The
Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to:
*Democratic Party (United States)
Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to:
Active parties Africa
*Botswana Democratic Party
*Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea
*Gabonese Democratic Party
*Demo ...
is one of the two major political parties of the
United States political system and the oldest existing
political party in that country founded in the 1830s and 1840s.
It is also the oldest voter-based
political party
A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...
in the world. The party has changed significantly during its nearly two centuries of existence.
Known as the party of the "common man," the early Democratic Party stood for individual rights and state sovereignty, and opposed banks and high tariffs.
In the first decades of its existence, from 1832 to the mid-1850s (known as the
Second Party System
Historians and political scientists use Second Party System to periodize the political party system operating in the United States from about 1828 to 1852, after the First Party System ended. The system was characterized by rapidly rising levels ...
), under Presidents
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American lawyer, planter, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, he gained fame as ...
,
Martin Van Buren
Martin Van Buren ( ; nl, Maarten van Buren; ; December 5, 1782 – July 24, 1862) was an American lawyer and statesman who served as the eighth president of the United States from 1837 to 1841. A primary founder of the Democratic Party (Uni ...
and
James K. Polk
James Knox Polk (November 2, 1795 – June 15, 1849) was the 11th president of the United States, serving from 1845 to 1849. He previously was the 13th speaker of the House of Representatives (1835–1839) and ninth governor of Tennessee (183 ...
, the Democrats usually bested the opposition
Whig Party by narrow margins.
Before the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...
the party supported or tolerated slavery; and after the war until the
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
the party opposed civil rights reforms in order to retain the support of Southern voters. During this second period (1865-1932), the opposing
Republican Party, (organized in the mid-1850s from the ruins of the Whig Party and some other smaller splinter groups), was dominant in
presidential politics. The Democrats elected
only two Presidents during this period:
Grover Cleveland
Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837June 24, 1908) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. Cleveland is the only president in American ...
(in 1884 and 1892) and
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
(in 1912 and 1916). Over the same period, the Democrats proved more competitive with the Republicans in
Congressional politics, enjoying
House of Representatives
House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...
majorities (as in the
65th Congress
The 65th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, DC from March 4, 1917, to ...
) in 15 of the 36
Congresses elected, although only in five of these did they form the majority in the
Senate
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
. Furthermore, the Democratic Party was split between the
Bourbon Democrat
Bourbon Democrat was a term used in the United States in the later 19th century (1872–1904) to refer to members of the Democratic Party who were ideologically aligned with fiscal conservatism or classical liberalism, especially those who su ...
s, representing Eastern business interests; and the agrarian elements comprising poor farmers in the South and West. The agrarian element, marching behind the slogan of
free silver (i.e. in favor of inflation), captured the party in 1896 and nominated
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan (March 19, 1860 – July 26, 1925) was an American lawyer, orator and politician. Beginning in 1896, he emerged as a dominant force in the History of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, running ...
in the 1896, 1900 and 1908 presidential elections, although he lost every time. Both Bryan and Wilson were leaders of the
progressive movement in the United States (1890s–1920s) and opposed imperialistic expansion abroad while sponsoring liberal reforms at home.
Starting with 32nd President
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
, the party dominated during the
Fifth Party System
The Fifth Party System is the era of American national politics that began with the New Deal in 1932 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This era of Democratic Party-dominance emerged from the realignment of the voting blocs and interest gro ...
, which lasted from 1932 until about the 1970s. In response to the
Wall Street Crash of 1929
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929. It started in September and ended late in October, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange colla ...
and the ensuing
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
, the party employed
liberal
Liberal or liberalism may refer to:
Politics
* a supporter of liberalism
** Liberalism by country
* an adherent of a Liberal Party
* Liberalism (international relations)
* Sexually liberal feminism
* Social liberalism
Arts, entertainment and m ...
policies and programs with the
New Deal coalition to combat financial crises and emergency bank closings, with policies continuing into
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. The Party kept the
White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...
after Roosevelt's death in April 1945, reelecting former Vice President
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...
in 1948. During this period, the
Republican Party only elected one president (Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956) and was the minority in Congress all but twice (the exceptions being 1946 and 1952). Powerful committee chairmanships were awarded automatically on the basis of seniority, which gave power especially to long-serving Southerners. Important Democratic leaders during this time included Presidents Harry S. Truman (1945–1953),
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...
(1961–1963) and
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
(1963–1969). Republican
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
won the White House in 1968 and 1972, leading to the end of the New Deal era.
Democrats have won six out of the last twelve presidential elections, winning in the presidential elections of
1976
Events January
* January 3 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force.
* January 5 – The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea.
* January 11 – The 1976 Phila ...
(with 39th President
Jimmy Carter
James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he previously served as th ...
, 1977–1981),
1992
File:1992 Events Collage V1.png, From left, clockwise: 1992 Los Angeles riots, Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the Police brutality, police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment buildi ...
and
1996 (with 42nd President
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
, 1993–2001),
2008 and
2012
File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gather ...
(with 44th President
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
, 2009–2017), and
2020
2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global Social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, social and Economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, COVID- ...
(with 46th President
Joe Biden, 2021–present). Democrats have also won the
popular vote
Popularity or social status is the quality of being well liked, admired or well known to a particular group.
Popular may also refer to:
In sociology
* Popular culture
* Popular fiction
* Popular music
* Popular science
* Populace, the total ...
in
2000
File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...
and
2016, but lost the
Electoral College in both elections (with candidates
Al Gore
Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic Part ...
and
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
, respectively). These were two of the four
presidential elections in which Democrats won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College, the others being the presidential elections in
1876 and
1888.
Foundation: 1820-1828
The modern Democratic Party emerged in the late 1820s from former factions of the
Democratic-Republican Party
The Democratic-Republican Party, known at the time as the Republican Party and also referred to as the Jeffersonian Republican Party among other names, was an American political party founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the early ...
, which had largely collapsed by 1824. It was built by
Martin Van Buren
Martin Van Buren ( ; nl, Maarten van Buren; ; December 5, 1782 – July 24, 1862) was an American lawyer and statesman who served as the eighth president of the United States from 1837 to 1841. A primary founder of the Democratic Party (Uni ...
, who assembled a cadre of politicians in every state behind war hero
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American lawyer, planter, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, he gained fame as ...
of Tennessee. The pattern and speed of formation differed from state to state. By the mid-1830s almost all the state Democratic parties were uniform.
Jacksonian ascendancy: 1829–1840
Presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829–1837)
![The modern balaam and his ass](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/The_modern_balaam_and_his_ass.jpg)
The spirit of
Jacksonian democracy
Jacksonian democracy was a 19th-century political philosophy in the United States that expanded suffrage to most white men over the age of 21, and restructured a number of federal institutions. Originating with the seventh U.S. president, And ...
animated the party from the early 1830s to the 1850s, shaping the
Second Party System
Historians and political scientists use Second Party System to periodize the political party system operating in the United States from about 1828 to 1852, after the First Party System ended. The system was characterized by rapidly rising levels ...
, with the
Whig Party as the main opposition. After the disappearance of the
Federalists
The term ''federalist'' describes several political beliefs around the world. It may also refer to the concept of parties, whose members or supporters called themselves ''Federalists''.
History Europe federation
In Europe, proponents of de ...
after 1815 and the
Era of Good Feelings
The Era of Good Feelings marked a period in the political history of the United States that reflected a sense of national purpose and a desire for unity among Americans in the aftermath of the War of 1812. The era saw the collapse of the Fed ...
