Professor Nicole Hemmer
speaker
296 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Jun 2025
Professor Nicole Hemmer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Yeah, it's something that he leans into by the time you get to the build-up to the 1968 run. He says that he learns from the Goldwater campaign that you can't win with just conservative votes, but you also can't win without them.
And he takes that lesson and he folds it into his political approach as he is eyeing, potentially running against Lyndon Johnson.
It is such a pivotal moment in the history of the two American parties because the Republican Party had thrown an enormous amount of support behind the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. The Democratic Party was split down the line because it had so many Southern Democrats who were opposed to black civil rights.
But in the 1964 election, Lyndon Johnson, the Democrat, was the champion of the Civil Rights Act and Barry Goldwater opposed it. And that really created a kind of opening for the Republican Party to woo disaffected white racist voters in the South. Because Barry Goldwater only wins a handful of states. He wins his home state of Arizona and then those deep South states.
So Nixon is looking at that map. And the Republican Party, which had not been competitive in the South since the Civil War. Yes. He looks at that and he says, there is a real opportunity here.
And so he develops what becomes known as a southern strategy to try to figure out a way to woo those white voters in a way that is clear to them that he is going to support them in the realm of civil rights, but is not so obnoxiously racist that it is going to drive away voters in other parts of the country. And that is sort of the line he toes.
Sehr genau. Und du weißt, Nixon kommt aus Kalifornien, könnte in einer Art und Weise sich von den Kriegen über die schwarzen Zivilrechte und die Rasse im Süden auslösen, um sich als jemand zu positionieren, der diese Dynamiken nicht auslösen musste. Und er engagiert sich nie in Segregationist-Politik. Wenn er Rasse-Baiten macht, ist es immer tieflich in der Sprache von Gesetz und Ordnung.
In the language of states rights. And that's the cleverness of the Nixon campaign is coming up with that new way of talking about racism.
Yeah, he has to sort of represent himself to the nation. Because remember, the last time that he was a big national figure, he wasn't doing so hot when it came to politics. But Nixon also faces a very different political environment by the time you get to 1968. He's being challenged by these liberal and moderate Republicans, people like George Romney and Nelson Rockefeller.
He wants to make it clear that he's more conservative than them. He hires Pat Buchanan, who would later go on to be this major conservative figure, but he hires him as one of his speechwriters and advisors to help him reach out to conservatives. And he also has to be less conservative.
overtly segregationist than George Wallace, who is the former Alabama governor, who is also running for president, is a third-party candidate, and is not only doing well in the South, but is also picking up disaffected white working-class voters in the North. And so Nixon really has to carve a path between those two.
Ja, in Part because it was signaling like a big change that was happening in the Democratic Party, which had been dealing with the so-called Dixiecrats since 1948, those disaffected white Southerners who oppose black civil rights. But Wallace was also putting himself in the way of that new Southern strategy. Those voters that Wallace was appealing to, Richard Nixon wanted those voters.
So that's when he's really honing his language and his outreach to people in the South. And people like Strom Thurmond become very important. for vouching for Nixon and making it clear that he's still your guy.
Sehr genau. Ich meine, Vietnam ist ein pivoter Problem geworden, weil im Anfang von 1968, sobald die Kampagne unterwegs ist, die Tet-Offensive passiert. Und die Tet-Offensive ist dieser Moment, wo, trotz all der Generalsversprechen, dass die Vereinigten Staaten diese Krieg gewinnen, trotz all diesen Versprechen wurde es so klar, dass die USA nicht gewinnen wollten.
dass der Krieg schon lange dauern würde. Und Nixon schwebt rein und sagt, put me in charge and I will be able to negotiate a settlement for this war. Johnson's in too deep, he can't see it clearly. Und Nixon ist sehr klar, dass wenn er rein kommt, er etwas Neues an die amerikanischen Menschen bieten kann. Yes, exactly. He represents that which the Eisenhower days carried for so many people.
That's right. And you can't understand his psychology without knowing about the Checker speech and without knowing about the last press conference and all of those resentments that he had stockpiled by the time he got into the Oval Office.
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