Partisan tribalism began to reemerge—slowly at first, but then with gathering speed and force. The polarization that began in the late 1960s was initially driven primarily by race, as the two parties became more distinct and more internally homogeneous. Johnson and Nixon (ironically, each a moderate within his own party) were the twin progenitors of that turn toward polarization, Johnson by signing the Civil Rights bills in 1964-65 that (as he himself reportedly had foretold45) cost the Democrats their conservative, Southern wing, and Nixon by following an essentially racist “Southern
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