(1816–1824), there was a hiatus of weakly organized personal factions until about 1828–1832, when the modern Democratic Party emerged along with its rival, the Whigs. The new Democratic Party became a coalition of farmers, city-dwelling laborers and Irish Catholics. Both parties worked hard to build
grassroots
A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or economic movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from the local level to effect change at t ...
organizations and maximize the turnout of voters, which often reached 80 percent or 90 percent of eligible voters. Both parties used
patronage
Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows on another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings, popes, and the wealthy have provided to artists su ...
extensively to finance their operations, which included emerging big city
political machine
In the politics of Representative democracy, representative democracies, a political machine is a party organization that recruits its members by the use of tangible incentives (such as money or political jobs) and that is characterized by a hig ...
s as well as national networks of newspapers.
Behind the party platforms, acceptance speeches of candidates, editorials, pamphlets and
stump speeches, there was a widespread consensus of political values among Democrats. As Mary Beth Norton explains:
The Democrats represented a wide range of views but shared a fundamental commitment to the Jeffersonian concept of an agrarian society
An agrarian society, or agricultural society, is any community whose economy is based on producing and maintaining crops and farmland. Another way to define an agrarian society is by seeing how much of a nation's total production is in agriculture ...
. They viewed the central government as the enemy of individual liberty. The 1824 " corrupt bargain" had strengthened their suspicion of Washington politics. ..Jacksonians feared the concentration of economic and political power. They believed that government intervention in the economy benefited special-interest groups and created corporate monopolies that favored the rich. They sought to restore the independence of the individual – the artisan and the ordinary farmer – by ending federal support of banks and corporations and restricting the use of paper currency
A banknote—also called a bill (North American English), paper money, or simply a note—is a type of negotiable promissory note, made by a bank or other licensed authority, payable to the bearer on demand.
Banknotes were originally issued ...
, which they distrusted. Their definition of the proper role of government tended to be negative, and Jackson's political power was largely expressed in negative acts. He exercised the veto more than all previous presidents combined. Jackson and his supporters also opposed reform as a movement. Reformers eager to turn their programs into legislation called for a more active government. But Democrats tended to oppose programs like educational reform
Education reform is the name given to the goal of changing public education. The meaning and education methods have changed through debates over what content or experiences result in an educated individual or an educated society. Historically, th ...
and the establishment of a public education system....Nor did Jackson share reformers' humanitarian concerns. He had no sympathy for American Indians, initiating the removal of the Cherokee
The Cherokee (; chr, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, translit=Aniyvwiyaʔi or Anigiduwagi, or chr, ᏣᎳᎩ, links=no, translit=Tsalagi) are one of the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, t ...
s along the Trail of Tears
The Trail of Tears was an ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of approximately 60,000 people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. As part of the Indian removal, members of the Cherokee, ...
.
The party was weakest in
New England
New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...
, but strong everywhere else and won most national elections thanks to strength in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia (by far the most populous states at the time) and the
American frontier
The American frontier, also known as the Old West or the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of United States territorial acquisitions, American expansion in mainland North Amer ...
. Democrats opposed elites and aristocrats, the
Bank of the United States and the whiggish modernizing programs that would build up industry at the expense of the
yeoman
Yeoman is a noun originally referring either to one who owns and cultivates land or to the middle ranks of servants in an English royal or noble household. The term was first documented in mid-14th-century England. The 14th century also witn ...
or independent small farmer.
The party was known for its populism. Historian Frank Towers has specified an important ideological divide:
Democrats stood for the 'sovereignty of the people' as expressed in popular demonstrations, constitutional conventions, and majority rule as a general principle of governing, whereas Whigs advocated the rule of law, written and unchanging constitutions, and protections for minority interests against majority tyranny.
At its inception, the Democratic Party was the party of the "common man". It opposed the abolition of slavery.
From 1828 to 1848, banking and tariffs were the central domestic policy issues. Democrats strongly favored—and Whigs opposed—expansion to new farm lands, as typified by their expulsion of eastern
American Indians and acquisition of vast amounts of new land in the West after 1846. The party favored the
war with Mexico and opposed anti-immigrant
nativism. In the 1830s, the
Locofocos
The Locofocos (also Loco Focos or Loco-focos) were a faction of the Democratic Party in American politics that existed from 1835 until the mid-1840s.
History
The faction, originally named the Equal Rights Party, was created in New York City as a ...
in New York City were radically democratic, anti-monopoly and were proponents of
hard money and
free trade
Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. It can also be understood as the free market idea applied to international trade. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold econo ...
. Their chief spokesman was
William Leggett. At this time,
labor unions were few and some were loosely affiliated with the party.
Presidency of Martin Van Buren (1837–1841)
![Martin Van Buren](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Martin_Van_Buren.jpg)
The Presidency of Martin Van Buren was hobbled by a long economic depression called the
Panic of 1837. The presidency promoted hard money based on gold and silver, an independent federal treasury, a reduced role for the government in the economy, and a liberal policy for the sale of public lands to encourage settlement; they opposed high tariffs to encourage industry. The Jackson policies were kept, such as Indian removal and the
Trail of Tears
The Trail of Tears was an ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of approximately 60,000 people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. As part of the Indian removal, members of the Cherokee, ...
. Van Buren personally disliked slavery but he kept the slaveholder's rights intact. Nevertheless, he was distrusted across the South.
The
1840 Democratic convention was the first at which the party adopted a platform. Delegates reaffirmed their belief that the Constitution was the primary guide for each state's political affairs. To them, this meant that all roles of the federal government not specifically defined fell to each respective state government, including such responsibilities as debt created by local projects. Decentralized power and states' rights pervaded each and every resolution adopted at the convention, including those on slavery, taxes, and the possibility of a central bank. Regarding slavery, the Convention adopted the following resolution:
Resolved, That congress has no power under the Constitution, to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several states, and that such states are the sole and proper judges of every thing appertaining to their own affairs, not prohibited by the Constitution: that all efforts of the abolitionists or others, made to induce congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences, and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people, and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend to our political institutions.
Harrison and Tyler (1841–1845)
The Panic of 1837 led to Van Buren and the Democrats' drop in popularity. The Whigs nominated
William Henry Harrison
William Henry Harrison (February 9, 1773April 4, 1841) was an American military officer and politician who served as the ninth president of the United States. Harrison died just 31 days after his inauguration in 1841, and had the shortest pres ...
as their candidate for the 1840 presidential race. Harrison won as the first president of the Whigs. However, he died in office a month later and was succeeded by his Vice President
John Tyler
John Tyler (March 29, 1790 – January 18, 1862) was the tenth president of the United States
The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president dire ...
. Tyler had recently left the Democrats for the Whigs and thus his beliefs did not align much with the Whig Party. During his presidency, he vetoed most of the key Whig bills. The Whigs disowned him. This allowed for the Democrats to retake power in 1845.
Presidency of James K. Polk (1845–1849)
Foreign policy was a major issue in the 1840s as war threatened with Mexico over Texas and with Britain over Oregon. Democrats strongly supported
Manifest Destiny
Manifest destiny was a cultural belief in the 19th century in the United States, 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand across North America.
There were three basic tenets to the concept:
* The special vir ...
and most Whigs strongly opposed it. The
1844 election was a showdown, with the Democrat
James K. Polk
James Knox Polk (November 2, 1795 – June 15, 1849) was the 11th president of the United States, serving from 1845 to 1849. He previously was the 13th speaker of the House of Representatives (1835–1839) and ninth governor of Tennessee (183 ...
narrowly defeating Whig
Henry Clay
Henry Clay Sr. (April 12, 1777June 29, 1852) was an American attorney and statesman who represented Kentucky in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. He was the seventh House speaker as well as the ninth secretary of state, al ...
on the Texas issue.
