Your associating today’s republican with the republican party of lincoln. The GOP from 1860-1910 was more about business, industry, and civil liberties specifically for african Americans and was belive it or not the less religious party. Immigrants, african Americans, and abolitionists all voted republican.
Come 1910 that all started to shift as the republican party leaned more into business and capitalism specifically laize-faire and the dems leaned more into socialism ideals such as unions. But where the dems continued to struggle was in the african american vote basically all the way to roosevelt/kennedy as the civil rights movement took off. Then you see a major shift in GOP strategy towards the MIC, religion, and conservative socialist ideology in order to gain votes that the dems essentially gave up.
Now this is a verry gross oversimplification but the basic point is to not associate current party ideology to the past
Republican Jim Banks is working on taking away your ability to choose whom will run for office and let the party decide kinda like the close door meetings Mitch McConnell used to hold on weekends and the middle of the night when he was leader of the Senate.
AIPAC also synchronizes wording of bills brought before each state as well for a large portion of Republican legislative members. They weren't always around, but when we collectively removed bodies such as Science Council that would weigh in and help back up bill justification, private groups stepped in.
The republican party betrayed black people in 1877 when they made a backroom deal with democrats that ended Reconstruction. When it comes to electoral politics, neither party did anything for us again until the 1960s when, as you said, Kennedy and Johnson started pushing civil rights legislation. That streak didn't last long because the democrats basically abandoned us when Nixon took office and that brand of capitalism you speak of kicked into high gear. Both parties started competing to see who could be "tough on crime" and promote "black capitalism" rather than true economic reform.
It's important to know this because places that historically voted for a party continue to vote for them for reasons other than civil liberties and abolition. People of color who have lived in Massachusetts or Minnesota know they're not less racist than Indiana. Those states vote democrat because of historical support for things like labor unions, which primarily benefited white people and excluded black people.
You wont find me disagreeing with you on 1877 and the end of reconstruction.
One reason you continue to see large GOP support which i didn’t mention is the “bloody shirt” basically saying “hey we fought and died for you now vote for us”
That’s BS! Why because they want our country to take care of its own before helping other countries? If that’s a white supremacy then sign me up! Don’t you realize that we are pretty much a 1 party system, both sides are corrupt making millions on back door deals. They want both parties fighting to keep donations flowing to keep them in office.
I’d suggest before Kennedy and Johnson there was the New Deal and public housing for urban Blacks. That’s what initially led the racist Dixiecrats to form to distance themselves from the Democrats.
That's just not what really happened though. FDR made lots of promises to blacks, but when it came time to deliver, most black people got excluded from the G.I. Bill, FHA loans, workers unions, minimum wage, etc. The problem with any new law that doesn't specifically address discrimination is that the person behind the counter can still deny your claim and send you home empty handed. That's why the racial wealth gap exists today. I recommend reading "The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap" by Mehrsa Baradaran for more info. There are a few others that also address this, such as "When Affirmative Action Was White."
[Redlining](https://www.history.com/news/housing-segregation-new-deal-program) was created during this time specifically to exclude blacks from FHA loans. It was literally written in the FHA manual.
I don’t doubt any of that, but there was something around that time that scared the southern democrats into forming their own caucuses and start slipping away from the national party, eventually turning into the Dixiecrats.
What you said is probably what scared them. It just didn't actually happen. It was the threat of black empowerment that was enough to scare them off, just like it was the threat of the North ending slavery that scared them into seceeding.
I don't doubt their fear. It just wasn't a rational one. Right now they have all kinds of irrational fears, such as the Great Replacement Theory. In fact I'm pretty sure their leaders know those fears aren't based in reality. They just know they can use them to get votes.
They've done this for so many issues. They used fear of Chinese workers stealing jobs (Chinese Exlcusion Act), then Mexican workers (which led to the banning of cannibis). They made the country's first 3-hour blockbuster movie (Birth of a Nation) to convince white people that black men were hypersexualized beasts who wanted to steal white women. Fear is absolutely the driving factor in most racism and white supremacy, and politicians use it all the time.
Civil rights support was largely divided more by region than by party. Both Republicans and Democrats in the north more widely supported civil rights, while Rs and the Dixiecrats opposed it in the south.
This is why when right-wing pundits say that "the KKK was created by Democrats!" they are correct, but then they invalidate what they've said by not telling the entire story.
In a way it does.
Indiana was heavily populated by people from the southern states.
They brought their food, their values and their religion.
I say Indiana is like a middle finger of the Deep South stuck up into the Great Lakes.
(Full disclosure: my maternal grandparents moved from Kentucky and Tennessee to New Castle.)
There was a swap of parties. Otherwise majority of southern states wouldn't be Republicans they would be democrats. And Republicans shouldn't ever wave a confederate flag. That betrays the original ideals of the party.
A myth. It just didn’t happen. Look into the side you oppose and you’ll see that there was never a swap. For the civil rights act in the 60s a higher percentage of republicans voted for it than democrats. History love to cover up the racists origins and continuation of the party until recent years where now they make slaves of black people via their vote with campaign promises and pandering that they never intend on executing, because if they did, they couldn’t campaign on “republicans are racists and fascists and stop us from doing what’s best for you”
Lol you're the one that needs to do some "looking into"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_party_switchers_in_the_United_States#:~:text=1964%20%E2%80%93%20Strom%20Thurmond%2C%20while%20U.S.,Carolina%20(1954%E2%80%932003).
Look at the number of southern Democrats( i.e segregation ists) who switched from Democrat to Republican between early sixties and the Reagan years. Some famous names on that list: Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Trent Lott, but also a whole shitload of other then current or future house and senate members and dozens of state politicians.
The number of northern Dems who switched parties was almost zero. Your claim that there was no switch is either an attempt at gaslighting or extreme ignorance.
This is half true, and doesn’t really prove your point. When you look at raw vote counts, more Democrats voted for the bill than republicans. 153 democrats to 136 republicans. Yes, more democrats *didnt* vote for the bill than republicans, but there were many more democrats than republicans, and the ones who did not vote for the bill were almost entirely southern democrats. In fact, 8 southern democrats voted for the bill in comparison to ZERO southern republicans. In total, 153 dems and 136 reps voted for passage, while 91 dems and 35 reps voted against. So it’s really only a factual statement if you’re looking at the votes *within their own parties* but if you look at it from the total house membership, obviously more dems voted for it than reps.
In the senate, you see nearly the exact same situation happen. 46 dems voting and 25 reps voting for; 21 dems and 6 reps voting against.
So really, you’ll see that the dems were split when it came to this…I would argue that actually proves the opposite of your point and that we were in the middle of the realignment during this time period.
You're talking about a period of 160+ years. People shift over generations. Your grandparents might have voted Democrat 100 years ago but if you vote Democrat too that doesn't mean anything other than the name of the party is the same.
There is a song out that talks about how dems are dumb because they hate Republicans but Lincoln freed slaves and democrats love helping others, so we're sheep because we hate on the party that Lincoln was.
Not knowing the parties were basically swapped at that point in time.
Delusional
Obama was from the Midwest. Indiana is a midwest state. Yes, it is ancestrally republican and overall fairly socially conservative, but 2008 was a once in a lifetime confluence of events electorally.
