I will say that the party switch is a myth in the way that republicans and some people on the left say it happened. Republicans will say you can’t point to a specific date when the switch happened. And some people on the left will say it happened after the civil rights bill, or it happened this year or that year. Republicans act like if there wasn’t a giant meeting where all the democrats and all the republicans met up and swapped shirts then it never happened. Of course it didn’t happen that way. I just rack my brain sometimes trying to figure out how republicans can use the same phrases and terminology as the democrats of yesteryear and still claim they are the party of Lincoln. Do you mean to tell me that Alabama in 1900 was run by democrats, and these are the same democrats that republicans today call socialists or Marxists or communists of unicyclists or whatever the buzzword of the day is? No, they were conservatives. Alabama has ALWAYS been run by CONSERVATIVES, no matter which party is in charge.

I remember one time at work a guy asked me if I could explain the party switch. This was around 2008 or 2009. I know that because it was around Obama’s first election and that was when people at work realized I was on the left because I was loud in my support of the man. I told my coworker this. Back in the day, the democratic party stood for the little man. The ones whose voices weren’t being heard. The blue collar workers were the main branch. As the world changed and the group whose voices weren’t being heard grew to include people of color or gay people or anyone that those hard working white men didn’t approve of, those men would think to themselves, “I aint voting for someone who supports them!” And they would flip their votes to republican because republicans would say hey come on over to our side. We will take care of you. They never did take care of them, but it felt better to those men instead of siding with people they didn’t approve of.

I know there’s a lot more nuance to it. I know it’s a lot more complicated than that but that was the best synopsis I could come up with. You can look at any period of time in the last 100 years and find where people left the left and joined the right. There was a time during FDR. There was the 1948 DNC when southern democrats formed the Dixiecrat party. There was the civil rights bill. The Southern Strategy. There was the Reagan takeover. There was Obama and Trump. So many times, there’s been an influx of people shifting from left to right. But since you can’t pinpoint a specific date, they say the party swap never happened. Well of course it didn’t happen that way. They act like it had to be fried when in reality, it was put into a crockpot. It happened long and slow. Shit, it’s still happening today. I always find it amusing when someone will tell me they proudly voted democrat for years until they didn’t “recognize” the democratic party anymore so they’ve been voting republican ever since and then those same people will say the party swap is a myth. Like hoss, you just admitted it’s true.

Recently I had a conversation with an older man I’ve known for several years. I will get to that in a few but first, some background information. Mr. Tom is a hardcore republican. I’ve always said that the people of Alabama are some of the best people in the country and would do anything to help you, except at the ballot box. Mr. Tom is the epitome of that. Sometimes when I tell stories like these and the people I am around I will get people on the left saying “Why are you interacting with these kind of people? You’re just as bad as they are if you don’t shut them out completely.” Which is such a lazy take. In places like Alabama, you have no choice but to be around people like this. What you can do is not condone anything they say and call them out on their bullshit. When that happens, usually they decide to distance themselves from you. Most of the time though that doesn’t happen. There is a fine balance to being on the left in Alabama and you come to sort of appreciate the right wingers who will sit and have a conversation with you even though you know in the back of their mind they’re ready to kill everything you believe in. In my day-to-day life when I am dealing with the people I have no choice but to deal with, I try to leave politics out of it. Sometimes though it comes up, and I always enjoy the look I receive when they realize I am not one of them.

That happened with Mr. Tom. One day a few years ago, I was having a conversation with him and a few other men and somehow a democrat politician was brought up. Mr. Tom mentioned how he hated all those radical leftists and just wished they would get the hell out of Alabama. This was one of those times when speaking up is the right time. I said, “Damn, Mr. Tom. My family has been in Bama for over 200 years. You want me to leave?”

The look on his face let me know the thought of me not being a republican had never even crossed his mind. The look told me that when he looked at me, he saw another white happily married with kids southern man who grew up in the Baptist church and that meant there was no way I could ever be one of those evil progressives. He looked shocked and said, “You’re a democrat!?” I smiled and replied, “Not really. I’m much further left than that. Democrats are too close to republicans for me. You can’t hate me. You’ve known me for a while. Hey, from now on you can tell people you don’t hate radical leftists. You’ve got radical leftist friends!”

Starting from then, there has been a weird shift. Mr. Tom will randomly sit with me and talk politics, politely. He will ask questions with genuine curiosity. It’s crazy that that is all it takes. People will have a hatred for others not realizing that the people they hate are sitting right beside them. They have this image of their perceived enemy in their head and come to find out; the enemy looks just like them or their child. I’ve seen pictures of Mr. Tom’s kids. They are close to my age and while his son doesn’t resemble me at all, his daughter and my wife could be cousins.

Ok, back to the recent conversation. It was just Mr. Tom and me. We were talking about worker’s rights and unions. He told me about his father, who was a WW2 veteran who received a purple heart and was the first person to have his spleen removed on the battlefield and survive. After the war, he went to work in a factory where he helped to unionize the workers and eventually became union president and presided over two successful strikes. That is a helluva man in my opinion.

Mr. Tom then told me, “When I got old enough to vote, my daddy sat me down and told me that he had voted for nothing but democrats ever since he was able to because the democrats fought for him but that the democrats had also abandoned him and he just couldn’t make himself vote for a democrat every again. He told me son, I aint telling you how to vote. I am just telling you how I vote and why.” Mr. Tom then added, “That’s why I have never voted for anybody that wasn’t a republican. To honor my daddy, who fought for this country and then was abandoned by the party who was supposed to take care of him.” I sat there almost in shock. I was silent but then had the wherewithal to ask Mr. Tom what year that was. When did he turn 18? When did his daddy tell him about the democrats abandoning him. He said, “Well I was born in 52, so that was in 1970.”

The motherfucking southern strategy. The exact thing I said earlier about the democrats standing up for those whose voices weren’t being heard. The democrats didn’t abandon Mr. Tom’s father. They just welcomed more people into the fold. And to southern white Americans, that was the ultimate betrayal. This was the first time I have ever been able to confirm my long-held hypothesis. Conservatives would rather not have anything, than allow those they hate a seat at their table. I just couldn’t believe I got to see the ramifications of the southern strategy so close and personal. I mean I live in Alabama, the eye of the southern strategy hurricane, but this was an actual account of the strategy working. It worked and the people that it worked on have no idea. Over 160 years later, we are still dealing with the ramifications of the civil war. Almost 60 years later, we are still dealing with the ramifications of the southern strategy. How do we “make America great again” when there is a huge populace that defines great as less rights for people? To that end, was it ever really great at all? Only in their minds.