John Mack Faragher's analysis of the political polarization between the parties is:
Most Democrats were wholehearted supporters of expansion, whereas many Whigs (especially in the North
North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography.
Etymology
T ...
) were opposed. Whigs welcomed most of the changes wrought by industrialization
Industrialisation ( alternatively spelled industrialization) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive re-organisation of an econo ...
but advocated strong government policies that would guide growth and development within the country's existing boundaries; they feared (correctly) that expansion raised a contentious issue the extension of slavery to the territories
A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, particularly belonging or connected to a country, person, or animal.
In international politics, a territory is usually either the total area from which a state may extract power resources or a ...
. On the other hand, many Democrats feared industrialization the Whigs welcomed. ..For many Democrats, the answer to the nation's social ills was to continue to follow Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...
's vision of establishing agriculture in the new territories in order to counterbalance industrialization.
Free Soil split
In
1848 a major innovation was the creation of the
Democratic National Committee (DNC) to coordinate state activities in the presidential contest. Senator
Lewis Cass
Lewis Cass (October 9, 1782June 17, 1866) was an American military officer, politician, and statesman. He represented Michigan in the United States Senate and served in the Cabinets of two U.S. Presidents, Andrew Jackson and James Buchanan. He w ...
, who held many offices over the years, lost to General
Zachary Taylor
Zachary Taylor (November 24, 1784 – July 9, 1850) was an American military leader who served as the 12th president of the United States from 1849 until his death in 1850. Taylor was a career officer in the United States Army, rising to th ...
of the Whigs. A major cause of the defeat was that the new
Free Soil Party
The Free Soil Party was a short-lived coalition political party in the United States active from 1848 to 1854, when it merged into the Republican Party. The party was largely focused on the single issue of opposing the expansion of slavery int ...
, which opposed slavery expansion, split the Democratic vote, particularly in New York, where the electoral votes went to Taylor. The Free Soil Party attracted Democrats and some Whigs which had considerable support in the Northeast. The primary doctrine was a warning that rich slave owners would move into new territories such as Nebraska and buy up the best lands and work them with slaves. To protect the white farmer it was essential therefore to keep the soil "free"—that is without slavery. In 1852, the free soil movement was much smaller, and consisted primarily of former members of the Liberty Party and some abolitionists, it hedged on the question of full equality. The majority wanted some form of racial separation to allow space for black activism, without alienating the overwhelming northern opposition to equal rights for black men.
Taylor and Fillmore (1849–1853)
Following the death of President Taylor, Democrats in Congress led by Stephen Douglas passed the
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that defused a political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired in the Mexican–Am ...
designed to avoid civil war by putting the slavery issue to rest while resolving issues involving territories gained following the War with Mexico. However, in state after state the Democrats gained small but permanent advantages over the Whig Party, which finally collapsed in 1852, fatally weakened by division on slavery and
nativism. The fragmented opposition could not stop the election of Democrats
Franklin Pierce
Franklin Pierce (November 23, 1804October 8, 1869) was the 14th president of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857. He was a northern Democrat who believed that the abolitionist movement was a fundamental threat to the nation's unity ...
in
1852 and
James Buchanan
James Buchanan Jr. ( ; April 23, 1791June 1, 1868) was an American lawyer, diplomat and politician who served as the 15th president of the United States from 1857 to 1861. He previously served as secretary of state from 1845 to 1849 and repr ...
in
1856.
The presidencies of Franklin Pierce (1853–1857) and James Buchanan (1857–1861)
![Augustbelmont](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Augustbelmont.jpg)
The eight years during which Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan held the presidency were disasters; historians agree that they rank as among the worst presidents. The Party increasingly split along regional lines on the issue of slavery in the territories. When the new Republican Party formed in 1854, many anti-slavery ("Free Soil") Democrats in the North switched over and joined it. In 1860 two Democrats ran for president and the United States was moving rapidly toward civil war.
Young America
The 1840s and 1850s were the heyday of a new faction of young Democrats called "
Young America". Led by
Stephen A. Douglas
Stephen Arnold Douglas (April 23, 1813 – June 3, 1861) was an American politician and lawyer from Illinois. A senator, he was one of two nominees of the badly split Democratic Party for president in the 1860 presidential election, which wa ...
, James K. Polk, Franklin Pierce and New York financier
August Belmont
August Belmont Sr. (born August Schönberg; December 8, 1813November 24, 1890) was a German-American financier, diplomat, politician and party chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and also a horse-breeder and racehorse owner. He wa ...
, this faction explains, broke with the agrarian and
strict constructionist
In the United States, strict constructionism is a particular legal philosophy of judicial interpretation that limits or restricts such interpretation only to the exact wording of the law (namely the Constitution).
Strict sense of the term
...
orthodoxies of the past and embraced commerce, technology, regulation, reform and internationalism. The movement attracted a circle of outstanding writers, including
William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant (November 3, 1794 – June 12, 1878) was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the ''New York Evening Post''. Born in Massachusetts, he started his career as a lawyer but showed an interest in poetry ...
,
George Bancroft
George Bancroft (October 3, 1800 – January 17, 1891) was an American historian, statesman and Democratic politician who was prominent in promoting secondary education both in his home state of Massachusetts and at the national and internati ...
,
Herman Melville
Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American people, American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his bes ...
and
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion.
He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associated with that t ...
. They sought independence from European standards of
high culture
High culture is a subculture that emphasizes and encompasses the cultural objects of aesthetic value, which a society collectively esteem as exemplary art, and the intellectual works of philosophy, history, art, and literature that a society con ...
and wanted to demonstrate the excellence and
exceptionalism of
America's own literary tradition.
In economic policy, Young America saw the necessity of a modern infrastructure with railroads, canals, telegraphs, turnpikes and harbors. They endorsed the "
market revolution
The Market Revolution in 19th century United States is a historical model which argues that there was a drastic change of the economy that disoriented and coordinated all aspects of the market economy in line with both nations and the world. Char ...
" and promoted
capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, pric ...
. They called for Congressional land grants to the states, which allowed Democrats to claim that
internal improvements
Internal improvements is the term used historically in the United States for public works from the end of the American Revolution through much of the 19th century, mainly for the creation of a transportation infrastructure: roads, turnpikes, canal ...
were locally rather than federally sponsored. Young America claimed that modernization would perpetuate the agrarian vision of
Jeffersonian democracy
Jeffersonian democracy, named after its advocate Thomas Jefferson, was one of two dominant political outlooks and movements in the United States from the 1790s to the 1820s. The Jeffersonians were deeply committed to American republicanism, whic ...
by allowing yeomen farmers to sell their products and therefore to prosper. They tied internal improvements to
free trade
Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. It can also be understood as the free market idea applied to international trade. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold econo ...
, while accepted moderate tariffs as a necessary source of government revenue. They supported the
Independent Treasury
The Independent Treasury was the system for managing the money supply of the United States federal government through the U.S. Treasury and its sub-treasuries, independently of the national banking and financial systems. It was created on August 6 ...
(the Jacksonian alternative to the Second Bank of the United States) not as a scheme to quash the special privilege of the Whiggish monied elite, but as a device to spread prosperity to all
Americans
Americans are the Citizenship of the United States, citizens and United States nationality law, nationals of the United States, United States of America.; ; Although direct citizens and nationals make up the majority of Americans, many Multi ...
.
Breakdown of the Second Party System (1854–1859)
Sectional confrontations escalated during the 1850s, the Democratic Party split between
North
North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography.
