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I'll post again for you s-l-o-w-l-y: of 200 Democrats who were Dixicrats or voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, exactly ONE--Strom Thurmond--switched to the GOP. That is not 'individual politicians.' And it would seem to qualify as an 'overall trend' that evidently you don't want to talk about.
Unbelievable. You are STILL harping about individual politicians when what I was clearly talking about was the broader movement of Southern democrats to the republican party.
Let's try this again. This was my original statement on this particular sub-topic:
Quote:
Originally Posted by James Bond 007
...
As for your changing political alignments, back in the 70's there were still lots of liberal republicans and conservative democrats. That is no longer the case. The republicans in states like NJ and IL (both of which voted republican in 1976) were a far cry from the republicans of today - they were more moderate, and even liberal. And the democrats in the South were more like the republicans of today (which, after all, is why they switched parties). So even back in the days you're referring to, the pattern was:
Liberal states = higher life expectancy
Conservative states = lower life expectancy
Thus, all we need to do is substitute republican for conservative and democrat for liberal for pre-1980's, and your objection still fails.
Get that? Who cares about individual politicians switching parties? That's irrelevant, because no politicians needed to "switch" parties from the democrats to the republicans. All that needed to happen was that people started voting for more republican candidates instead of democrats. Which is exactly what DID happen. You yourself even said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by travis t
.. 30-50 years ago, the South was solidly blue. It did not become solidly red until 1994...
So how do you think all those blues turned to red? People starting voting for republicans instead of democrats. Duh! Which is exactly what I've been trying to point out! Now you're contradicting yourself.
These were all southern dem segregationists; none were conservative. There were a handful in their ranks that could be called conservative such as James Eastland (D, MS), but the overwhelming majority were big gov't advocates--'liberals' in today's parlance.
Have you heard of the New Deal and Great Society? Pick up a history book sometime.
Why do I have to repeat this? Yes, they were conservative, which is why they left the democratic party, which was increasingly liberal. Had those dixiecrats been liberal as you claim, they wouldn't have left the increasingly liberal democratic party!
Just because they liked some New Deal policies does not mean they weren't conservative. And the Great Society was one of the things that made them start fleeing the democrats in large numbers. Why? Because those dixiecrats were conservative, and the Great Society was a liberal policy.
Tons and tons of variables at work but the main driver of a low life expectancy in the US is the obvious, deaths of infants and younger people.
It is also not uniformly the same across the state (as you point out) thus rendering the entire thread built on at least a couple layers of poor analysis.
I agree. When younger persons are dying in relatively large numbers, it doesn't help. And there are many ways young people die, as you've noted.
The life expectancy isn't even uniformed across the same cities. Someone living in the gang-infested parts of Chicago is going to have a much lower life expectancy than someone in Chicago's safer neighborhoods. Why? Murder rates aren't evenly distributed.
Note that the Opioid Raids that happened in so many states and rolled up so many pill mills and doctors/nurses doing dispensing were all in red states...
I would tend to agree it's environmental and diet mostly. i'm not aware of blacks in any country being long lived and I think it has to do mostly with BMI....also why Asians live longer than whites in my opinion.
Diet and environment play a big role. This is what I'm trying to show. With Black countries having low life expectancies, this has nothing to do with BMI. The average African is going to markedly thinner than someone in the USA or the UK. In many African countries, obesity isn't the problem. Malnutrition and being TOO THIN play a big factor. High childhood death rates from hunger or infectious diseases.
As for THIS country, yes, Blacks do tend to have a shorter life expectancy. However, it isn't evenly distributed. Life expectancy for Blacks living in New Hampshire, Vermont, Idaho, and Wyoming is markedly higher than for Blacks living in Mississippi, West Virginia, and Louisiana. There are so many variables. For Wyoming, I suspect the influence of the U.S military is a factor. For New Hampshire, African immigrants tend to have lower rates of obesity and low murder rates relative to American Blacks.
Asians tend to live longer because of diet. Environment too. But even that has alot of variables. Japanese-Americans tend to have higher life expectancy than Hmong-Americans. Exposure to violent crime is a variable to consider.
And with diet, it isn't just what you eat, but how much you eat, and when you eat. And then physical activity is important. BMI isn't everything. Fat composition is another factor. A man who is 5'11", 195 lbs might have a relatively high BMI, but if he has a lower body fat composition, and he's mostly muscle, he'll have a higher life expectancy than a man of the same height and weight, but of little physical activity and a beer belly.
Just because they liked some New Deal policies does not mean they weren't conservative. And the Great Society was one of the things that made them start fleeing the democrats in large numbers. Why? Because those dixiecrats were conservative, and the Great Society was a liberal policy.
They were ok with Roosevelt and Truman until Eisenhower and Kennedys and Johnson forced integration on them
There were GOP Republicans like Bush’s grandfather who hated Roosevelt and the New Deal and was anti Semetic enough to vote against allowing more Jews into the US
But the people of the South who you call Dixiecrats were against Democratic policies because Johnson called in enough votes to pass the Civil Rights legislation after Kennedy’s assassination
That killed the Democratic Party in the South—for most whites...
Johnson knew it —but he did it because he knew it was then or never
So he sacrificed 60 years of Democratic power in the South to achieve one of the most powerful laws in US history
One that is being gutted by GOP politics and gerrymandering/voter suppression
One bit of trivia. Guess who was speaking at the 1948 Democratic Convention when Strom Thurmond and his Dixiecrats staged their walkout? The young Mayor of Minneapolis, Hubert Humphrey, was introducing a strong Civil Rights platform which was adopted by the Convention.
And Humphrey was Johnson’s VP when Johnson managed to get the Civil Rights Act passed and put the nail in the coffin for Democratic power in the South—
He knew what it would cost the party but he did it anyway
Humphrey apparently was so naive about the cost of the Civil Rights legislation, he thought the South would appreciate and welcome the reversal for 400 yrs of racism in that part of America... they didn’t...
And still manage to ignore and fight provisions of the laws today with gerrymandering and voter suppression to lock GOP control up...
Drinking and smoking are rare in Utah thanks to the Mormon Church. Stronger families in Utah. Generally a healthier lifestyle in Utah. The one thing holding Utah back is the air pollution in the SLC area. When an inversion takes place in the valley, pollution levels soar.
Contrast this with Arkansas, where the violent crime rate is among the highest in the nation(not only Little Rock, Pine Bluff is bad too). Arkansas has one of the highest rates of smoking in the USA. The diet in Arkansas is not much different from the rest of the South.
I agree. Which was my point of posting in this thread. It doesn't do much good to throw around statistics about blue or red without understanding them.
These threads just become mud-slinging contests by a bunch of Dunning-Krugers.
Every single top 10 state in life expectancy is a blue state ...
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You are STILL harping about individual politicians when what I was clearly talking about was the broader movement of Southern democrats to the republican party. 