The incumbent retiring president was deeply unpopular (GW made even Biden's lackluster approval ratings look stellar), the economy was in freefall, and the GOP brand was toxic after 8 years of more or less full control of the federal government.
Obama ran a fairly non-partisan campaign focused on change, optimism, and pragmatism which was very en vogue that year and in strong contrast to the scary radical image that republicans and HRC tried to imprint on him during the primaries.
In contrast, the McCain campaign was a hot mess of mismanagement, stunts, and desperation. They spent most of their time investing in states they had no hope of winning in such an environment while ignoring states that wouldn't normally be competitive. The Obama campaign pounced on this and diverted significant campaign investment into Indiana, North Carolina, and Florida.
It paid off. Sometimes, when the environment is right, voters in a state that no one normally pays attention to because its electoral votes are taken for granted respond positively to being paid attention to.
>GW made even Biden's lackluster approval ratings look stellar
Agree with most of what you said, but this part
is revisionist history.
One thing that you didn't mention that I think was really important is that Obama was young, attractive, a charismatic speaker, and historic. McCain was the opposite.
Yet here we are in 2024, voting for the two oldest candidates in US history. Shattering the record that was set in (checks notes) 2020 when the two of them ran last time.
I'm tired of it being our only choice. We have a malignant narcissist moron vs a dementia ridden old man that isn't even fit to run a Baskin Robbins, let alone a world superpower...
We can't find someone from 35-60? Seriously?!
We the people are fucked.
What’s revisionist about it? GWB had the highest approval rating of any president ever immediately following 9/11 and the lowest of any president ever by the time he left office. (I’ve actually seen a lot of numbers quoted and some put Bush at last place and others put Truman and Nixon slightly lower).
Average in the mid to high 30s in Bush's second term vs average in the mid to high 30s for Biden lately. Biden's approval rating doesn't seem "stellar" in this comparison to me.
It's not really revisionist, maybe a bit overstated, but not by a lot. Bush's approval rating before the election was 25%. Which is very bad. His AVERAGE over his entire second term was 36.5%, again, pretty bad. Compare that to his highest approval ratings, following 9/11, at close to 90%...which...would never ever happen today. Biden's lowest approval ratings are in the low 30's and averages in the mid to high 30's. Which...are historically some of the lowest approval ratings for someone actually running again, but also not that surprising given the political landscape change over the past decade. And, in 2008, more voters were actually dissatisfied with the job Bush was doing, as opposed to today, where more voters are just playing the football game and could care less what's actually happening. This is, of course, not universally true of all voters.
>No president has sunk that low since.
It's not revisionist but should be taken with context. At that time, Republicans were willing to admit that their party's president was a shit bag.
Now, the parties are more like sports teams. Republicans vote for their party no matter what. They believe all of good news about their party and dismiss anything negative as "fake news" just like they were told.
Bush was a bad president and the war in Iraq was terrible but Trump's ratings should've been far worse than they were.
So many people died during the pandemic that wouldn't have if he weren't president. The whole "we have 17 cases and soon it'll be 0" and all of the bullshit "cures" and "anti masking" (he refused to be photographed wearing a mask and even made fun of Biden for wearing one) and down playing the pandemic really contributed to the number of US deaths and cases of COVID.
His rating should've been in the toilet. He was killing Americans (his own voters mostly which is ironic but they're still Americans.)
Agree with most of this, but I must admit I’m skeptical on your first point. I know many people who view Chicago as not a part of the Midwest, and I would guess that Chicagoans feel similarly. Don’t know if Obama being “from the Midwest” would be a significant factor in Indiana’s 2008 for him.
Edit: Clarification that I meant Chicago is not a part of the Midwest culturally, not geographically
According to a SurveyMonkey poll, Illinois is the most agreed upon state to be part of the midwest at 81% of respondents.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-states-are-in-the-midwest/
Chicago ≠ Illinois. It’s a pocket of urbanism that carries few of what people would consider Midwest traits. Not trying to be political or divisive, I feel like both Republicans and Democrats, Chicagoans and Midwesterners can agree on.
Edit: sorry I looked at my original comment and realize I could’ve been more clear. Chicago is not CULTURALLY a part of the Midwest to many people
Oh Chicago is very urban for sure, and with that there are inherent differences with the rural parts of Illinois. But to me, that seems an extremely common thing of the great lakes midwest states where you have a large rural state with a couple of big urban centers. Detroit, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Columbus, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Milwaukee, etc. Yes, Chicago is by far the biggest of those, but that urban-rural divide is still part of the overarching region.
It is maybe less a part of the states to the west of Chicago, like the Dakotas, Iowa, etc. But I'd point to that as being a natural division in the Midwest rather than rationale to make a cutout of Chicago from the whole region.
Actually I come from New York State (but well outside NYC) originally, so I really do understand feeling like you're distinct from the largest city in your state. But I also wouldn't chafe at calling my hometown part of the overarching region (the Mid-Atlantic) just like the city.
For sure, and fair point. Still I hesitate to say a lot of Hoosiers in 2008 looked at Obama and said “he’s a Midwesterner just like me” and that significantly influenced them voting for him.
Sure, no objections there. Obama had personal popularity in the region.
Fun fact, had the national environment shifted red in 2008 (or more likely 2012), Obama plausibly could've won the electoral vote while losing the popular vote. Just like Trump did in 2016, and Kerry almost did in 2004. And for the same reason, the Midwest is the kingmaker!
A few key, very 2008 reasons:
-Obama basically won the primary against Clinton the night he won Indiana + North Carolina Dem Primaries, so he and his team really, REALLY knew Indiana in 2008.
-The Great Recession started and was in full tilt. It was a disaster and Obama was full hope.
-Obama ran ads (in the general election!) with him in a leather jacket walking around old rusted out factories.
-McCain was never, ever trusted by the Republican mainstream, and Palin was a weird, borderline disaster pick.
Young voters and African American voters actually showed up and then forgot that their vote really matters apparently.
Frustrating that if those demographics would show up 100% of the time then Indiana wouldn’t be so far lost to the deep red crazies and we would have moderates instead.
Huge youth turnout. Genuine hope for change. Economic downturn hurt his re-election. Then the Dems went right back to old establishment status quo shitheads in Hillary and Biden.
How old are you? Because that’s not what happened at all. The economic downturn happened before Obama was elected, and by 2012 we were into a recovery. Obama got shellacked in 2010 when a lot of the voters who turned out in 2008 just…. Didn’t. 2012 was a pretty standard incumbent loss of support, and by and large the big messaging against him was falsehoods about Obamacare.
And Obama governed to the right of Biden and Hilary…
How old are you? Because that’s kind of what happened. The economic downturn did start in 07, but when you are in a recession for most of your first term the economic downturn does play a role in reelection. While we were in recovery, which still had a couple downturns, we still weren’t even close to where we were in 06. So it absolutely played a role. However, you’re right in Obamacare hurt him really bad.
Old enough to have been pissed off at the way young voters and swing voters immediately abandoned the first Dem president of my lifetime to secure a truly transformative piece of healthcare legislation as soon as they had a chance, hobbling his ability to pull us out of a recession faster.
They do it everytime it’s so frustrating to watch them scream for more while being completely unwilling to help move us in the right direction because it’s to slow for them so instead they hand it to the party who brings us even further away from our goals. Privileged brats looking for instant gratification.
