To Survive, Democrats Need to Give Up On the White Vote

How America’s Changing Demographics Will Force Change

Content Warning: For posterity, the following article contains uncensored mention of a racist slur and sexual assault.

Black women engaged in the streets, Summer of 2020, Washington D.C., George Floyd/Breonna Taylor Protests. | 9 Jun 2020 | Photo Credit: Johnny Silvercloud

Now that the clickbait title probably has the attention of some pissed off white liberals and moderates, hear me out on this first.

In 1964, Lyndon Johnson won the U.S. presidential election over his Republican opponent Barry Goldwater in what would today be characterized as a landslide. With 61.1% of the popular vote backing Johnson, it was one of the most one-sided elections in American history.

Map of the 1964 U.S. election results by every county — with Mississippi vying for worst state.

Of the non-Hispanic white people who voted, Johnson handily won 59% of them. He also won 94% of votes from all non-white voters. Decades after Johnson’s death, two apocryphal quotes from the man were put to pen for the first time, giving markedly contradictory reactions to the legacy of this election’s impact and the Civil Rights Act he had signed that year.

The first quote was from Inside the White House, written by journalist Ronald Kessler and published in 1995: