In Search of the Real Southern Democrat

It was an indelible moment, one that has resonated with me up to the present day.

My father and I had gone to whatever permutation of Wal-Mart existed at that time in Union County in late 1982.  (Maybe it was still Edwards then, maybe Big K; the chronology is no longer clear so many years later.)  He was a supervisor at one of the various Milliken textile plants in Union, and that industry had been hit especially hard by a recession attributed to the current President, Ronald Reagan, and what his 1980 rival for the GOP nomination George H. W. Bush had termed “voodoo economics” in that primary.  Another name given this brand of economic thought and practice was “trickle-down economics,” which supposed that as long as high-dollar manufacturers were doing well, the resultant treasure would “trickle down” to the workers below.

My father voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 (and would again in 1984), when the rest of Union County was supporting fellow Southerner Jimmy Carter by a fifty-six percent margin over the former California governor.