Etymology
T ...
and
South
South is one of the cardinal directions or Points of the compass, compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west.
Etymology
The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Pro ...
grew deeper. The conflict was papered over at the
1852 and
1856 conventions by selecting men who had little involvement in sectionalism, but they made matters worse. Historian
Roy F. Nichols explains why
Franklin Pierce
Franklin Pierce (November 23, 1804October 8, 1869) was the 14th president of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857. He was a northern Democrat who believed that the abolitionist movement was a fundamental threat to the nation's unity ...
was not up to the challenges a Democratic president had to face:
:As a national political leader Pierce was an accident. He was honest and tenacious of his views but, as he made up his mind with difficulty and often reversed himself before making a final decision, he gave a general impression of instability. Kind, courteous, generous, he attracted many individuals, but his attempts to satisfy all factions failed and made him many enemies. In carrying out his principles of strict construction he was most in accord with Southerners, who generally had the
letter of the law
The letter of the law and the spirit of the law are two possible ways to regard rules, or laws. To obey the letter of the law is to follow the literal reading of the words of the law, whereas following the spirit of the law means enacting the ...
on their side. He failed utterly to realize the depth and the sincerity of Northern feeling against the South and was bewildered at the general flouting of the law and the Constitution, as he described it, by the people of his own New England. At no time did he catch the popular imagination. His inability to cope with the difficult problems that arose early in his administration caused him to lose the respect of great numbers, especially in the North, and his few successes failed to restore public confidence. He was an inexperienced man, suddenly called to assume a tremendous responsibility, who honestly tried to do his best without adequate training or temperamental fitness.
In 1854, Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois—a key Democratic leader in the Senate—pushed the
Kansas–Nebraska Act
The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 () was a territorial organic act that created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It was drafted by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas, passed by the 33rd United States Congress, and signed into law by ...
through Congress. President
Franklin Pierce
Franklin Pierce (November 23, 1804October 8, 1869) was the 14th president of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857. He was a northern Democrat who believed that the abolitionist movement was a fundamental threat to the nation's unity ...
signed the bill into law in 1854.
The Act opened
Kansas Territory
The Territory of Kansas was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 30, 1854, until January 29, 1861, when the eastern portion of the territory was admitted to the United States, Union as the Slave and ...
and
Nebraska Territory
The Territory of Nebraska was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 30, 1854, until March 1, 1867, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Nebraska. The Nebrask ...
to a decision by the residents on whether slavery would be legal or not. Previously it had been illegal there. Thus the new law implicitly repealed the prohibition on slavery in territory north of
36° 30′ latitude that had been part of the
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was a federal legislation of the United States that balanced desires of northern states to prevent expansion of slavery in the country with those of southern states to expand it. It admitted Missouri as a slave state and ...
of 1820.
Supporters and enemies of slavery poured into Kansas to vote slavery up or down. The armed conflict was
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas, or the Border War was a series of violent civil confrontations in Kansas Territory, and to a lesser extent in western Missouri, between 1854 and 1859. It emerged from a political and ideological debate over the ...
and it shook the nation. A major re-alignment took place among voters and politicians. The Whig Party fell apart and the new Republican Party was founded in opposition to the expansion of slavery and to the
Kansas–Nebraska Act
The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 () was a territorial organic act that created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It was drafted by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas, passed by the 33rd United States Congress, and signed into law by ...
. The new party had little support in the South, but it soon became a majority in the North by pulling together former Whigs and former Free Soil Democrats.
[William E. Gienapp, ''The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856'' (1987) explores statistically the flow of voters between parties in the 1850s.]
North and South pull apart
The crisis for the Democratic Party came in the late 1850s as Democrats increasingly rejected national policies demanded by the Southern Democrats. The demands were to support slavery outside the South. Southerners insisted that full equality for their region required the government to acknowledge the legitimacy of slavery outside the South. The Southern demands included a fugitive slave law to recapture runaway slaves; opening Kansas to slavery; forcing a pro-slavery constitution on Kansas; acquire Cuba (where slavery already existed); accepting the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court; and adopting a federal slave code to protect slavery in the territories. President Buchanan went along with these demands, but Douglas refused and proved a much better politician than Buchanan, though the bitter battle lasted for years and permanently alienated the Northern and Southern wings.
When the new
Republican Party formed in 1854 on the basis of refusing to tolerate the expansion of slavery into the territories, many northern Democrats (especially
Free Soilers
The Free Soil Party was a short-lived coalition political party in the United States active from 1848 to 1854, when it merged into the Republican Party. The party was largely focused on the single issue of opposing the expansion of slavery into ...
from 1848) joined it. The formation of the new short-lived
Know-Nothing Party
The Know Nothing party was a nativist political party and movement in the United States in the mid-1850s. The party was officially known as the "Native American Party" prior to 1855 and thereafter, it was simply known as the "American Party". ...
allowed the Democrats to win the presidential election of 1856.
Buchanan, a Northern "
Doughface
The term doughface originally referred to an actual mask made of dough, but came to be used in a disparaging context for someone, especially a politician, who is perceived to be pliable and moldable. In the 1847 ''Webster's Dictionary'' ''doughfac ...
" (his base of support was in the pro-slavery South), split the party on the issue of slavery in Kansas when he attempted to pass a federal slave code as demanded by the South. Most Democrats in the North rallied to Senator Douglas, who preached "
Popular Sovereignty
Popular sovereignty is the principle that the authority of a state and its government are created and sustained by the consent of its people, who are the source of all political power. Popular sovereignty, being a principle, does not imply any ...
" and believed that a Federal slave code would be undemocratic.
![DEM1860](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/DEM1860.JPG)
In
1860, the Democrats split over the choice of a successor to President Buchanan along Northern and Southern lines. Some
Southern Democratic delegates followed the lead of the
Fire-Eaters
In American history, the Fire-Eaters were a group of pro-slavery Democrats in the Antebellum South who urged the separation of Southern states into a new nation, which became the Confederate States of America. The dean of the group was Robert R ...
by walking out of the
Democratic National Convention
The Democratic National Convention (DNC) is a series of presidential nominating conventions held every four years since 1832 by the United States Democratic Party. They have been administered by the Democratic National Committee since the 1852 ...
at
Charleston's Institute Hall in April 1860. They were later joined by those who, once again led by the Fire-Eaters, left the
Baltimore Convention the following June when the convention rejected a resolution supporting extending slavery into territories whose voters did not want it. The Southern Democrats, also referred to as Seceders, nominated
John C. Breckinridge
John Cabell Breckinridge (January 16, 1821 – May 17, 1875) was an American lawyer, politician, and soldier. He represented Kentucky in both houses of Congress and became the 14th and youngest-ever vice president of the United States. Serving ...
of Kentucky, the pro-slavery incumbent vice president, for president and General
Joseph Lane
Joseph "Joe" Lane (December 14, 1801 – April 19, 1881) was an American politician and soldier. He was a state legislator representing Evansville, Indiana, and then served in the Mexican–American War, becoming a general. President James K. ...
, former governor of Oregon, for vice president.