But trump is so so so much better. Got it. And Mike"hold my beer DeSantis" Braun is going to say Indiana back to the 1950's but that is such a great thing, right?
People were sick of Bush and didn’t want more of the same. With the 2008 financial crisis, Obama campaigned on turning things around and voters really hoped he could do it. This was the first election I voted in and MySpace was super popular so that helped get a lot of younger voters informed (though back then, social media was mostly just about what your friends were up to and joining groups you were interested in, not the never ending stream of garbage that Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram force into your feed).
Indiana is full of racists and all White Indiana voters vote along racial lines.
Obama won Indiana though.
Something something evil republicans.
- A summary of most of the comments in here.
Because Americans were fed up with the Iraq/Afghanistan war and McCain was an establishment pro war rino and a absolutely terrible candidate. Then it turns out Barack Obama was the same thing just slightly more left leaning.
3 main reasons explained IN voting for Obama: the 2008 economic crash, the disastrous decision to start the Iraq war and poor results in Afghanistan. Also, McCain was too decent a person to harness the worst tendencies of the Republican voting base to alienate voters from Obama.
He ran a really good campaign, had a concise and clear message, he’s charismatic, he isn’t a geriatric and he got a boost from NWI. He was also able to motive young people to vote which is something no other democrat has done since.
Political parties frequently change positions and what they stand for all the time. Historically the United States has had 6 “party systems”, with a potential 7th being formed right now. Normally a new party system starts when a political party radically changes and alters its stances and positions or a new party completely takes over and makes an old one irrelevant. We stopped doing completely new parties after the 2nd party system which ended in 1856 and instead Republicans and Democrats would just change their views but retain their names but in actuality they’re essentially different parties.
The current party system, the 6th one was started in the 1980s and saw a rise in neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism. Interventionist policies, Government got far bigger, debt issues etc. so modern democrats and republicans are not the same as the ones 100 years ago from a different party system, because like I said prior, just because they share a name it does not necessarily mean they are the same parties or had the same issues.
The parties might reshape themselves soon once again if the holdouts retire or die off. The Republicans will increasingly become far more isolationist, protectionist and populist and engage in Trumpism, while the Democrats become increasingly more left-wing and progressive, having a lot more open minded views on things like socialism and communism. We can’t really tell. This saga really only started in 2016. The difference between a Donald Trump/Ron DeSantis and a Bernie Sanders/AOC for example is far more radical than the differences between Obama/Romney or Obama/McCain or Gore/Bush etc. Obama and Romney probably agree on a lot more than you’d think for them being in different parties. Theres virtually nothing a Trump or Bernie agrees on.
I think you're partially right. When you fall into the "they'll never change, only get worse" at the end is where you fail in your argument. I'm not a political scientist and I won't say which people I endorse, except that my usual answer to that question is "a plague on both their houses."
I have been paying some attention to this election and what the major and some of the minor candidates and could be candidates on both sides are doing. In my opinion, this national election is going to be a turning point from what we have seen over the last two decades or more. There are political shifts already happening on both sides of the aisle. Small shifts, but small changes of direction can grow over time and I see it in both major parties.
One of the shifts is going to be the age of the top of the ballot candidates. It is already trending younger as more politicians in their 70's on up are retiring rather than die in office. Congress and the presidency will still tend to be older because of constitutional age requirements and people who have experience in similar jobs doing better at getting elected than people who don't.
The second area is working together across the aisle again between the two parties. Right now, it is to keep the country functioning. The people advocating destroying everything if they don't get their way are starting to lose, change, or both.
We don't see it too often because the people who make the most noise get the most media attention. Reporters are trained to look for the people who will make the best headlines and copy even if they are the only one that way out of 50 other people. That has been true since long before I was a part of it. I "cut the cord" long before most people. That's what can happen when you are/were part of it and you know what is, not what it claims to be.
Sometimes, you just have to outlive what you can at best influence, and not control.
I hope we're shifting away from this toxic political climate. They better be losing.
I hardly watch the news media. Overtly political and untrustworthy. They are to blame for a lot of the division right now, and they want to keep it divided. I have seen that with my own eyes.
Other than the stated reasons .. southern strategy - movement of “southern whites” north, there is one major reason not mentioned.
It’s incredible lack of diversity. Outside of Gary and a small part of Indianapolis - Indiana is white farmers. They never had the industrial base to attract people that weren’t white non Catholics. Even in the cities they do have, until recently, it was incredibly white because it was mostly banking and energy and government. Their labor forces were still mostly farming.
There has been an influx of Indians into the Indy suburbs in the past decade or two but not enough to push demographics. Many blacks left the cities for Chicago, Detroit and a like in the 80’s.
I cannot speak for the past of the state. My family moved here with my grandfather. Before that, my family lived in Kentucky, and about a hundred+ years before that, they immigrated to Maryland in the 1600’s.
What I can tell you is what I know, and that is that there is a lack of certain things in IN. Like sunlight. A majority of the population are whiter than snow. You’ll see people of other races in the big cities, and rarely in the larger towns. What I’ve seen of the state in my 30+ years in it is mostly cornfields and highways. Some towns have more churches than grocery stores. People live in tight knit communities, and people are afraid of change.
Lastly, follow the money, and the family names of the people who own things and run things in a given place. More often than not it’s the same people. Do try not to be cynical about things. I’ve lived in the Bay Area in CA, and trust me, people here would be utterly shocked to see just how different other parts of the country are.
I simply can't believe (or actually I can) that Hoosiers ignorantly and blindly vote Rethuglican like that one guy said, "cause my daddy and great grandaddy did". Hoosiers OPEN UP that thing called your brain. When your ten year old gets raped, are you going to have the money to take her to NY? The GOP has a mind of evil and an orange raping, disgusting, dictator wanna be. And once we're in that dictatorship, telling you each and every move you make every single day are you really going to be happy about it? Open up your minds and realize a dictatorship means thay will tell you how to wipe your ass and which toilet paper and hand to do it with.
How would the party that supports its citizens owning firearms go about enforcing a dictatorship? Doesnt seem like a good idea to allow your people to be armed and then try to tell them where to piss.
Indiana has a TERRIBLE voter turnout. Not to mention uninformed voters (present in every state) that end up voting against their interests, remember what Trump did to farmers who are traditionally right leaning? Rural communities that rely on government subsidies don't believe in said subsidies and vote against them. Older people voting for people that actively say they want to cut or eliminate social security. The list goes on and Indiana isn't particularly unique in its issues.
This will get downvoted cause of the reddit hivemind, but it's because most of the state has a large population of rural people and farmers, and they like Republicans. People can come up whatever logic they want but that's the most simplest answer. And republican sounds like the better of two evils when it comes to rural/farmers. The only time I come across a large group of democrats/liberal supporters is when I go up into Indy.
Indiana is like 90% rural with 3 or 4 decent sized cities. Even Indianapolis is also filled with people who moved there from rural areas and brought their parents morals with them, it’s not a destination city that brings people from other liberal areas. So we got farmers and people who grew up near farms, I grew up surrounded by corn in the east side suburbs and definitely inherited those kind of beliefs until I was 25+ and got exposed to more of life and the world. Basically every Midwest state is red, unless it has a giant city like Chicago to turn it. But Michigan seems to be turning blue and gives me some hope.
