Watch: Dem Strategist Melts Down When Scott Jennings Gives Her a History Lesson About Her Own Party

Modern Democrats would do well to avoid bringing up the past.

After all, the Democratic Party as a whole (excluding some decent individuals) amounts to a 200-year-old cancer on the republic.

Sunday on CNN, conservative commentator Scott Jennings turned Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky’s lame historical allusion on its head, causing Roginsky to verbally flail while complaining that Jennings would not allow her to talk.

“These are the same people that defended opening fire hoses on protesters in the Sixties on the Selma Bridge,” Roginsky said, referring to Jennings and Republicans, who, according to the Democrat strategist, would have supported the violent suppression of peaceful protests during the Civil Rights Era, in this case the famous march, led by Martin Luther King Jr., across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 1965.

Unfortunately for Roginsky, the historical facts do not support her slanderous contention.

“I think those were Democrats, Julie,” Jennings interjected. “Just FYI. Those were Democrats.”

Roginsky then tried to argue that people like Jennings support the suppression of peaceful protests today. But she had already lost the debate.

“That was your party,” a chuckling Jennings continued. “But thank you for reminding everybody that Democrats were against civil rights.”

At that point, Roginsky grew agitated, ostensibly at Jennings’ interruptions but in reality due to her own embarrassing argument.

“You’re the one that brought up Democrats,” Jennings said, needling the prickly Roginsky. “I agree with you. Democrats shouldn’t have been against civil rights.”

I’d like to personally thank @julieroginsky for reminding everyone that it was Democrats in Alabama who opposed civil rights in 1965 & turned fire hoses against the brave marchers in Selma. Although I wasn’t born until 1977, Julie 😉. pic.twitter.com/GtmEG5oeHH

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) January 19, 2026

Southern Democrats, of course, did indeed oppose the civil rights movement of the 1960s. But that does not even begin to tell the sordid history of the Democratic Party.

At a time when white supremacy actually existed, Democrats did everything possible to sustain it.

For instance, in the 1830s, the Democrats established themselves as the party of Indian Removal under President Andrew Jackson.

In the years preceding the Civil War, Democrats both North and South demanded the extension of slavery into the territories. Meanwhile, the Republican Party emerged in 1854 for the sole reason of keeping slavery out of said territories.

Speaking of Republicans, Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election after pledging to keep slavery from spreading westward and expressing moral repugnance to the institution. Southern Democrats responded to Lincoln’s campaign rhetoric by removing him from state ballots.

Why do Democrats always try to prevent voters from choosing a candidate who elitist Democrats, in this case slaveholders, despise?

Then, when Democrats lost the 1860 election, they took their toys and went home. More specifically, seven Democrat-controlled Southern states seceded from the Union before Lincoln even took office. Four more states followed shortly thereafter, joining the new Confederacy.

After the conflict, Democrats won a decades-long war of attrition in the South, ignoring constitutional amendments and relegating freed blacks to second-class citizenship.

In short, the 19th-century Democratic Party was filled with authoritarian elitists such as the former slaveholders who, in the 1870s and 1880s, wrested control of their states from the Reconstruction governments. Their descendants — Democrats all — still held power in the South by the 1960s.

Today, those same strands of racism and authoritarian elitism define the Democratic Party.

Special thanks to Roginsky — and to Jennings, of course — for reminding us who the Democrats are and have always been.

Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.