[David M. Potter. ''The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861'' (1976). ch. 16.] The
Northern Democrats
The Northern Democratic Party was a leg of the Democratic Party during the 1860 presidential election, when the party split in two factions because of disagreements over slavery. They held two conventions before the election, in Charleston and ...
proceeded to nominate Douglas of Illinois for president and former governor of Georgia
Herschel Vespasian Johnson
Herschel Vespasian Johnson (September 18, 1812August 16, 1880) was an American politician. He was the 41st Governor of Georgia from 1853 to 1857 and the vice presidential nominee of the Douglas wing of the Democratic Party in the 1860 U.S. pr ...
for vice president, while some southern Democrats joined the
Constitutional Union Party, backing former Senator
John Bell of Tennessee for president and politician
Edward Everett
Edward Everett (April 11, 1794 – January 15, 1865) was an American politician, Unitarian pastor, educator, diplomat, and orator from Massachusetts. Everett, as a Whig, served as U.S. representative, U.S. senator, the 15th governor of Mass ...
of Massachusetts for vice president. This fracturing of the Democratic Party left it powerless.
Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States. Douglas campaigned across the country calling for unity and came in second in the popular vote, but carried only Missouri and New Jersey. Breckinridge carried 11
slave states
In the United States before 1865, a slave state was a state in which slavery and the internal or domestic slave trade were legal, while a free state was one in which they were not. Between 1812 and 1850, it was considered by the slave states ...
, coming in second in the Electoral vote, but third in the popular vote.
Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (1861–1865)
Civil War
During the
Civil War
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
, Northern Democrats divided into two factions: the
War Democrats
War Democrats in American politics of the 1860s were members of the Democratic Party who supported the Union and rejected the policies of the Copperheads (or Peace Democrats). The War Democrats demanded a more aggressive policy toward the C ...
, who supported the military policies of President Lincoln; and the
Copperheads, who strongly opposed them. In the South party politics ended in the
Confederacy. The political leadership, mindful of the fierce divisions in antebellum American politics and with a pressing need for unity, rejected organized political parties as inimical to good governance and as being especially unwise in wartime. Consequently, the Democratic Party halted all operations during the life of the Confederacy (1861–1865).
[Jennifer L. Weber, ''Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's Opponents in the North'' (2006)]
Partisanship flourished in the North and strengthened the Lincoln Administration as Republicans automatically rallied behind it. After the
attack on Fort Sumter, Douglas rallied
Northern Democrats
The Northern Democratic Party was a leg of the Democratic Party during the 1860 presidential election, when the party split in two factions because of disagreements over slavery. They held two conventions before the election, in Charleston and ...
behind the Union, but when Douglas died the party lacked an outstanding figure in the North and by 1862 an anti-war peace element was gaining strength. The most intense anti-war elements were the
Copperheads.
The Democratic Party did well in the
1862 congressional elections, but in
1864
Events
January–March
* January 13 – American songwriter Stephen Foster ("Oh! Susanna", "Old Folks at Home") dies aged 37 in New York City, leaving a scrap of paper reading "Dear friends and gentle hearts". His parlor song " ...
it nominated General
George McClellan
George Brinton McClellan (December 3, 1826 – October 29, 1885) was an American soldier, Civil War Union general, civil engineer, railroad executive, and politician who served as the 24th governor of New Jersey. A graduate of West Point, McCl ...
(a War Democrat) on a peace platform and lost badly because many War Democrats bolted to
National Union candidate Abraham Lincoln. Many former Douglas Democrats became Republicans, especially soldiers such as generals
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant ; April 27, 1822July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union Ar ...
and
John A. Logan
John Alexander Logan (February 9, 1826 – December 26, 1886) was an American soldier and politician. He served in the Mexican–American War and was a general in the Union Army in the American Civil War. He served the state of Illinois as a st ...
.
Presidency of Andrew Johnson (1865–1869)
![Democraticjackass](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Democraticjackass.jpg)
In the
1866 elections, the
Radical Republicans
The Radical Republicans (later also known as " Stalwarts") were a faction within the Republican Party, originating from the party's founding in 1854, some 6 years before the Civil War, until the Compromise of 1877, which effectively ended Reco ...
won two-thirds majorities in Congress and took control of national affairs. The large Republican majorities made Congressional Democrats helpless, though they unanimously opposed the Radicals'
Reconstruction policies. The Senate passed the 14th Amendment by a vote of 33 to 11 with every Democratic senator opposed. Realizing that the old issues were holding it back, the Democrats tried a "
New Departure" that downplayed the War and stressed such issues as stopping corruption and
white supremacy
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White su ...
, which it wholeheartedly supported.
President Johnson, elected on the fusion Union Party ticket, did not rejoin the Democratic party, but Democrats in Congress supported him and voted against his impeachment in 1868. After his term ended in 1869 he rejoined the Democrats.
Republican interlude 1869–1885
War hero
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant ; April 27, 1822July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union Ar ...
led the Republicans to
landslides
Landslides, also known as landslips, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, deep-seated slope failures, mudflows, and debris flows. Landslides occur in a variety of environments, ...
in
1868
Events
January–March
* January 2 – British Expedition to Abyssinia: Robert Napier leads an expedition to free captive British officials and missionaries.
* January 3 – The 15-year-old Mutsuhito, Emperor Meiji of Jap ...
and
1872
Events
January–March
* January 12 – Yohannes IV is crowned Emperor of Ethiopia in Axum, the first ruler crowned in that city in over 500 years.
* February 2 – The government of the United Kingdom buys a number of forts on ...
.
When a major economic depression hit the United States with the
Panic of 1873
The Panic of 1873 was a financial crisis that triggered an economic depression in Europe and North America that lasted from 1873 to 1877 or 1879 in France and in Britain. In Britain, the Panic started two decades of stagnation known as the ...
, the Democratic party made major gains across the country, took full control of the South, and took control of Congress.
The Democrats lost consecutive presidential elections from 1860 through 1880, nevertheless Democrats have won the popular vote in
1876. Although the races after 1872 were very close they did not win the presidency until
1884. The party was weakened by its record of opposition to the war, but nevertheless benefited from
White Southerners
White Southerners, from the Southern United States, are considered an ethnic group by some historians, sociologists and journalists, although this categorization has proven controversial, and other academics have argued that Southern identity do ...
' resentment of
Reconstruction
Reconstruction may refer to:
Politics, history, and sociology
*Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company
*'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...
and consequent hostility to the Republican Party. The
nationwide depression of 1873 allowed the Democrats to retake control of the House in the
1874 Democratic landslide.
The
Redeemers
The Redeemers were a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction Era that followed the Civil War. Redeemers were the Southern wing of the Democratic Party. They sought to regain their political power and enforce ...
gave the Democrats control of every Southern state (by the
Compromise of 1877), but the
disenfranchisement of blacks took place (1880–1900). From 1880 to 1960, the "
Solid South
The Solid South or Southern bloc was the electoral voting bloc of the states of the Southern United States for issues that were regarded as particularly important to the interests of Democrats in those states. The Southern bloc existed especial ...
" voted Democratic in presidential elections (except 1928). After 1900, a victory in a Democratic primary was "
tantamount to election
A safe seat is an electoral district (constituency) in a legislative body (e.g. Congress, Parliament, City Council) which is regarded as fully secure, for either a certain political party, or the incumbent representative personally or a combinati ...
" because the Republican Party was so weak in the South.
The politicized cowboy image
Heather Cox Richardson
Heather Cox Richardson is an American historian and professor of history at Boston College, where she teaches courses on the American Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, the American West, and the Plains Indians. She previously taught history ...
argues for a political dimension to the cowboy image in the 1870s and 1880s,:
The timing of the cattle industry’s growth meant that cowboy imagery grew to have extraordinary power. Entangled in the vicious politics of the postwar years, Democrats, especially those in the old Confederacy, imagined the West as a land untouched by Republican politicians they hated. They developed an image of the cowboys as men who worked hard, played hard, lived by a code of honor, protected themselves, and asked nothing of the government. In the hands of Democratic newspaper editors, the realities of cowboy life -- the poverty, the danger, the debilitating hours -- became romantic. Cowboys embodied virtues Democrats believed Republicans were destroying by creating a behemoth government catering to lazy ex-slaves. By the 1860s, cattle drives were a feature of the plains landscape, and Democrats had made cowboys a symbol of rugged individual independence, something they insisted Republicans were destroying.
