To Care or Not to Care?

Sixty Years After the Enactment of Medicare, Medicaid, and the Voting Rights Act, “Republicans” Are Pushing Anti- and Ante-1964-65 Acts.

At the signing of the “War on Poverty” bill, President Lyndon B. Johnson hands a pen to Peace Corps Director Sargent Shriver, whom Johnson nominated to head the program | U.S. Peace Corps photo via Flickr

“We’re in favor of a lot of things, and we’re against mighty few!” – Lyndon B. Johnson, September 28, 1964

That exclamation that Lyndon Johnson made in an impromptu campaign talk through a bullhorn after climbing on top of his car in Providence, Rhode Island has long seemed to me to epitomize the positive, can-do, outlook of the Democratic Party at its best. It contrasts completely with the outlook of today’s MAGA “Republicans,” who are against a lot of good things and in favor of mighty few.

What were arguably the two crowning achievements of Johnson’s Great Society, the Social Security Amendments creating Medicare and Medicaid and the Voting Rights Act, were signed into law a week apart, the former on July 30 and the latter on August 6, 1965. The sixtieth anniversaries of those accomplishments are upon us.

They provide an opportunity to discuss the radically different visions of Democrats, both then and now, and MAGA “Republicans” today on what the United States should be.

‘What Needs to Be Done?’ vs. WWJND?

“We would sit around in the White House and ask each other, ‘What needs to be done?” Kennedy-Johnson aide Dick Goodwin told me in a 1985 conversation about the Johnson administration in 1965. “We should be able to pass anything we want to.”

“I’m sick of all these people who talk about the things we can’t do,” Johnson had told Goodwin the previous March when Goodwin was summoned into a White House bathroom while the leader of the Free World was seated on a (non-gold) toilet defecating. “Hell, we’re the richest country in the world, the most powerful. We can do it all.”

How radically different it is six decades later. In the Trump administration they are, in effect, asking, What needs to be undone? We can undo it all!

They appear to be asking themselves, WWJND. “What Would Jesus Not Do? That’s what we’ll do!

The Anti- and Ante-1964 Act

My most recent book, The Times They Were a-Changin’: 1964 – The Year the Sixties Arrived and the Battle Lines of Today Were Drawn (2022), recounts “the Long 1964,” which I define as the period from the JFK assassination in November 1963 through the summer of 1965. As the subtitle indicates, it emphasizes that the remarkable progress that was made then is what the MAGA Republicans are seeking to destroy.

When I was writing it early in the current decade, neither I nor almost anyone else imagined how quickly what was built up then could be torn down. Now, especially through the massive bill that could accurately be called the “Anti- and Ante-1964-65 Act” the project of overturning progress has already had much negative success

‘Landslide Donald’?

Lyndon Johnson had overwhelming support from the American public for the betterment of American society he sought. He won election in his own right in November 1964 with a record 61.1 percent of the popular vote. He won 90 percent of the Electoral College vote (486-52).

Trump claims he won in a landslide in 2024. In the world of fact, a realm he rarely visits, it was closer to the 87-vote victory LBJ had when he was elected to the Senate in 1948 that led to his derisive nickname, “Landslide Lyndon” than it was to Johnson’s undeniable landslide in 1964. Last November, Trump did not even win a majority of the votes cast, getting 49.8 percent of the popular vote to edge out Kamala Harris’s 48.3 percent.

I’ll save you from doing the math: In 1964, LBJ won the popular vote by 22.6 points. Sixty-two years later, DJT’s margin of victory was less than 1.5 points. Trump won 58 percent of the Electoral vote, nowhere near Johnson’s 90 percent.

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Support for Democrats in 1965, Opposition to Republicans in 2025

In 1965, Democrats held huge majorities in both houses of Congress: 68-32 in the Senate and 295-140 in the House. Today, Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate and 219-212 in the House.

“Our first objective is to free 30 million Americans from the prison of poverty. Can you help us free these Americans? And if you can, let me hear your voices!”

– Lyndon Johnson (1964)

The above declaration LBJ made during his celebratory 1964 campaign is among many such statements of his objectives that demonstrate how radically different they were from those of Trump. He and his sycophants seem to have the objective of putting millions of Americans into the prison of poverty.

