In a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, titled “Whitewash: The racist history the Democratic Party wants you to forget,” Bruce Bartlett vigorously criticizes the Democratic Party for its long racist heritage, with an accent on actions before its shift to support civil rights and desegregation in recent decades. There’s been some mention of this in the relatively quiet holiday-blogosphere, including an interesting discussion over at Steve Benen’s Carpetbagger. Bartlett argues that those in the Democratic Party were:

“openly and explicitly for slavery before the Civil War, supported lynching and ‘Jim Crow’ laws after the war, and regularly defended segregation and white supremacy throughout most of the 20th century.”

There is certainly truth to this assertion, though… Continue reading…