Cleveland, Harrison, Cleveland (1885–1897)
After being out of office since 1861, the Democrats won the popular vote in three consecutive elections, and the electoral vote (and thus the White House) in 1884 and 1892.
The first presidency of Grover Cleveland (1885–1889)
Although Republicans continued to control the White House until 1884, the Democrats remained competitive (especially in the
mid-Atlantic and lower
Midwest
The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four Census Bureau Region, census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of ...
) and controlled the House of Representatives for most of that period. In the election of
1884,
Grover Cleveland
Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837June 24, 1908) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. Cleveland is the only president in American ...
, the reforming Democratic Governor of New York, won the Presidency, a feat he repeated in
1892
Events
January–March
* January 1 – Ellis Island begins accommodating immigrants to the United States.
* February 1 - The historic Enterprise Bar and Grill was established in Rico, Colorado.
* February 27 – Rudolf Diesel applies for ...
, having lost in the election of
1888.
![1893polittooncleveland](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/1893polittooncleveland.JPG)
Cleveland was the leader of the
Bourbon Democrats
Bourbon Democrat was a term used in the United States in the later 19th century (1872–1904) to refer to members of the Democratic Party who were ideologically aligned with fiscal conservatism or classical liberalism, especially those who supp ...
. They represented business interests, supported banking and railroad goals, promoted ''
laissez-faire
''Laissez-faire'' ( ; from french: laissez faire , ) is an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies) deriving from special interest groups. ...
'' capitalism, opposed
imperialism
Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...
and U.S. overseas expansion, opposed the annexation of
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...
, fought for the
gold standard
A gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. The gold standard was the basis for the international monetary system from the 1870s to the early 1920s, and from the la ...
and opposed
Bimetallism
Bimetallism, also known as the bimetallic standard, is a monetary standard in which the value of the monetary unit is defined as equivalent to certain quantities of two metals, typically gold and silver, creating a fixed rate of exchange betwee ...
. They strongly supported reform movements such as
Civil Service Reform and opposed corruption of city bosses, leading the fight against the
Tweed Ring
William Magear Tweed (April 3, 1823 – April 12, 1878), often erroneously referred to as William "Marcy" Tweed (see below), and widely known as "Boss" Tweed, was an American politician most notable for being the political boss of Tammany H ...
.
The leading Bourbons included
Samuel J. Tilden,
David Bennett Hill
David Bennett Hill (August 29, 1843October 20, 1910) was an American politician from New York who was the 29th Governor of New York from 1885 to 1891 and represented New York in the United States Senate from 1892 to 1897.
In 1892, he made an u ...
and
William C. Whitney of New York,
Arthur Pue Gorman
Arthur Pue Gorman (March 11, 1839June 4, 1906) was an American politician. He was leader of the Gorman-Rasin organization with Isaac Freeman Rasin that controlled the Maryland Democratic Party from the late 1870s until his death in 1906. Gorman ...
of Maryland,
Thomas F. Bayard
Thomas Francis Bayard (October 29, 1828 – September 28, 1898) was an American lawyer, politician and diplomat from Wilmington, Delaware. A Democrat, he served three terms as United States Senator from Delaware and made three unsuccessful bids ...
of Delaware,
Henry M. Mathews and
William L. Wilson of West Virginia,
John Griffin Carlisle
John Griffin Carlisle (September 5, 1834July 31, 1910) was an American politician from the commonwealth of Kentucky and was a member of the Democratic Party. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives seven times, first in 18 ...
of Kentucky,
William F. Vilas
William Freeman Vilas (July 9, 1840August 27, 1908) was an American lawyer, politician, and United States Senator. In the U.S. Senate, he represented the state of Wisconsin for one term, from 1891 to 1897. As a prominent Bourbon Democrat, he wa ...
of Wisconsin,
J. Sterling Morton
Julius Sterling Morton (April 22, 1832 – April 27, 1902) was a Nebraska newspaper editor and politician who served as President Grover Cleveland's United States Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Agriculture. He was a prominent Bourbon Dem ...
of Nebraska,
John M. Palmer of Illinois,
Horace Boies
Horace Boies (December 7, 1827 – April 4, 1923) served as the 14th Governor of Iowa from 1890 to 1894 as a member of the United States Democratic Party. Boies was the only Democrat to serve in that position from 1855 to 1933, a period of 78 y ...
of Iowa,
Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar
Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II (September 17, 1825January 23, 1893) was an American politician, diplomat, and jurist. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented Mississippi in both houses of Congress, served as the United States Se ...
of Mississippi and railroad builder
James J. Hill
James Jerome Hill (September 16, 1838 – May 29, 1916) was a Canadian-American railroad director. He was the chief executive officer of a family of lines headed by the Great Northern Railway, which served a substantial area of the Upper Midwes ...
of Minnesota. A prominent intellectual was
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
.
[Addkison-Simmons, D. (2010). Henry Mason Mathews. ''e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia''. Retrieved December 11, 2012, fro]
"Henry Mason Mathews"
Republican Benjamin Harrison won a narrow victory in 1888. The party pushed through a large agenda, and raised the
McKinley Tariff
The Tariff Act of 1890, commonly called the McKinley Tariff, was an act of the United States Congress, framed by then Representative William McKinley, that became law on October 1, 1890. The tariff raised the average duty on imports to almost fift ...
and federal spending so high it was used against them as Democrats scored a landslide in
the 1890 elections. Harrison was easily defeated for reelection in 1892 by Cleveland.
The second presidency of Grover Cleveland (1893–1897)
The Bourbons were in power when the
Panic of 1893
The Panic of 1893 was an economic depression in the United States that began in 1893 and ended in 1897. It deeply affected every sector of the economy, and produced political upheaval that led to the political realignment of 1896 and the pres ...
hit and they took the blame. The party polarized between the pro-gold pro-business Cleveland faction and the anti-business silverites in the West and South. A fierce struggle inside the party ensued, with catastrophic losses for both the Bourbon and agrarian factions in 1894, leading to the showdown in 1896. Just before the 1894 election, President Cleveland was warned by an advisor:
:We are on the eve of very dark night, unless a return of commercial prosperity relieves popular discontent with what they believe Democratic incompetence to make laws, and consequently with Democratic Administrations anywhere and everywhere.
Aided by the deep nationwide economic depression that lasted from 1893 to 1897, the Republicans won their biggest landslide ever, taking full control of the House. The Democrats lost nearly all their seats in the Northeast. The third party Populists also were ruined. However, Cleveland's silverite enemies gained control of the Democratic Party in state after state, including full control in Illinois and Michigan and made major gains in Ohio, Indiana, Iowa and other states. Wisconsin and Massachusetts were two of the few states that remained under the control of Cleveland's allies.
The rise and fall of William Jennings Bryan
The opposition Democrats were close to controlling two-thirds of the vote at the
1896 national convention, which they needed to nominate their own candidate. However, they were not united and had no national leader, as Illinois governor
John Peter Altgeld
John Peter Altgeld (December 30, 1847 – March 12, 1902) was an American politician and the 20th Governor of Illinois, serving from 1893 until 1897. He was the first Democrat to govern that state since the 1850s. A leading figure of the Progr ...
had been born in Germany and was ineligible to be nominated for president.
