this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2026
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To be fair, there was a lot of fluidity between Democrats and Republicans in the early eighties. We were still used to Democrats being racist, and the new Southern Strategy suit was still freshly donned by the GOP and being adjusted for fit. Reagan was definitely racist, but it was coached in dog whistles that the present-day SCOTUS would not understand, like welfare queen or urban crime. And according to the How Money Works on Reagan, he had bipartisan support for a lot of his policies that turned the economy K-shaped.
The Southern Strategy transition was complete by Clinton, and his policies were pretty Republican as well. By that time, corporate lobbyists dominated federal politics, and were already not just asking for legislature, but actually submitting clauses pre-written in service of the companies who hired them.
By the time of George W. Bush, politics moved so far right that even progressive Democrats were more right than Eisenhower-era Republicans. Both parties had been completely captured by commercial interests.