What would have happened if LBJ had vetoed the bill?

The Veto is Overridden

The Prize

Johnson personally worked those House members and Senate members to get those votes. Without Johnson, there would have been no bill. Kennedy had three years with pretty much the same Congress and got nowhere at all.

The question is hypothetical and Nixon signed the Clean Air Act.

You also have to add that Medicaid and Medicare were John Kennedy's programs but it took Lyndon Johnson's skills to get them enacted...

vetoing a bill and needing a partner in the president when more than 70% of Congress is on board.

~

even if LBJ had not done this, and had vetoed the bill, what would have happened?

Bush lobbied Congress hard on SCHIP, and won. Congress tried to override and failed.

The bill was passed by Congress based on aggressive jawboning (look it up) by President Johnson to hesitant members of Congress, especially those from the south.

You understand? Lyndon Johnson aggressively pushed both bills - the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Martin Luther King was the acknowledged catalyst of these movements but he most definitely haad to have a "friend in the White House."

He is old enough to remember the history of those days. I remember them well.

A President of the United States, from the south, was aggressively supporting Martin Luther King and his civil and voting rights movements by pushing legislation through a stubborn and combative congress. I could not understand that. What was happening to this country - I thought to myself?

Well, I found out. I lived through a period of history that impressed me forever with the fact that political activists are the coolest people in the world.

So, I became one.

and the people complaining to him do too:



Maybe Clinton should fire him!

:thumbsup:

why is it impossible to address the hypothetical question without insults? Diversionary? I think so.

suston96 made a lovely comment about Johnson and why she became an acivist. I thanked her for it and you cherry-picked an insult out of it.

didn't come to this place on his own.

MLKjr was not only crutial to this movement, he gave his life to it.

And many people, myself included, tend to be a bit sensitive about the way MLK and the entire Civil Rights community are often not given the respect and gratitude they deserve, even by 'progressive' politicians.

The statement Hillary made was unnecessiary and motivated by what?

(and kudo's to you for taking up the mantle- it's not a spectator sport- I appreciate your activism)

Hillary said that it took political action on Johnsons part to make the LAWS change. Which is true.

And the statement came as an analogy about Obamas ability to inspire people. She was saying it took more than just inspiration to make change.

She was trying to diminish Obama as not being worthy of a comparison to King by implying that even King need a "partner" in the White House.

Is that right?

that it was a team effort that made it happen. That AA leaders raised the issue, developed the movement and fought hard to make it a reality. In addition many non-AA liberals and Dems were inspired by their commitment and offended at the injustice so much that they joined the fight and helped them make it a reality.

Are you saying that Civil Rights activists would have preferred people like LBJ stay on the sidelines and let them fight the battle alone? I don't think so.

The civil rights movement and subsequent civil rights act are a great achievement of both races in the Democratic Party, something both can be proud of. Why would any candidate want to divide Dems on this issue?

Not sure why Clinton decided to go there, but was the point then that Obama is not a team player or was it that he is only a part of the team?

because he or someone else dared to compare him to MLK?

and made it sound as if it were divisive and racist. Pretty low on his part.

Video posted here.

Do you have a link to Obama making a statement related to this on or around this date?


I found this from a few days later:

And she pointed out that one of the people running against her was great with rhetoic, but she felt that it took more than rhetoric to be a President.

And I'm pretty sure you know what it meant, but choose to ignore it.

We're done here.

she said it because she was threatened by the thought that Obama might be viewed favorably by comparing him to MLK. She had to diminish the validity of the comparison.

It wasn't like Johnson and Dr. King were the best of friends... were they?


And Johnson was quick to turn on Dr. King when Dr. King announced his objection to Vietnam.

It was right after the JFK assassination and before the big buildup in Vietnam and the public's revulsion of it. Talk about a mandate! He knew that the moment was his to seize and he did. We got civil rights, medicare and medicaid. But no landslide, no deal I'll bet.

LBJ said, upon signing the civil rights bill, that he had just lost the South for the Democrats for a generation. Well, it's lasted longer than that (perhaps he couldn't foresee the collapse of the Wallace insurgency at the time) due to the fact that the Republicans picked up the Southern white racist vote and ran with it. But that was in its fledgling years when LBJ was already out of office and dying).

Thurgood Marshall, Daisy Bates, Roy Wilkins, Hosea Williams... and so many other brave, determined people too numerous to mention, there would have been no bill for the President to sign.

People DIED in the struggle to bring America to a better place. People continue to die because we have not reached that mountaintop.

The statement Hillary made was intended to minimize any positive connection people have between Obama and MLKjr. regardless of your perception of how accurate or inaccurate that connection may be.

I was disapointed in her statement when she made it- and I continue to be dissapointed in her claims that she is running on her own merits and not a 'trash the competition platform.'

Desperate people use desperate measures. If Hillary is indeed the best candidate, she should not need to resort to this kind of campaign.

At least in my opinion.

peace to all

.....between MLK and Obama..."

Pure nonsense. Let me repeat. All that activism by all those people is for nothing, I repeat: for NOTHING... if there is no aggressive legislative activism on the part of the President and the Congress in power.