On domestic issues (he lied completely about his intentions in Vietnam), Johnson had during the 1964 election campaign told the American people exactly what he sought to do, and the people loved it. Trump lied constantly during his 2024 campaign, particularly in claiming he was not running on Project 2025.

Early in 1965, Johnson’s approval rating among Republicans was an astonishing 74 percent. Today, substantial majorities of Americans oppose most of what Trump and his minions are doing.

Medicare and Medicaid

The final votes on the bill that created Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 were 307-116 in the House and 70-24 in the Senate. Seventy House Republicans and 17 Senate Republicans voted for the bill.

A month ago, Trump’s budget (a.k.a. the Big Ugly Project 2025 bill), the Anti- and Ante-1964 bill, was passed 216-214 in the House and the Vice President’s vote was needed to break a 50-50 tie in the Senate.

President Johnson chose to sign the bill into law at the Truman Presidential Library to honor the former president for his effort to pass national healthcare.

Before Medicare, more than half of all Americans sixty-five and older had no health insurance. After Medicare was well established, the number of uninsured seniors became negligible. Medicare is also associated with a dramatic drop in the percentage of seniors living in poverty. In 1959, 35.2 percent of the elderly were below the poverty line. Social Security had greatly reduced the number of seniors living in poverty since the 1930s, and improvements in that system played a major part, along with Medicare, in the remarkable further reduction in senior poverty, down to 8.9 percent in 2009 — 75 percent lower than before 1964.

That’s just one part of the progress Republicans are dead set on reversing now.

In his remarks at the signing of the health insurance bill six decades ago, Johnson spoke of the American tradition that “calls upon us never to be indifferent toward despair. It commands us never to turn away from helplessness. It directs us never to ignore or to spurn those who suffer untended in a land that is bursting with abundance.”

Those holding power today have turned completely against that American tradition. They are proudly indifferent to despair. They always turn away from helplessness. They ignore and spurn those who suffer and transfer ever more of our nation’s abundance to billionaires. They think that caring about others is a sign of weakness. Early this year, Elon Musk spoke for this radically different view: “We’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on. … The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”

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Johnson Plays Washington at Yorktown, Trump Chooses the Cornwallis Role

Johnson triumphantly signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, in a Capitol Rotunda ceremony staged beneath Trumbull’s painting of Cornwallis surrendering at Yorktown. His purpose was to send a message that the forces of racism had finally been defeated.

He referred to the incongruity at the base of American history that the land of freedom was also a land of slavery. Noting that “the first Negroes had arrived at Jamestown” in chains three and a half centuries before, the president asserted that the nation was finally striking “away the last major shackle of those fierce and ancient bonds. Today the Negro story and the American story fuse and blend.” “Today is a triumph for freedom,” Johnson proclaimed, “as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any battlefield.”

The Voting Rights Act was passed 328–74 in the House and 79-18 in the Senate. Only 20 of the 131 Republicans in the House and only one of the 31 Senate Republicans voted against it. Put another way, 83 percent of House Republicans and 94 percent of Senate Republicans voted in favor of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

As recently as 2006, an extension of the Voting Rights Act was supported by all Senate Republicans. Since the MAGA takeover, that has changed completely. In 2021, all fifty Republicans in the Senate voted not even to allow discussion of a bill titled the Freedom to Vote Act, which would restore voting rights protections that had been overturned by the Supreme Court.

Donald Trump and his wholly owned subsidiary, what is now The Anti-Lincoln Party, have cast themselves in the role of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

The Choice: A Society that Cares or a War of All Against All

The victories of 1964-65, which are still supported by a majority of Americans, are being rapidly overturned. The choice is now before us. Either we can have a society that cares about people or a social Darwinian “civilization” with a Hobbesian war of “all against all.”

We are confronting a full-frontal assault seeking to overturn the progress of the Long 1964, and the substantial majority of Americans who want to preserve and extend those gains find ourselves needing again to fight the battles of six decades ago.

It is a difficult struggle against an increasingly authoritarian government, but we must, we can, and we will succeed.

NOTE: Some portions of this essay are taken from McElvaine’s most recent book; much of it is new.

Author and historian Robert S. McElvaine writes the Musings & Amusings Substack.