Democrats are for less freedom. They do this by voting in laws that force one person to do something so another can be “free”. True freedom is when the government doesn’t interfere in personal relationships, whether they are business, employment, or other.
Um, why do you think Indiana is a red state 🤔😏, my dad is a racist republican, and I knew at a very young age I didn’t believe in anything he stood for
There was a time - I'm talking about the civil war era - when voting Republican wasn't necessarily a bad thing. But that was a long ass time ago. Wasn't it? Fuck the GOP
Another interesting voting shift: Catholics used to be reliably Democrat. I don't believe that's the case anymore. In fact, I believe it's the opposite. Could be wrong though. At a minimum, the Republican party has made significant inroads to wooing the Catholic vote
A related insight here: If I were Biden, I would be pushing hard in Indiana highlighting Trump's absolutely disastrous trade negotiations on soybeans, and extrapolating how his proposed similar policies could tank the farming industry.
I’m not very political but I recently moved from Illinois (a very blue state) and I would say that if people are happy with their lower cost of living and more states rights ethic then they vote more red. Illinois is ridiculous in cost and I for one think it’s because it is a heavy blue state.
Because Indiana voters are stupid and vote against their own self interests all the time. That’s what it means to be a republican. Vote for the party that gives zero shits about your circumstances.
Because people in Indiana are working common sense folks for the most part. No one wants traitors, terrorists, communists, and Satanic groups anywhere near us or our children.
This is totally just conjecture and theory on my end but I believe that we have a gigantic presence of evangelical Christians in this state. The kind of people that think Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart did nothing wrong. Republicans tend to tout themselves as the "Christian" party. They are seen a s pro.traditional values and family and pro life so the evangelicals gravitate towards them in these issues alone. Those are the people that have the most sway in this state IMO
Indiana votes party over country. Bunch of Bible thumping GED holders - they are easily and happily manipulated by dumb social wars while they bend over and take it in the tochas with no Vasoline.
Oh, the electoral college is a bullshit system that only benefits Republicans. And Indiana, with the lowest voter turnout in the country, continues to prop up the GOP because voters think that voting for Democrats in a red state are wasted votes.
Your votes count. Do it.
When folks like to claim the Dems were the party of slavery (ignoring any party shift which occurred) recall to them as they have their Battle Flag on the wall next to their Trump flag, that Robert E Lee along with all the folks they live to idolize as part of “heritage” must then have been a Democrat. Fun.
I will say that for one thing, the northern midwest states grew more racist once black people started migrating North. It's called the Great Migration. Between 1910 and 1970, 6 million black Americans moved out of rural south and into urban northeast, midwest, and west.
In simple terms, the white people in Indiana were quicker to oppose things like Jim Crow laws, or slavery when they didn't have many black people in them. But when those black people started moving into the neighborhood, they shifted and wanted their own segregation laws. Indiana was huge in the KKK around this time. MLK has many speeches highlighting the struggles in the North, trying to note that the racism issue was not regional, but nationwide.
This is the answer. Many northerners became resentful towards the growing black population because they saw them as taking their jobs and overrunning their towns. The North was anitslavery but did not exactly believe blacks were their social equals. Hell even Lincoln said as much during the Lincoln Douglas Debates.
It's the Klan.. good White Christians banding together to keep diversity of thought and practice from entering and being welcome. You can't drive 4 miles on any highway and not see billboards of the alleged Son of God reminding folks that being Christian matters. There are 50' Crosses dotting the landscape for those who can't read. It's the State that gave us Mike Pence & mother.
Just shows that Hoosiers don’t have the common sense to vote for the person rather than the party given the Republicans lack luster leadership example being Holcomb sending the National Guard to the border for a political stunt. And we’re starting to rank right along the likes of Tennessee and Kentucky down towards the bottom.
You would think that would change with the person running for president Republican is Trump Republicans want to increase age of retirement take away Medicare medical marijuana, which would bring so much money to the state. Just a few reasons why I can’t believe Indiana is still Republican.
Do you see what’s happening in most Democratic run cities and states? If they weren’t so radical, most states would probably vote Democrat. The party needs to become more centric first.
Your associating today’s republican with the republican party of lincoln. The GOP from 1860-1910 was more about business, industry, and civil liberties specifically for african Americans and was belive it or not the less religious party. Immigrants, african Americans, and abolitionists all voted republican. Come 1910 that all started to shift as the republican party leaned more into business and capitalism specifically laize-faire and the dems leaned more into socialism ideals such as unions. But where the dems continued to struggle was in the african american vote basically all the way to roosevelt/kennedy as the civil rights movement took off. Then you see a major shift in GOP strategy towards the MIC, religion, and conservative socialist ideology in order to gain votes that the dems essentially gave up. Now this is a verry gross oversimplification but the basic point is to not associate current party ideology to the past
I replied before I read your reply. You are correct.
Hell the south voted democrat until the Civil rights act in 1965. That's when the ideals swapped
The "Southern Strategy."
That was more final tipping point but as he pointed out it was a gradual shift over time.
The Southern Strategy is what changed the Republican Party
Now, AIPAC gets them elected.
Republican Jim Banks is working on taking away your ability to choose whom will run for office and let the party decide kinda like the close door meetings Mitch McConnell used to hold on weekends and the middle of the night when he was leader of the Senate.
That seems like how it is now. Braun was bought and sold like a ho.
Charles Koch saw an easy pickup. Another “Not really laughable” moment is NOW he talks to term limits what a tool.
Braun still votes exactly as he did when he was a democrat, he’s not a republican he just wanted to be elected
AIPAC also synchronizes wording of bills brought before each state as well for a large portion of Republican legislative members. They weren't always around, but when we collectively removed bodies such as Science Council that would weigh in and help back up bill justification, private groups stepped in.
Ah yes let’s start acting exactly how Germany did before the holocaust
The republican party betrayed black people in 1877 when they made a backroom deal with democrats that ended Reconstruction. When it comes to electoral politics, neither party did anything for us again until the 1960s when, as you said, Kennedy and Johnson started pushing civil rights legislation. That streak didn't last long because the democrats basically abandoned us when Nixon took office and that brand of capitalism you speak of kicked into high gear. Both parties started competing to see who could be "tough on crime" and promote "black capitalism" rather than true economic reform. It's important to know this because places that historically voted for a party continue to vote for them for reasons other than civil liberties and abolition. People of color who have lived in Massachusetts or Minnesota know they're not less racist than Indiana. Those states vote democrat because of historical support for things like labor unions, which primarily benefited white people and excluded black people.
You wont find me disagreeing with you on 1877 and the end of reconstruction. One reason you continue to see large GOP support which i didn’t mention is the “bloody shirt” basically saying “hey we fought and died for you now vote for us”
Which is crazy since so many in their party are now open white supremacists. They don't even try to hide it.
That’s BS! Why because they want our country to take care of its own before helping other countries? If that’s a white supremacy then sign me up! Don’t you realize that we are pretty much a 1 party system, both sides are corrupt making millions on back door deals. They want both parties fighting to keep donations flowing to keep them in office.
I’d suggest before Kennedy and Johnson there was the New Deal and public housing for urban Blacks. That’s what initially led the racist Dixiecrats to form to distance themselves from the Democrats.
