Twitter: One more Democratic speech:
@RevDrBarber: Both @VP & Richard Spencer pulled stunts to stoke white rage this weekend. But neither proposes policies that would help poor white people.
@mattyglesias: This is well said. I’d only add that they’re not helping middle class white people either. White supremacy is America’s oldest & best con.
Lyndon Johnson: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you..."
Joseph Bailey of TX (Rep 1891-1901; Sen 1901-1913) to Sam Rayburn, as related by LBJ in New Orleans in 1964:
When Mr. Rayburn came up as a young boy of the House, he went over to see the old Senator.... [Bailey] was talking about economic problems. He was talking about how we had been at the mercy of certain economic interests, and how they had exploited us. They had worked our women for 5 cents an hour, they had worked our men for a dollar a day, they had exploited our soil, they had let our resources go to waste, they had taken everything out of the ground they could, and they had shipped it to other sections.
He was talking about the economy and what a great future we could have in the South, if we could just meet our economic problems, if we could just take a look at the resources of the South and develop them.
And he said:
Sammy, I wish I felt a little better. I would like to go back to old _. I would like to go back down there and make them one more Democratic speech. I just feel like I have one in me. The poor old State, they haven't heard a Democratic speech in 30 years. All they ever hear at election time is 'n----r, n----r, n----r!'
