When did this happen?

Question

Do you think there was a fundamental "values swap" between the Democratic and Republican parties in the past? Considering that it was the Republicans who freed the slaves and struggled to give blacks civil rights in the reconstruction-era South, while the Democrats started the Confederacy, and instituted and upheld Jim Crow legislation and Segregation for nearly a century, how did people come to associate the Republicans with the needs of the wealthy, whites,and big business, and the Democrats with the needs of the downtrodden and disenfranchised?

Answer 1

Yes there was a "values swap" as you put it around the year 1950 (not the exact right year but within five years of that year).

Democrats always focus their ideas towards the poorer people (financially speaking) who want the federal government more involved because as a rule they feel they are being cheated by the rich (they often are but not as much as the like to claim) and they want government intervention to even the odds. Before the values swap time the poor were the southern whites who felt the rich northerners were trying to take away the slaves and what they felt was their only way of supporting themselves (cotton is a lot of work to pick and the white plantation owners didn't have time nor did they want to put in the effort needed to pick it themselves or pay someone to pick it for them). Slavery seemed the only way to do it (it wasn't but that was the only way they knew how).

After the slaves had been freed they weren't really given any help and were just struggling to survive, they didn't really have time to care about getting in on choosing how government was working (through voting) and those that did try were regularly harassed and often killed. So they didn't affect the government all that much at the time.

Then WW I and WW II came along and provided opportunities for blacks to join the army and navy and later the air force. After having served they began to feel it was their right to join in the government setup and that is really around the time the civil rights movement was born; in secret at first and out in the open in the sixties. They were the poor at the time because of the policies of those in power, so when they looked at the situation and really saw the Democrats as the natural choice and voted that way.

That is because the Democrats wanted more federal government intervention rather than state government, and the federal government was leaning more toward giving civil rights to blacks and women than the state governments were. That's when and why the blacks have come to be associated as a whole with the Democrats and not Republicans.

Answer 2

By not really paying attention. Instead, they listen to talking heads. Democrats will raise your taxes and expand government power by creating departments and programs designed to limit the power of the free-thinking masses and convincing people these programs are for their own well-being. Universal healthcare: requires government intervention into your personal healthcare decisions. Global warming: a lie created by a minority of scientists who receive much larger grants than those scientists who disagree with global warming (the majority). Global warming is used by the likes of Al Gore to scare people into trusting the DNC. It's easy to make the masses believe a lie, so long as you have scientists with the utmost of resources design probable possibilities (in other words, a massive lie with minimal facts will appear on the surface to be the whole truth.)

Answer 3

Liberals scream louder then the Conservatives. Republicans have done more for blacks then any democrat. But most blacks are Dem's, I don't under stand it myself.