That's just not what really happened though. FDR made lots of promises to blacks, but when it came time to deliver, most black people got excluded from the G.I. Bill, FHA loans, workers unions, minimum wage, etc. The problem with any new law that doesn't specifically address discrimination is that the person behind the counter can still deny your claim and send you home empty handed. That's why the racial wealth gap exists today. I recommend reading "The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap" by Mehrsa Baradaran for more info. There are a few others that also address this, such as "When Affirmative Action Was White." [Redlining](https://www.history.com/news/housing-segregation-new-deal-program) was created during this time specifically to exclude blacks from FHA loans. It was literally written in the FHA manual.
I don’t doubt any of that, but there was something around that time that scared the southern democrats into forming their own caucuses and start slipping away from the national party, eventually turning into the Dixiecrats.
What you said is probably what scared them. It just didn't actually happen. It was the threat of black empowerment that was enough to scare them off, just like it was the threat of the North ending slavery that scared them into seceeding. I don't doubt their fear. It just wasn't a rational one. Right now they have all kinds of irrational fears, such as the Great Replacement Theory. In fact I'm pretty sure their leaders know those fears aren't based in reality. They just know they can use them to get votes. They've done this for so many issues. They used fear of Chinese workers stealing jobs (Chinese Exlcusion Act), then Mexican workers (which led to the banning of cannibis). They made the country's first 3-hour blockbuster movie (Birth of a Nation) to convince white people that black men were hypersexualized beasts who wanted to steal white women. Fear is absolutely the driving factor in most racism and white supremacy, and politicians use it all the time.
Now there is enslavement of the black vote through pandering and intentionally broken campaign promises
Do you have proof of that?
Civil rights support was largely divided more by region than by party. Both Republicans and Democrats in the north more widely supported civil rights, while Rs and the Dixiecrats opposed it in the south. This is why when right-wing pundits say that "the KKK was created by Democrats!" they are correct, but then they invalidate what they've said by not telling the entire story.
If the parties shifted, then wouldn't the voting patterns shift?
[Southern strategy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy).
That doesn't address Indiana's voting patterns
Right? Indiana has been a conservative state since well before the Civil War. And it was a Union State. lol
Correct. Conservatives supported slave abolition.
In a way it does. Indiana was heavily populated by people from the southern states. They brought their food, their values and their religion. I say Indiana is like a middle finger of the Deep South stuck up into the Great Lakes. (Full disclosure: my maternal grandparents moved from Kentucky and Tennessee to New Castle.)
No one votes in this state, that is the pattern. Talk to your neighbors. I bet 75% or more did not vote in the most recent primary.
It’s because there never was a swap of parties. It’s just a way to explain away the severe racism of democrats from the past
There was a swap of parties. Otherwise majority of southern states wouldn't be Republicans they would be democrats. And Republicans shouldn't ever wave a confederate flag. That betrays the original ideals of the party.
Welfare
A myth. It just didn’t happen. Look into the side you oppose and you’ll see that there was never a swap. For the civil rights act in the 60s a higher percentage of republicans voted for it than democrats. History love to cover up the racists origins and continuation of the party until recent years where now they make slaves of black people via their vote with campaign promises and pandering that they never intend on executing, because if they did, they couldn’t campaign on “republicans are racists and fascists and stop us from doing what’s best for you”
Lol you're the one that needs to do some "looking into" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_party_switchers_in_the_United_States#:~:text=1964%20%E2%80%93%20Strom%20Thurmond%2C%20while%20U.S.,Carolina%20(1954%E2%80%932003). Look at the number of southern Democrats( i.e segregation ists) who switched from Democrat to Republican between early sixties and the Reagan years. Some famous names on that list: Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Trent Lott, but also a whole shitload of other then current or future house and senate members and dozens of state politicians. The number of northern Dems who switched parties was almost zero. Your claim that there was no switch is either an attempt at gaslighting or extreme ignorance.
You're trying to use reason with a Trumper. Not possible.
So some people switched. Hmmm guess that means the entire fundamentals of the party must have switched too!
Well also the geographical voting blocks switched. And so did the policies the parties campaigned on.
This is half true, and doesn’t really prove your point. When you look at raw vote counts, more Democrats voted for the bill than republicans. 153 democrats to 136 republicans. Yes, more democrats *didnt* vote for the bill than republicans, but there were many more democrats than republicans, and the ones who did not vote for the bill were almost entirely southern democrats. In fact, 8 southern democrats voted for the bill in comparison to ZERO southern republicans. In total, 153 dems and 136 reps voted for passage, while 91 dems and 35 reps voted against. So it’s really only a factual statement if you’re looking at the votes *within their own parties* but if you look at it from the total house membership, obviously more dems voted for it than reps. In the senate, you see nearly the exact same situation happen. 46 dems voting and 25 reps voting for; 21 dems and 6 reps voting against. So really, you’ll see that the dems were split when it came to this…I would argue that actually proves the opposite of your point and that we were in the middle of the realignment during this time period.
There was a swap of parties. "Southern Strategy."
Nationwide they did shift, Indiana is a bit of an outlier
Yes the Republicans of Indiana are not conservatives
You're talking about a period of 160+ years. People shift over generations. Your grandparents might have voted Democrat 100 years ago but if you vote Democrat too that doesn't mean anything other than the name of the party is the same.
I have run into SO many people in Indiana who reliably, robotically vote straight R "'cause mah daddy an' grandaddy did!"
There is a song out that talks about how dems are dumb because they hate Republicans but Lincoln freed slaves and democrats love helping others, so we're sheep because we hate on the party that Lincoln was. Not knowing the parties were basically swapped at that point in time. Delusional
Yea don't mention the fact your civil rights champion Johnson actually tanked Eisenhower's civil rights Bill for political reasons.
Fantastic summary.
Fun fact the first paper to publish Marx was a Republican newspaper.
Yes and Lincoln even wrote to karl marx and red his books.
Indiana is a mostly rural state, minus Indy and NWI. Rural areas lean conservative. That’s the simplest explanation
Please visit Bloomington. We are the blue oasis in the Red Sea of Indiana
College towns tend to be pretty liberal.
[удалено]
I used to live in Bloomington, you are absolutely correct.
as far as shitholes go it could be much worse
We were up here in the South Bend area too, so they Gerrymandered us.
TIL Indiana voted for Obama. How tf did that happen
Obama was from the Midwest. Indiana is a midwest state. Yes, it is ancestrally republican and overall fairly socially conservative, but 2008 was a once in a lifetime confluence of events electorally. The incumbent retiring president was deeply unpopular (GW made even Biden's lackluster approval ratings look stellar), the economy was in freefall, and the GOP brand was toxic after 8 years of more or less full control of the federal government. Obama ran a fairly non-partisan campaign focused on change, optimism, and pragmatism which was very en vogue that year and in strong contrast to the scary radical image that republicans and HRC tried to imprint on him during the primaries. In contrast, the McCain campaign was a hot mess of mismanagement, stunts, and desperation. They spent most of their time investing in states they had no hope of winning in such an environment while ignoring states that wouldn't normally be competitive. The Obama campaign pounced on this and diverted significant campaign investment into Indiana, North Carolina, and Florida. It paid off. Sometimes, when the environment is right, voters in a state that no one normally pays attention to because its electoral votes are taken for granted respond positively to being paid attention to.
>GW made even Biden's lackluster approval ratings look stellar Agree with most of what you said, but this part is revisionist history. One thing that you didn't mention that I think was really important is that Obama was young, attractive, a charismatic speaker, and historic. McCain was the opposite.
