Democrats delay change to convention superdelegates

[Hortensis]

82. To enlarge, clarity comes with using the words conservative

and liberal for this era when party labels shifted and were often worn by people with radically opposing views. Today's conservatives (most in the GOP) are using this confusion to claim OUR virtues for themselves and OUR advances that we achieved against their passionate opposition.

It's encouraging that conservatives WANT and NEED to claim social advances achieved by liberals, suggesting they see the virtue in them, but they do that because they have none of their own.

For instance, the civil rights Republicans were majority liberal in that era, with some moderate conservatives. Just try imagining today's conservatives fighting to integrate schools. (!) No, they didn't have personality transplants between then and now; whether they were southern Democrat conservatives or Republican conservatives, most fought advances for POC, some with everything they had.

Same for the reforms of the progressive era. At that time most liberals were still in the liberal/progressive wing of the Republican Party, so it was under that party label that WE spearheaded critically needed progressive reforms, along with some sensible progressive conservatives. And the rest of the conservatives, in both the Republican and Democratic parties, fought us tooth and nail then and today are still doing it.

As for Lincoln, I've read that it would be very difficult to overstate just how big the issue of slavery was in the decades leading up to the war. Lincoln's personal feelings about slavery, like those of most far less thoughtful people, were determined long before the civil war. What evolved with history was what he felt could and should be done, what could succeed, at any particular time.