I'm not sure it's not him
Could be. bodie generally thinks it's a mistake to look at historic figures as static caricatures, frozen at some randomly selected moment in time that suits a particular bias on the part of the observer. Like most human beings they had the dynamism and the capacity to evolve and change over time, and often they did. Take Abraham Lincoln as an example. Many years before becoming president he had some very unpleasant things to say about colored people, and lots of folks like to point to those times as evidence of Lincoln being a phony later on in life. When he was first elected president he had no intent whatsoever to destroy slavery or free the slaves. Lots of folks like to point that out as evidence of him being a phony on emancipation. But through subsequent time and events he evolved into a passionate and genuine abolitionist.
I see Edgy left out the balance of the snopes article, which addresses such an evolution of thought in Johnson:
LBJ’s comment about black people voting Democrat was supposedly uttered to two unnamed governors traveling with the president on Air Force One, but we only have one source — MacMillan, who claimed he overheard the exchange — and no corroboration from anyone else. And then there’s MacMillan’s editorializing: “It was strictly a political ploy for the Democratic party. He was phony from the word go.” And: “This was the attitude of these people who were championing civil rights.”
It’s not just that MacMillan gives the appearance of being a biased witness, but also that his cynical portrait is at odds with historical evidence showing that by the time Johnson took office after JFK’s assassination, he was fully committed to Kennedy’s civil rights legislation. Some of this evidence can be found in LBJ’s oval office recordings, in which he can be heard fighting for its passage. Eric Foner writes in the New York Times Book Review:
One example of genuine idealism that does come through in these volumes is Johnson’s commitment to civil rights. When he took office, nobody expected that he would identify himself with the black movement more passionately than any previous president. But from his first days in office he urged black leaders, labor officials and businessmen to lobby Congress for passage of the stalled civil rights bill. He asked Robert Anderson, a member of Eisenhower’s cabinet, to work on Republicans: “You’re either the party of Lincoln or you ain’t…. By God, put up or shut up!”
Lastly, the historical evidence suggests that far from being concerned about securing future generations of black votes, one of Johnson’s main worries — which, to his credit, didn’t prevent him from pushing for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — was losing the votes of white Southerners. His former press secretary, Bill Moyers, recounted this scene in his 2004 book Moyers on America:
When he signed the act he was euphoric, but late that very night I found him in a melancholy mood as he lay in bed reading the bulldog edition of the Washington Post with headlines celebrating the day. I asked him what was troubling him. “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come,” he said.
MacMillan's charge against Johnson doesn't even make mathematical sense. In order to gain the overwhelming majority of the votes of 10% of the population you alienate the overwhelming majority of white voters in the south as well as millions of others in other regions who were opposed to the Civil Rights Acts? That results in a negative net loss of voters, not a gain.