A 1964 remark made by the late Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) was realized Tuesday, after predicting how long it would take for the American South to vote Democrat again.
Bill Moyers, a legendary journalist and LBJ's special assistant at the time, was the original source of the prediction, sharing what the president had said regarding the political consequences for Johnson's party after signing the Civil Rights Act. (RELATED: Internet On Fire With The Jokes After Democrats Shellack Republicans In Midterms)
The act was designed to secure rights for black Americans, which LBJ understood would drastically change the political landscape of the South, which had long since been the land of the Democrats, Confederates, and the Ku Klux Klan.
Recalling the conversation to the Guardian, Moyers said the president was reading the Washington Post about the "great event" of the bills passing.
"Quite a day, Mr. President," Moyers said, trying to make conversation.
LBJ pulled the paper close to read the column, before responding to his assistant in a line that would spark political intrigue for decades. "Well, I think we may have lost the South for your lifetime — and mine."
Der amerikanische Journalist Bill Moyers, aufgenommen um das Jahr 1979. Er ist bekannt für seine Arbeit im Bereich des Journalismus. USA, 1979
Moyers told the Guardian that LBJ made the remark lightly, like a "throwaway sidebar," not dramatically or sarcastically.
"Merely a jest, lightly uttered and soon forgotten," Moyers said, adding that he had only shared the exchange once.
Yet it quickly caught Washington's attention and then the country's imagination, with each retelling becoming more dramatized than the last, as at some point the lines altered to "for a generation" or "once and for all."
"I couldn't keep up. I finally stopped commenting," Moyers told the Guardian in 2023.
Whichever way LBJ intended the line, it became literally true as the polls began to close Tuesday, the first national election since Moyers' passing in June 2025.
The Greenville, MS community waits in line and votes inside the Elk Lodge Voting Polls on November 4, 2008 in Greenville, Mississippi. (Photo by Shaul Schwarz/Getty Images)
The long-since Republican South wasn't spared from Tuesday's blue tsunami, with crimson red states flipping bright blue.
Texas, a long-time Republican stronghold, did a near 180, electing Democrat James Talarico for Senate, Democrat Gina Hinojosa for governor, and a Democratic majority state House.
In deep-red South Carolina, Democrat Annie Andrews became the first Democratic Senator since 1998.
Blue ballots were also cast in Georgia with the reelection of Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff and the election of Keisha Lance Bottoms, who will be the first black woman elected governor in the U.S. and the first Democratic governor in Georgia since 1998.
Democrat Roy Cooper was also able to flip the state's U.S. Senate seat by a wide margin in North Carolina. (RELATED: Democrats Flip Five Governorships In Election Night Bloodbath… So Far)
While analysts are still trying to determine why election night ended with the results it did and political figures are giving their own thoughts on it, LBJ's 60-plus-year prediction was proven true.
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