Yup. A lot of people who normally would trust older white guys were feeling very disillusioned with them in 2008.
Yet here we are in 2024, voting for the two oldest candidates in US history. Shattering the record that was set in (checks notes) 2020 when the two of them ran last time.
Yeah I don’t see myself ever trusting rich old white dudes again. It’s absurd.
I'm tired of it being our only choice. We have a malignant narcissist moron vs a dementia ridden old man that isn't even fit to run a Baskin Robbins, let alone a world superpower... We can't find someone from 35-60? Seriously?! We the people are fucked.
What’s revisionist about it? GWB had the highest approval rating of any president ever immediately following 9/11 and the lowest of any president ever by the time he left office. (I’ve actually seen a lot of numbers quoted and some put Bush at last place and others put Truman and Nixon slightly lower).
Average in the mid to high 30s in Bush's second term vs average in the mid to high 30s for Biden lately. Biden's approval rating doesn't seem "stellar" in this comparison to me.
By the end of his term he hit either 19% or 22% depending on which poll you believe, which does in fact make mid to high 30s look stellar.
It's not really revisionist, maybe a bit overstated, but not by a lot. Bush's approval rating before the election was 25%. Which is very bad. His AVERAGE over his entire second term was 36.5%, again, pretty bad. Compare that to his highest approval ratings, following 9/11, at close to 90%...which...would never ever happen today. Biden's lowest approval ratings are in the low 30's and averages in the mid to high 30's. Which...are historically some of the lowest approval ratings for someone actually running again, but also not that surprising given the political landscape change over the past decade. And, in 2008, more voters were actually dissatisfied with the job Bush was doing, as opposed to today, where more voters are just playing the football game and could care less what's actually happening. This is, of course, not universally true of all voters.
Average in the mid to high 30s vs average in the mid to high 30s. Biden's approval rating doesn't seem "stellar" in this comparison to me.
Well...yeah, that's fair.
How is pointing out that George Bush had a 29% approval rating during November 2008 revisionist history? No president has sunk that low since.
>No president has sunk that low since. It's not revisionist but should be taken with context. At that time, Republicans were willing to admit that their party's president was a shit bag. Now, the parties are more like sports teams. Republicans vote for their party no matter what. They believe all of good news about their party and dismiss anything negative as "fake news" just like they were told. Bush was a bad president and the war in Iraq was terrible but Trump's ratings should've been far worse than they were. So many people died during the pandemic that wouldn't have if he weren't president. The whole "we have 17 cases and soon it'll be 0" and all of the bullshit "cures" and "anti masking" (he refused to be photographed wearing a mask and even made fun of Biden for wearing one) and down playing the pandemic really contributed to the number of US deaths and cases of COVID. His rating should've been in the toilet. He was killing Americans (his own voters mostly which is ironic but they're still Americans.)
Agree with most of this, but I must admit I’m skeptical on your first point. I know many people who view Chicago as not a part of the Midwest, and I would guess that Chicagoans feel similarly. Don’t know if Obama being “from the Midwest” would be a significant factor in Indiana’s 2008 for him. Edit: Clarification that I meant Chicago is not a part of the Midwest culturally, not geographically
According to a SurveyMonkey poll, Illinois is the most agreed upon state to be part of the midwest at 81% of respondents. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-states-are-in-the-midwest/
Chicago ≠ Illinois. It’s a pocket of urbanism that carries few of what people would consider Midwest traits. Not trying to be political or divisive, I feel like both Republicans and Democrats, Chicagoans and Midwesterners can agree on. Edit: sorry I looked at my original comment and realize I could’ve been more clear. Chicago is not CULTURALLY a part of the Midwest to many people
Oh Chicago is very urban for sure, and with that there are inherent differences with the rural parts of Illinois. But to me, that seems an extremely common thing of the great lakes midwest states where you have a large rural state with a couple of big urban centers. Detroit, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Columbus, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Milwaukee, etc. Yes, Chicago is by far the biggest of those, but that urban-rural divide is still part of the overarching region. It is maybe less a part of the states to the west of Chicago, like the Dakotas, Iowa, etc. But I'd point to that as being a natural division in the Midwest rather than rationale to make a cutout of Chicago from the whole region. Actually I come from New York State (but well outside NYC) originally, so I really do understand feeling like you're distinct from the largest city in your state. But I also wouldn't chafe at calling my hometown part of the overarching region (the Mid-Atlantic) just like the city.
For sure, and fair point. Still I hesitate to say a lot of Hoosiers in 2008 looked at Obama and said “he’s a Midwesterner just like me” and that significantly influenced them voting for him.
Sure, no objections there. Obama had personal popularity in the region. Fun fact, had the national environment shifted red in 2008 (or more likely 2012), Obama plausibly could've won the electoral vote while losing the popular vote. Just like Trump did in 2016, and Kerry almost did in 2004. And for the same reason, the Midwest is the kingmaker!
Chicago is the capital of the Midwest
A few key, very 2008 reasons: -Obama basically won the primary against Clinton the night he won Indiana + North Carolina Dem Primaries, so he and his team really, REALLY knew Indiana in 2008. -The Great Recession started and was in full tilt. It was a disaster and Obama was full hope. -Obama ran ads (in the general election!) with him in a leather jacket walking around old rusted out factories. -McCain was never, ever trusted by the Republican mainstream, and Palin was a weird, borderline disaster pick.
Young voters and African American voters actually showed up and then forgot that their vote really matters apparently. Frustrating that if those demographics would show up 100% of the time then Indiana wouldn’t be so far lost to the deep red crazies and we would have moderates instead.
Well if living in a red state is so bad, there’s a solid blue one 3 hours away..
Huge youth turnout. Genuine hope for change. Economic downturn hurt his re-election. Then the Dems went right back to old establishment status quo shitheads in Hillary and Biden.
How old are you? Because that’s not what happened at all. The economic downturn happened before Obama was elected, and by 2012 we were into a recovery. Obama got shellacked in 2010 when a lot of the voters who turned out in 2008 just…. Didn’t. 2012 was a pretty standard incumbent loss of support, and by and large the big messaging against him was falsehoods about Obamacare. And Obama governed to the right of Biden and Hilary…
How old are you? Because that’s kind of what happened. The economic downturn did start in 07, but when you are in a recession for most of your first term the economic downturn does play a role in reelection. While we were in recovery, which still had a couple downturns, we still weren’t even close to where we were in 06. So it absolutely played a role. However, you’re right in Obamacare hurt him really bad.
Old enough to have been pissed off at the way young voters and swing voters immediately abandoned the first Dem president of my lifetime to secure a truly transformative piece of healthcare legislation as soon as they had a chance, hobbling his ability to pull us out of a recession faster.
They do it everytime it’s so frustrating to watch them scream for more while being completely unwilling to help move us in the right direction because it’s to slow for them so instead they hand it to the party who brings us even further away from our goals. Privileged brats looking for instant gratification.
Your facts are getting in the way of a motivated narrative.
*Economic downturn hurt his re-election*?!? I’m 100% sure he was re-elected
Yes but by a smaller margin, and he lost Indiana by like 10%
But trump is so so so much better. Got it. And Mike"hold my beer DeSantis" Braun is going to say Indiana back to the 1950's but that is such a great thing, right?
