Democrats Gains In The South Are An Oddly Specific Fulfillment Of A 60-Year-Old Prophecy

Democrats made significant gains across the American South in Tuesday’s election, reviving a region that had become a Republican stronghold. The results echo a remark Lyndon B. Johnson reportedly made after signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act: that Democrats might have “lost the South” for his and Bill Moyers’s lifetimes.

Moyers, then Johnson’s special assistant, later said the comment was a lightly delivered aside, though its wording grew more dramatic as it was retold. The article says Texas elected Democrat James Talarico to the Senate and Gina Hinojosa as governor, while Democrats gained a state House majority; Annie Andrews won South Carolina’s Senate race, Jon Ossoff was re-elected in Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms won its governorship, and Roy Cooper flipped North Carolina’s Senate seat. It presents the scale of the gains as an unusual reversal of the long-term political shift that followed the Civil Rights Act.