SC and Arizona. Kennedy also carried Louisiana as it’s heavily catholic… He barely beat Nixon, but Byrd had little to do with that. Was he questioned because of his catholicism? Yes. But he won regardless, even if it was a close race. I don’t think Byrd was much of an issue in the election at the end of the day.
I’m not aware of that… where did you hear it from? I’m not taft or presidential scholar by any means.
Except for the parts that still voted for him. The solid south is/was not as solid as most people think.
Overall, though. I agree with your argument about religious diversity in the white house. We DO need it. But the concerns about other aspects of the diversity, that the majority are rich white men, is probably more concerning for me, honestly.
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Byrd won 15 Electoral votes in Mississippi, Alabama, and Oklahoma, and had strong popular support in states like South Carolina. Not quite as successful as I remembered, but still really impressive for someone who wasn’t even running… If impressive is the right word for that.
Perot got zero Electoral votes, total, despite having run three times, and having carved out a sizable share of the popular vote in 1992 and 1996. Anderson got zero, Schmitz got zero, Hospers got one. No socialist candidate has ever gotten any. And to think that Byrd got 15…
Byrds 15 Electoral votes wouldn’t have swayed the election, but the race was very tight in terms of popular vote. Kennedy won by just over a million votes. If all the Byrd voters voted for Nixon, Nixon would have gotten the popular vote. Not sure if he would have gotten the Electoral vote, but who can say. The Southern Strategy seems to be working now, so maybe it could have worked a few years earlier, but this would mean rewriting history.
Not everybody in the south hated Kennedy, but enough did where it had an impact.
I read a biography about him a few years back that mentioned that he didn’t identify as a Christian. He never put it as bluntly as to say “I am not a Christian” or “I deny the divinity of Christ” but this is as close as I can find at the moment:
Of course, I am interested in the spread of Christian civilization, but to go into a dogmatic discussion of creed I will not do whether I am defeated or not. . . . If the American electorate is so narrow as not to elect a Unitarian, well and good. I can stand it.
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I was just a kid back in the Kennedy days, but it wasn’t till my twenties that I heard people actually referring to themselves as Christians. My first notice was the “I Found It” movement in college. It got worse from there, once the republicans realized they could exploit them.
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Kennedy had made noises about supporting civil rights in the south, so I wonder how much of people voting for Byrd was about that, rather than his catholicism. It’s the same thing with the Beatles - the real reason people were burning their records in the south was because they insisted on integrated audiences. Plenty of protestant bigots will align with deeply conservative catholic groups when it suits them (see the abortion issue, gay rights, etc). The democratic party was slowly moving away from being a segregationist party for decades by that point, anyway. After his death Eleanor Roosevelt was working along side anti-racist groups, and most certainly would have been a visible figure who to many represented the democratic party. Don’t forget the Dixiecrats had split off way back in the late 40s. So, although the catholic issue certainly would have been part of this, the race issue was likely paramount here and was just further cracks in the democratic base because of some changing attitudes on segregation.
I guess the question is, was this publicly and popularly known? As @kxkvi indicates, I think that most people just assumed that the people in power were good Christians just like them, and didn’t need to publicly identify as such. But either way, I didn’t know that about Taft… TIL!
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You mean there are OTHER people out there? /s
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Good point. Byrd was the segregationalist candidate, so a vote for him was a vote for segregation. I’m not sure what appeal there was for him personally except for that.
The quote implies that he wasn’t Christian enough for some people, but he didn’t really care about getting their votes. Makes sense. He really didn’t care about being president at all.
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It was a thing of beauty.
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Good. I can’t stand Burke.
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Resigning. That’s so 20th century.
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In case anyone didn’t know, Linda Fairstein, head of the NYPD sex crimes unit – who pushed for prosecution of the Central Park Five, has been summarily dropped by her book publisher, Dutton, after the Netflix release of When They See Us.
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And shame on them for not doing it when the Innocent 5 were released and exonerated. She said a lot of public horrible stuff about them.
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I was also thinking to myself how this kind of thing doesn’t happen to many white men. They just keep failing upwards.
ETA: I also took notice how they painted her in the show, always referring to them as “animals”, etc.
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This thread here is how to make it happen:
Teach 'em young and teach 'em empathy.
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Empathy for the victims; swift justice to the perpetrators.
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