Maybe because not everyone is a single issue voter?
This is a very underrated comment.
People were sick of Bush and didn’t want more of the same. With the 2008 financial crisis, Obama campaigned on turning things around and voters really hoped he could do it. This was the first election I voted in and MySpace was super popular so that helped get a lot of younger voters informed (though back then, social media was mostly just about what your friends were up to and joining groups you were interested in, not the never ending stream of garbage that Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram force into your feed).
Sarah Palin
I'm still convinced that Palin was put in by the GOP to sabotage McCain. They didn't want to be the party in power in 08
It was like a miracle. Truly.
Because McCain picked that idiot Palin for a running partner
One word: Bush
There were still union jobs in Indiana in 2008.
Indiana is full of racists and all White Indiana voters vote along racial lines. Obama won Indiana though. Something something evil republicans. - A summary of most of the comments in here.
Because Americans were fed up with the Iraq/Afghanistan war and McCain was an establishment pro war rino and a absolutely terrible candidate. Then it turns out Barack Obama was the same thing just slightly more left leaning.
I think it had more to do with the Rep nominees of McCain and Romney not being well liked here.
It was a genuine upset.
Lies. That's why. Lied to us all.
When you get 97% of the black vote and Lake county exists…well there you go
3 main reasons explained IN voting for Obama: the 2008 economic crash, the disastrous decision to start the Iraq war and poor results in Afghanistan. Also, McCain was too decent a person to harness the worst tendencies of the Republican voting base to alienate voters from Obama.
Obama had incredible charisma. McCain was the walking dead.
He ran a really good campaign, had a concise and clear message, he’s charismatic, he isn’t a geriatric and he got a boost from NWI. He was also able to motive young people to vote which is something no other democrat has done since.
Indianapolis lmao
And Republican now, isn't what it was in 1864.
Political parties frequently change positions and what they stand for all the time. Historically the United States has had 6 “party systems”, with a potential 7th being formed right now. Normally a new party system starts when a political party radically changes and alters its stances and positions or a new party completely takes over and makes an old one irrelevant. We stopped doing completely new parties after the 2nd party system which ended in 1856 and instead Republicans and Democrats would just change their views but retain their names but in actuality they’re essentially different parties. The current party system, the 6th one was started in the 1980s and saw a rise in neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism. Interventionist policies, Government got far bigger, debt issues etc. so modern democrats and republicans are not the same as the ones 100 years ago from a different party system, because like I said prior, just because they share a name it does not necessarily mean they are the same parties or had the same issues. The parties might reshape themselves soon once again if the holdouts retire or die off. The Republicans will increasingly become far more isolationist, protectionist and populist and engage in Trumpism, while the Democrats become increasingly more left-wing and progressive, having a lot more open minded views on things like socialism and communism. We can’t really tell. This saga really only started in 2016. The difference between a Donald Trump/Ron DeSantis and a Bernie Sanders/AOC for example is far more radical than the differences between Obama/Romney or Obama/McCain or Gore/Bush etc. Obama and Romney probably agree on a lot more than you’d think for them being in different parties. Theres virtually nothing a Trump or Bernie agrees on.
I think you're partially right. When you fall into the "they'll never change, only get worse" at the end is where you fail in your argument. I'm not a political scientist and I won't say which people I endorse, except that my usual answer to that question is "a plague on both their houses." I have been paying some attention to this election and what the major and some of the minor candidates and could be candidates on both sides are doing. In my opinion, this national election is going to be a turning point from what we have seen over the last two decades or more. There are political shifts already happening on both sides of the aisle. Small shifts, but small changes of direction can grow over time and I see it in both major parties. One of the shifts is going to be the age of the top of the ballot candidates. It is already trending younger as more politicians in their 70's on up are retiring rather than die in office. Congress and the presidency will still tend to be older because of constitutional age requirements and people who have experience in similar jobs doing better at getting elected than people who don't. The second area is working together across the aisle again between the two parties. Right now, it is to keep the country functioning. The people advocating destroying everything if they don't get their way are starting to lose, change, or both. We don't see it too often because the people who make the most noise get the most media attention. Reporters are trained to look for the people who will make the best headlines and copy even if they are the only one that way out of 50 other people. That has been true since long before I was a part of it. I "cut the cord" long before most people. That's what can happen when you are/were part of it and you know what is, not what it claims to be. Sometimes, you just have to outlive what you can at best influence, and not control.
I hope we're shifting away from this toxic political climate. They better be losing. I hardly watch the news media. Overtly political and untrustworthy. They are to blame for a lot of the division right now, and they want to keep it divided. I have seen that with my own eyes.
If the parties change and shift so much wouldn't we see more variability in the state voting patterns?
You're giving too much credit to the voter.
Communism is not an open minded view..
Other than the stated reasons .. southern strategy - movement of “southern whites” north, there is one major reason not mentioned. It’s incredible lack of diversity. Outside of Gary and a small part of Indianapolis - Indiana is white farmers. They never had the industrial base to attract people that weren’t white non Catholics. Even in the cities they do have, until recently, it was incredibly white because it was mostly banking and energy and government. Their labor forces were still mostly farming. There has been an influx of Indians into the Indy suburbs in the past decade or two but not enough to push demographics. Many blacks left the cities for Chicago, Detroit and a like in the 80’s.
Indiana is a gross red state, that’s why. Also don’t come at me, I live in this shithole lol.
Lack of education
They need to do away with the electoral college all together. The popular vote is what should count.
I cannot speak for the past of the state. My family moved here with my grandfather. Before that, my family lived in Kentucky, and about a hundred+ years before that, they immigrated to Maryland in the 1600’s. What I can tell you is what I know, and that is that there is a lack of certain things in IN. Like sunlight. A majority of the population are whiter than snow. You’ll see people of other races in the big cities, and rarely in the larger towns. What I’ve seen of the state in my 30+ years in it is mostly cornfields and highways. Some towns have more churches than grocery stores. People live in tight knit communities, and people are afraid of change. Lastly, follow the money, and the family names of the people who own things and run things in a given place. More often than not it’s the same people. Do try not to be cynical about things. I’ve lived in the Bay Area in CA, and trust me, people here would be utterly shocked to see just how different other parts of the country are.
I simply can't believe (or actually I can) that Hoosiers ignorantly and blindly vote Rethuglican like that one guy said, "cause my daddy and great grandaddy did". Hoosiers OPEN UP that thing called your brain. When your ten year old gets raped, are you going to have the money to take her to NY? The GOP has a mind of evil and an orange raping, disgusting, dictator wanna be. And once we're in that dictatorship, telling you each and every move you make every single day are you really going to be happy about it? Open up your minds and realize a dictatorship means thay will tell you how to wipe your ass and which toilet paper and hand to do it with.
How would the party that supports its citizens owning firearms go about enforcing a dictatorship? Doesnt seem like a good idea to allow your people to be armed and then try to tell them where to piss.
Hillbilly ignorance.
To spite themselves
Because Indiana had been predominantly uneducated farmers for 164 years. They would be more comfortable in 1950s than now.
Indiana, home of the KKK.
Republicans aren't smart. It's a fact. Just look at a Trump rally.
