Jill Lepore

So they hadn't really updated their thinking after the Voting Rights Act, and they still thought that.

And Bayh kept saying, no, no, this actually is the right thing.

It's the right thing for civil rights.

But when he introduced that, the NAACP sent a telegram to every member of the Senate urgently begging them to vote against the abolition of the Electoral College Amendment.

So there was that problem, and he tried really hard to deal with that without much success.

Because a lot of the Urban League, a lot of civil rights organizations...

agreed with by.

But the problem was they alone would not have been able to defeat the amendment.

The problem was that Richard Nixon had nominated in quick succession, two Southern segregationists to seats on the Supreme court.

And the Democrats wanted both of them axed.

And

They're very... Vi would not have seemed like the person who should be wielding the axe, but some other guy was a coward, and then Teddy Kenny didn't want to do it because he thought he was going to run for president.

I don't know.

Whatever.

They wouldn't do it.

So they're like, Birch, could you please defeat these... And so he had to go dig up the dirt

and destroy the reputations of these two men, one of whom really was contemptible, but the other one was really not contemptible.

And Nixon, Nixon was a problem with Nixon, but all the southern segregationists in Congress were like, we're never doing anything for that damn guy again.

And so they refused.

They voted against abolishing the Electoral College.