Thread by @GeeDee215

John McCain voted at least six times to prevent divestment from apartheid South Africa and voted against making King’s birthday a federal holiday.

His campaign manager in the 2000 presidential race was an *actual* neo-Confederate who ran a magazine called Southern Partisan.

https://twitter.com/Marxicology/status/1085276707773448192

After George HW Bush vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1990 — a narrow measure that would have made it easier for job applicants to sue employers for discrimination — McCain was central in making sure the Senate's override of that veto ultimately failed.

McCain's stance on this bill even put him at odds with other *Republicans* — the veto override fell one vote short, 66-34 — and put him on the same side of the issue as David Duke, who watched the Senate vote from the gallery.

It would be the first time in U.S. history that a president ever successfully vetoed a civil rights bill.

But Bush's ppl were so unnerved by the optics of being on the same side of the issue as a Klansman — having just confirmed Clarence Thomas, they thought they had a rare chance to win Black voters — that they soon rushed a modified bill to the floor.

trib.in/2TU5RY8

But McCain, always bizarrely characterized as a moderate in the news media, was on the same side as David Duke, as well as avowed segregationist Strom Thurmond and the likes of Jesse Helms and Trent Lott, who all voted against the override.

bit.ly/2TQoHzi

McCain wouldn't walk back his opposition to the federal King holiday until the 2008 campaign, when he found himself running for president against a Black man.

But he would *never* apologize for helping prop up the veto of that milquetoast civil rights bill. A maverick.

Addendum: here’s a story on McCain’s aforementioned campaign manager.

mobile.nytimes.com/2000/02/08/us/…

And another from 2015, from when he was working with Lindsey Graham. buzzfeednews.com/article/andrew…