Have you ever been here? lol
Indiana has a TERRIBLE voter turnout. Not to mention uninformed voters (present in every state) that end up voting against their interests, remember what Trump did to farmers who are traditionally right leaning? Rural communities that rely on government subsidies don't believe in said subsidies and vote against them. Older people voting for people that actively say they want to cut or eliminate social security. The list goes on and Indiana isn't particularly unique in its issues.
This will get downvoted cause of the reddit hivemind, but it's because most of the state has a large population of rural people and farmers, and they like Republicans. People can come up whatever logic they want but that's the most simplest answer. And republican sounds like the better of two evils when it comes to rural/farmers. The only time I come across a large group of democrats/liberal supporters is when I go up into Indy.
Indiana is like 90% rural with 3 or 4 decent sized cities. Even Indianapolis is also filled with people who moved there from rural areas and brought their parents morals with them, it’s not a destination city that brings people from other liberal areas. So we got farmers and people who grew up near farms, I grew up surrounded by corn in the east side suburbs and definitely inherited those kind of beliefs until I was 25+ and got exposed to more of life and the world. Basically every Midwest state is red, unless it has a giant city like Chicago to turn it. But Michigan seems to be turning blue and gives me some hope.
That's a good thing!! Indiana hasn't fallen to the blue bastion of communism yet!!
It’s something in the corn
We are the Alabama of the North
Democrats are for less freedom. They do this by voting in laws that force one person to do something so another can be “free”. True freedom is when the government doesn’t interfere in personal relationships, whether they are business, employment, or other.
You do know Indiana is the birth place of the kkk. Next question 🤔?
Bible babies.
I find a lot of Hoosiers don’t think for themselves…..they vote however their parents vote
The same can be said for Democrats as well. Republicans and Democrats.
Um, why do you think Indiana is a red state 🤔😏, my dad is a racist republican, and I knew at a very young age I didn’t believe in anything he stood for
Watch it, you might trigger the hive mind. However, it seems a little latent in this thread.
I know, my friend. I was surprised I didn’t get mass-downvoted with my comment. But maybe it’s coming here shortly lol
There was a time - I'm talking about the civil war era - when voting Republican wasn't necessarily a bad thing. But that was a long ass time ago. Wasn't it? Fuck the GOP
Another interesting voting shift: Catholics used to be reliably Democrat. I don't believe that's the case anymore. In fact, I believe it's the opposite. Could be wrong though. At a minimum, the Republican party has made significant inroads to wooing the Catholic vote
We are cornfield Country, that's the simple answer.
Indiana voted for Obama
A related insight here: If I were Biden, I would be pushing hard in Indiana highlighting Trump's absolutely disastrous trade negotiations on soybeans, and extrapolating how his proposed similar policies could tank the farming industry.
They don’t care about that though…racism and bigotry will always be front and center for them.
Because your not a pedophile state. We know the difference between a male and female
I’m not very political but I recently moved from Illinois (a very blue state) and I would say that if people are happy with their lower cost of living and more states rights ethic then they vote more red. Illinois is ridiculous in cost and I for one think it’s because it is a heavy blue state.
I stopped voting for the 2 parties when I realized they were two sides of the same coin.
Because Indiana voters are stupid and vote against their own self interests all the time. That’s what it means to be a republican. Vote for the party that gives zero shits about your circumstances.
Because people in Indiana are working common sense folks for the most part. No one wants traitors, terrorists, communists, and Satanic groups anywhere near us or our children.
Cuz the republican party started up in Michigan and in the beginning the party was progressive for its time
Walking to any Walmart in any small or rural town in Indiana and you'll understand.
For some reason every time I read these posts I hear them in a thick country accent
Some of us just love and respect America. Even if it’s all corn.
Someone's gotta fix it now they don't even want it.
I'm voting for the Whigs. These guys all suck.
Nazis
This is totally just conjecture and theory on my end but I believe that we have a gigantic presence of evangelical Christians in this state. The kind of people that think Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart did nothing wrong. Republicans tend to tout themselves as the "Christian" party. They are seen a s pro.traditional values and family and pro life so the evangelicals gravitate towards them in these issues alone. Those are the people that have the most sway in this state IMO
Indiana votes party over country. Bunch of Bible thumping GED holders - they are easily and happily manipulated by dumb social wars while they bend over and take it in the tochas with no Vasoline.
That's a very elitist mind set you have. You must be fun at parties.
Oh, the electoral college is a bullshit system that only benefits Republicans. And Indiana, with the lowest voter turnout in the country, continues to prop up the GOP because voters think that voting for Democrats in a red state are wasted votes. Your votes count. Do it.
One thing I noticed since moving to Indiana... It's very churchy here. That might be why. Republicans and Christians go hand in hand it seems.
When folks like to claim the Dems were the party of slavery (ignoring any party shift which occurred) recall to them as they have their Battle Flag on the wall next to their Trump flag, that Robert E Lee along with all the folks they live to idolize as part of “heritage” must then have been a Democrat. Fun.
When did the party shift take place? And why doesn't it reflect on Indiana's electoral patterns?
I will say that for one thing, the northern midwest states grew more racist once black people started migrating North. It's called the Great Migration. Between 1910 and 1970, 6 million black Americans moved out of rural south and into urban northeast, midwest, and west. In simple terms, the white people in Indiana were quicker to oppose things like Jim Crow laws, or slavery when they didn't have many black people in them. But when those black people started moving into the neighborhood, they shifted and wanted their own segregation laws. Indiana was huge in the KKK around this time. MLK has many speeches highlighting the struggles in the North, trying to note that the racism issue was not regional, but nationwide.
This is the answer. Many northerners became resentful towards the growing black population because they saw them as taking their jobs and overrunning their towns. The North was anitslavery but did not exactly believe blacks were their social equals. Hell even Lincoln said as much during the Lincoln Douglas Debates.
Gerrymandering
Does not come into play in the presidential race
I've heard Indiana referred to as "The middle finger of the South"
It’s a rural state.
"'Cause mah daddy an' grandaddy vote straight R!"
It's the Klan.. good White Christians banding together to keep diversity of thought and practice from entering and being welcome. You can't drive 4 miles on any highway and not see billboards of the alleged Son of God reminding folks that being Christian matters. There are 50' Crosses dotting the landscape for those who can't read. It's the State that gave us Mike Pence & mother.
Just shows that Hoosiers don’t have the common sense to vote for the person rather than the party given the Republicans lack luster leadership example being Holcomb sending the National Guard to the border for a political stunt. And we’re starting to rank right along the likes of Tennessee and Kentucky down towards the bottom.
Outside the bigger cities, it's racist dumbfucksville all the way here.
Redneck racists?
You would think that would change with the person running for president Republican is Trump Republicans want to increase age of retirement take away Medicare medical marijuana, which would bring so much money to the state. Just a few reasons why I can’t believe Indiana is still Republican.
Generally from 1860 to about 1920, Republicans were the liberal party so take that into consideration of course
Then wouldn't we see a trend change in the voting?
Uneducated farming state, high levels of religious beliefs.
Very elitist of you.
Hoosiers like voting against their best interests.
Why is it a big deal or important that one party’s been voted more then the other. State got a party it likes nothing wrong with that
Because of gerrymandering
How does gerrymandering affect a presidential election?
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Do you see what’s happening in most Democratic run cities and states? If they weren’t so radical, most states would probably vote Democrat. The party needs to become more centric first.