One of the things that annoys the hell out of me is when college sports announcers say things like "This team hasn't won a championship since 1959," or "The last time this team was in the final four was [YEARS before any member of the team was even born]." Trivial, maybe even petty, but it's an unavoidable side effect of my personal philosophies. Confusing the name of a thing with the thing itself is the root of many an evil.

Those personal philosophies force me to join Walter at Idols of the Marketplace in hoping Cobb, in his examination of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will explain why the breakdown by party of that 40 year old vote is relevant when most of those Democrats he would decry switched parties because of that vote.

As I told Bob Parks when he stopped by:

I haven't disputed the Democratic/Republican vote breakdown. I'm saying the people who voted against the Civil Rights Act were not liberal whites, though they may have been both white and registered Democrats. As proof I submit the fact that all those registered Democrats that voted against the bill exited the party pretty much en mass and joined the Republican party.

You're impugning an outlook because of the actions of a group that did not hold the outlook at the time.

Even a fellow member of his Conservative Brotherhood has issues she raises in Cobb's comments:

This is a key reason why, even though I agree with 65% of Republican ideology, I hesitate to register as a Republican (but I ain't a Democrat either). When even Glenn Loury, Robert Woodson, and J.C. Watts grow exasperated by their party peers, then I know it ain't for me. That stuff doesn't get overlooked by black folks either, and is often brought up in discussions about Republican politics.

If Cobb is making the "mistaking the name for the thing named" error that would be surprising but correctable. If he's not, then I'm disappointed in myself for overestimating him.