cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17294985
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." - Abraham Lincoln
"I am glad to know that there is a system of labor where the laborer can strike if he wants to! I would to God that such a system prevailed all over the world." - Abraham Lincoln
"The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world." - Karl Marx
Exactly. Back in those days, the Democrats were what Republicans are now, and vice versa. The people didn't change; just the names of the groups flipped.
To be entirely fair, it was a bit slower than that. The Republican Party was the party of urban folk and free farmers up until the late 1870s, and shifted to the urban elite and middle class by the 1890s; while the Democrats shifted to favor rural elites and (white) yeomen farmers. Teddy Roosevelt was really the last gasp of progressivism in the Republican Party, which had been steadily been souring on labor, while Wilson shifted the Democrat party to favor white wage laborers as well as farmers. Truman (a Democrat) had taken a firm pro-civil rights stance in the 1940s, and as late as Eisenhower in the 1950s there was broad anti-conservative support in the Republican Party.
The tumult of the 1960s really just set everything in stone - capital siding with conservative elements, and labor with liberal elements. And then, in the course of the 80s, aligning the racists and capital with the previously-apolitical evangelicals, which delivered a 'winning coalition' to a previously-struggling Republican Party.
This was Nixon, and the "Southern Strategy.". This moment marked the final demographic realignment of the Republican party and is probably Nixon's true legacy since we're still stuck with it to this very day. To be a little more nuanced, I suppose, the Southern Strategy probably ultimately originated with Barry Goldwater's campaign. But Goldwater never actually made it to the presidency -- to put it mildly. (Goldwater was positively obliterated by Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 election.)
But Nixon did.
Nixon aligned with racists and capital with the Southern Strategy, but the evangelicals being an essential part of the coalition was the work of Reagan and his era.
Also Jerry Fallwell in particular. Fuck that guy.