That is what Hillary is saying.

I posed my hypothetical question.

I seem to remember Reconstruction -- what good did legislation do without action/enforcement?

Hearts and minds. The nation had to be ready. The sacrifices of thousands helped the nation become ready, helped LBJ make a hard choice off the back of his assassinated predecessor.

But that hard choice did not come from the top down.

It came from the bottom up.

If federal anti-lynching legislation had passed, say, under FDR -- FDR isn't the most important person, those who fought for decades to get it passed were important.

It will be the same for gay marriage. Whoever signs it is not going to be the most important person, those who fought for it would be.

it wasn't LBJ it might have been RFK or ? - we will never know, because fortunately LBJ DID pick up the cause.

Until the people with THE most to lose put their lives at the mercy of a racist, murderous society determined to keep the status quo, the legislation didn't even HAVE an infancy- It didn't have a 'conception'. Their actions were the seed that needed to be planted.

Yes, it needed to be fed, nurtured and harvested - LBJ's part in the improvement of the civil rights movement of our nation is important. He worked hard to make things better, and took political risks to do what he knew to be right. He was a President who had a very strong consience. The fact still remains that his actions were motivated by a movement begun by MLK and others who marched, bled, died and faced their oppressors with nothing but faith, courage, and unity, rather than to leave things as they were, and wish that things were different.

Hillary had no cause to bring up MLK or LBJ when and how she did, except to undermine Obama. Had she not opened up the issue, she wouldn't have to be defending herself now.

peace,
blu

Yeah, right. Obama does his MLK routine in all his speeches inviting, even expecting comparison with MLK and people aren't supposed to notice?

I was enthralled by MLK in those days, as were most of us. Obama is just as good and comparing him to MLK is an honor for him. He should welcome and be grateful for such comparisons.

That's not what the comparison evolved into. Hillary's words were twisted into an insult by desperate supporters who had or have little knowledge of what MLK accomplished and how he achieved his successes - with the help of a powerful President in the White House.

That is precisely what Hillary said.

:cry:

You were arguing for Hillary's point. But I personally wonder if Hillary would have made the same argument for Women's Right to Vote, that she's willing to make for Civil Rights.

Because no woman (that I'm aware of) signed off on Suffrage. Men did. Does that make the men who signed off on it more important than the women who marched for it?

I really wonder about Hillary's answer to that one.....

Our point is that the fight would have continued even if LBJ hadn't signed the Act -- it continues even today. The buck did not stop with LBJ.

It started -- and stops -- with the grass roots. It started with an idea, and with people who were willing to risk murder in order to see the right thing done.

LBJ risked the Democrat party's power. That's unheard of. Lincoln made a similar gamble when he put the Union before all else. George Washington -- who had the armies -- refused to be made King or President-For-Life or Benevolent Dictator.

LBJ did the politically risky thing in signing off on JFK's 'N*gger Bill' (as he called it) instead of playing it safe.

But he did not do it because it was his driving passion. Whatever risk of death he faced was nothing compared to the risk of death faced by simple American citizens who just wanted to go to school, to eat, to be able to vote, to own their own business without harassment, to own a home, people who just wanted their rights as legal American citizens protected.

The grassroots made the Civil Rights Bill possible. Dr. King's sacrifice made the Civil Rights Bill possible.

I'm beginning to think Hillary's answer was from a desire to inflate her own importance in the future....


But anyway, though I still think your OP was obtuse, I apologize for making you feel bad. You're not the only one to feel the way you do. It's just that there's an ulterior method beyond 'Great White Father', for Hillary (to my mind), but she hasn't been pressed to extend her MLK/LBJ argument to other important milestones in American history.

I think she should be.

I was not arguing for Hillary's point.

beautifully said.

thank you.

This is nothing more than playing the politics of division, aided and abetted by GOP dirty tricksters. This is a wet dream for them, having Dems at each others throats over civil rights.

Hell, we had those even WITH the bill.

I love the idea that the Civil Rights legislation was passed because of so many good intentions. It's ludicrous. The Civil Rights bill was passed because we were on the verge of a major race war in a time when colonized people were revolting against European domination all over the world. If you didn't pass the Civil Rights Act, you were gonna get less Martin and more Malcolm. Even WITH the legislation, the country went into racial warfare for the next several years.

It's like saying the New deal was passed because everyone just lerved the working class. Bullshit. The new deal was passed because without reform, you would have had a class uprising to rival anything going on in Europe. The CRA was good legislation, but it was FORCED ON WHITE AMERICA by both moral argument and the ever increasing threat of violence.

Watts and Detroit would have looked like Sunday School picnics in comparison if the Civil Rights Act hadn't passed when it did.

If you and a whole lot of other people had lived during the period of the civil rights movement and civil rights bill(s), none of you would be too anxious to go back to that time. It was a heroic time and it was a hideous time. Everyone had a role inn some part of it.

The "getting it done" referred to by Clinton was the flat out amazing job Johnson did getting those astonishing vote totals, not his penmanship in signing the bill.

Learn some history. Thanks,