However, a young (35 years old) upstart, Congressman
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan (March 19, 1860 – July 26, 1925) was an American lawyer, orator and politician. Beginning in 1896, he emerged as a dominant force in the History of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, running ...
made the magnificent "cross of gold" speech, which brought the crowd at the convention to its feet and got him the nomination. He would lose the election, but remained the Democratic hero and was renominated and lost again in 1900 and a third time in 1908.
Free silver movement
Grover Cleveland
Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837June 24, 1908) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. Cleveland is the only president in American ...
led the party faction of conservative, pro-business
Bourbon Democrat
Bourbon Democrat was a term used in the United States in the later 19th century (1872–1904) to refer to members of the Democratic Party who were ideologically aligned with fiscal conservatism or classical liberalism, especially those who su ...
s, but as the
depression of 1893
The Panic of 1893 was an Depression (economics), economic depression in the United States that began in 1893 and ended in 1897. It deeply affected every sector of the economy, and produced political upheaval that led to the political realignmen ...
deepened his enemies multiplied. At the
1896 convention, the silverite-agrarian faction repudiated the President and nominated the crusading orator
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan (March 19, 1860 – July 26, 1925) was an American lawyer, orator and politician. Beginning in 1896, he emerged as a dominant force in the History of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, running ...
on a platform of
free coinage of silver. The idea was that minting silver coins would flood the economy with cash and end the depression. Cleveland supporters formed the
National Democratic Party (Gold Democrats), which attracted politicians and intellectuals (including
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
and
Frederick Jackson Turner
Frederick Jackson Turner (November 14, 1861 – March 14, 1932) was an American historian during the early 20th century, based at the University of Wisconsin until 1910, and then Harvard University. He was known primarily for his frontier thes ...
) who refused to vote Republican.
Bryan, an overnight sensation because of his "
Cross of Gold
The Cross of Gold speech was delivered by William Jennings Bryan, a former United States Representative from Nebraska, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on July 9, 1896. In his address, Bryan supported " free silver" (i.e. bime ...
" speech, waged a new-style crusade against the supporters of the gold standard. Criss-crossing the
Midwest
The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four Census Bureau Region, census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of ...
and
East
East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth.
Etymology
As in other languages, the word is formed from the fa ...
by special train – he was the first candidate since 1860 to go on the road – he gave over 500 speeches to audiences in the millions. In St. Louis he gave 36 speeches to workingmen's audiences across the city, all in one day. Most Democratic newspapers were hostile toward Bryan, but he seized control of the media by making the news every day as he hurled thunderbolts against Eastern monied interests.
[Richard J. Jensen, ''The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict 1888–1896'' (1971]
free online edition
/ref>
The rural folk in the South and Midwest were ecstatic, showing an enthusiasm never before seen, but ethnic Democrats (especially Germans
, native_name_lang = de
, region1 =
, pop1 = 72,650,269
, region2 =
, pop2 = 534,000
, region3 =
, pop3 = 157,000
3,322,405
, region4 =
, pop4 = ...
and Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
) were alarmed and frightened by Bryan. The middle classes, businessmen, newspaper editors, factory workers, railroad workers and prosperous farmers generally rejected Bryan's crusade. Republican William McKinley
William McKinley (January 29, 1843September 14, 1901) was the 25th president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. As a politician he led a realignment that made his Republican Party largely dominant in ...
promised a return to prosperity based on the gold standard, support for industry, railroads and banks and pluralism that would enable every group to move ahead.
Although Bryan lost the election
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.
Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...
in a landslide, he did win the hearts and minds of a majority of Democrats, as shown by his renomination in 1900 and 1908. As late as 1924, the Democrats put his brother Charles W. Bryan on their national ticket. The victory of the Republican Party in the election of 1896 marked the start of the "Progressive Era
The Progressive Era (late 1890s – late 1910s) was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States focused on defeating corruption, monopoly, waste and inefficiency. The main themes ended during Am ...
", which lasted from 1896 to 1932, in which the Republican Party usually was dominant.
The GOP Presidencies of McKinley (1897–1901), Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909) and Taft (1909–1913)
The 1896 election marked a political realignment in which the Republican Party controlled the presidency for 28 of 36 years. The Republicans dominated most of the Northeast
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each se ...
and Midwest and half the West
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sunset, Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic languages, German ...
. Bryan, with a base in the South and Plains states
The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...
, was strong enough to get the nomination in 1900
As of March 1 ( O.S. February 17), when the Julian calendar acknowledged a leap day and the Gregorian calendar did not, the Julian calendar fell one day further behind, bringing the difference to 13 days until February 28 ( O.S. February 15), 2 ...
(losing to William McKinley
William McKinley (January 29, 1843September 14, 1901) was the 25th president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. As a politician he led a realignment that made his Republican Party largely dominant in ...
) and 1908 (losing to William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857March 8, 1930) was the 27th president of the United States (1909–1913) and the tenth chief justice of the United States (1921–1930), the only person to have held both offices. Taft was elected pr ...
). Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
dominated the first decade of the century and to the annoyance of Democrats "stole" the trust issue by crusading against trusts.
With Bryan taking a hiatus and Teddy Roosevelt the most popular president since Lincoln, the conservatives who controlled the convention in 1904, nominated the little-known Alton B. Parker
Alton Brooks Parker (May 14, 1852 – May 10, 1926) was an American judge, best known as the Democrat who lost the presidential election of 1904 to Theodore Roosevelt.
A native of upstate New York, Parker practiced law in Kingston, New York, ...
before succumbing to Roosevelt's landslide.
Religious divisions were sharply drawn.[Kleppner (1979)] Methodists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Scandinavian Lutherans
Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched ...
and other pietists
Pietism (), also known as Pietistic Lutheranism, is a movement within Lutheranism that combines its emphasis on biblical doctrine with an emphasis on individual piety and living a holy Christianity, Christian life, including a social concern for ...
in the North were closely linked to the Republican Party. In sharp contrast, liturgical
Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. ''Liturgy'' can also be used to refer specifically to public worship by Christians. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and partic ...
groups, especially the Catholics
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
, Episcopalians
Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...
and German Lutherans, looked to the Democratic Party for protection from pietistic moralism, especially prohibition
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic ...
. Both parties cut across the class structure, with the Democrats gaining more support from the lower classes and Republicans more support from the upper classes.
Cultural issues, especially prohibition and foreign language schools, became matters of contention because of the sharp religious divisions in the electorate. In the North, about 50 percent of voters were pietistic Protestants (Methodists, Scandinavian Lutherans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Disciples of Christ) who believed the government should be used to reduce social sins, such as drinking.
Liturgical churches (Roman Catholics, Episcopalians and German Lutherans) comprised over a quarter of the vote and wanted the government to stay out of the morality business. Prohibition debates and referendums heated up politics in most states over a period of decade, as national prohibition was finally passed in 1918 (repealed in 1932), serving as a major issue between the wet Democrats and the dry Republicans.
1908: "Yet another farewell tour"
With the wildly popular President Roosevelt sticking to his promise to step down after seven and a half years, and his chosen successor, War Secretary William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857March 8, 1930) was the 27th president of the United States (1909–1913) and the tenth chief justice of the United States (1921–1930), the only person to have held both offices. Taft was elected pr ...
somewhat popular as well, the Democratic Party gave Bryan the nomination for a third time. He was again defeated. The Democrats held together while the Republican Party bitterly split between the Roosevelt-oriented progressives and the Taft-oriented conservatives. Taft defeated Roosevelt for the 1912 nomination, but Roosevelt ran as a third-party candidate. That split the GOP vote so that the Democrats were inevitably the winners, electing their first Democratic president and fully Democratic Congress in 20 years.
Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress, with their base among poor farmers and the working class, generally supported Progressive Era reforms, such as antitrust, regulation of railroads, direct election of Senators, the income tax, the restriction of child labor, and the Federal Reserve system.
Presidency of Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921)
Taking advantage of a deep split in the Republican Party, the Democrats took control of the House in 1910 and elected the intellectual reformer Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
in 1912 and 1916. Wilson successfully led Congress to a series of progressive laws, including a reduced tariff, stronger antitrust laws, new programs for farmers, hours-and-pay benefits for railroad workers and the outlawing of child labor
Child labour refers to the exploitation of children through any form of work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and is mentally, physically, socially and morally harmful. Such e ...
(which was reversed by the Supreme Court).[John Milton Cooper, ''Woodrow Wilson: A Biography'' (2009)]
Wilson tolerated the segregation Segregation may refer to:
Separation of people
* Geographical segregation, rates of two or more populations which are not homogenous throughout a defined space
* School segregation
* Housing segregation
* Racial segregation, separation of humans ...
of the federal Civil Service by Southern cabinet members. Furthermore, bipartisan constitutional amendments for prohibition and women's suffrage
Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vot ...
were passed in his second term. In effect, Wilson laid to rest the issues of tariffs, money and antitrust that had dominated politics for 40 years.
Wilson oversaw the U.S. role in World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
and helped write the Versailles Treaty, which included the League of Nations. However, in 1919 Wilson's political skills faltered and suddenly everything turned sour. The Senate rejected Versailles and the League, a nationwide wave of violent, unsuccessful strikes and race riots caused unrest and Wilson's health collapsed.
The Democrats lost by a landslide in 1920 United States presidential election, 1920, doing especially poorly in the cities, where the German-Americans deserted the ticket; and the Irish Catholics, who dominated the party apparatus, were unable to garner traction for the party in this election cycle.
The Roaring Twenties: Democratic defeats
The entire decade saw the Democrats as an ineffective minority in Congress and as a weak force in most Northern states.
After the massive defeat in 1920, the Democrats recovered most of their lost territory in 1922 United States House of Representatives elections, the Congressional elections of 1922. They especially recovered in the border states, as well as the industrial cities, where the Irish and German element returned to that party. In addition, there was growing support among the more recent immigrants, who had become more Americanized. Many ethnic families now had a veteran in their midst, and paid closer attention to national issues, such as the question of World War Adjusted Compensation Act, a bonus for veterans. There was also an expression of annoyance with the federal prohibition of beer and wine, and the closing of most saloons.
Culture conflict and Al Smith (1924–1928)
At the 1924 Democratic National Convention, a resolution denouncing the Ku Klux Klan was introduced by Catholic and liberal forces allied with Al Smith and Oscar W. Underwood in order to embarrass the front-runner, William Gibbs McAdoo. After much debate, the resolution failed by a single vote. The KKK faded away soon after, but the deep split in the party over cultural issues, especially prohibition, facilitated Republican landslides in 1924 United States presidential election, 1924 and 1928 United States presidential election, 1928. However, Al Smith did build a strong Catholic base in the big cities in 1928 and Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
's election as Governor of New York that year brought a new leader to center stage.
The internal battles and repeated defeats left the party discouraged and demoralized. To a considerable extent, the challenge of restoring morale was the province of historian Claude Bowers. His histories of the Democratic Party in its formative years from the 1790s to the 1830s helped shape the party's self-image as a powerful force against monopoly and privilege. In his enormously popular books ''Party Battles of the Jackson Period'' (1922) and ''Jefferson and Hamilton: The Struggle for Democracy in America'' (1925) he argued for the political and moral superiority of the Democratic Party since the days of Jefferson versus the almost un-American faults of the Federalist Party, the Whig Party, and the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, as bastions of aristocracy. ''Jefferson and Hamilton'' especially impressed his friend Franklin D Roosevelt. It inspired Roosevelt when he became president to build a great monument to the party's founder in the national capital, the Jefferson Memorial. According to Historian Merrill D. Peterson, the book conveyed:
the myth of the Democratic Party masterfully re-created, a fresh awareness of the elemental differences between the parties, and ideology with which they might make sense of the two often senseless conflicts of the present, and a feeling for the importance of dynamic leadership. The book was a mirror for Democrats.
The Great Depression and a Second World War: Democratic hegemony (1930–1953)
The Great Depression marred Hoover's term as the Democratic Party made large gains in the 1930 congressional elections and garnered a landslide win in 1932.
Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945)
The Wall Street Crash 1929, stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
set the stage for a more progressive government and Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
won a landslide victory in the 1932 United States presidential election, election of 1932, campaigning on a platform of "Relief, Recovery, and Reform", that is relief of unemployment and rural distress, recovery of the economy back to normal and long-term structural reforms to prevent a repetition of the Depression. This came to be termed "New Deal, The New Deal" after a phrase in Roosevelt's acceptance speech.
The Democrats also swept to large majorities in both houses of Congress and among state governors. Roosevelt altered the nature of the party, away from ''laissez-faire'' capitalism and towards an ideology of economic regulation and insurance against hardship. Two old words took on new meanings: "liberal" now meant a supporter of the New Deal while "conservative" meant an opponent.
Conservative Democrats were outraged and led by Al Smith they formed the American Liberty League in 1934 and counterattacked. They failed and either retired from politics or joined the Republican Party. A few of them, such as Dean Acheson, found their way back to the Democratic Party.
The 1933 programs, called "the First New Deal" by historians, represented a broad consensus. Roosevelt tried to reach out to business and labor, farmers and consumers, cities and countryside. However, by 1934 he was moving toward a more confrontational policy. After making gains in state governorships and in Congress, in 1934 Roosevelt embarked on an ambitious legislative program that came to be called "The Second New Deal". It was characterized by building up labor unions, nationalizing welfare by the Works Progress Administration, WPA, setting up Social Security (United States), Social Security, imposing more regulations on business (especially transportation and communications) and raising taxes on business profits.
Roosevelt's New Deal programs focused on job creation through public works projects as well as on social welfare programs such as Social Security. It also included sweeping reforms to the banking system, work regulation, transportation, communications and stock markets, as well as attempts to regulate prices. His policies soon paid off by uniting a diverse coalition of Democratic voters called the New Deal coalition, which included labor unions, Modern liberalism in the United States, liberals, minorities (most significantly, Catholics and Jews) and liberal white Southerners. This united voter base allowed Democrats to be elected to Congress and the presidency for much of the next 30 years.
The Second term
After a triumphant re-election in 1936 United States presidential election, 1936, he announced plans to Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, enlarge the Supreme Court, which tended to oppose his New Deal, by five new members. A firestorm of opposition erupted, led by his own Vice President John Nance Garner. Roosevelt was defeated by an alliance of Republicans and conservative Democrats, who formed a conservative coalition that managed to block nearly all liberal legislation (only a Minimum wage in the United States, minimum wage law got through). Annoyed by the conservative wing of his own party, Roosevelt made an attempt to rid himself of it and in 1938 he actively campaigned against five incumbent conservative Democratic senators, though all five senators won re-election.
The Party
Under Roosevelt, the Democratic Party became identified more closely with modern liberalism, which included the promotion of social welfare, labor unions, civil rights and the regulation of business, as well as support for farmers and promotion of ethnic leaders. The opponents, who stressed long-term growth and support for entrepreneurship and low taxes, now started calling themselves "conservatives".
World War II
With a near disaster in 1937 with the so-called "recession" and the near defeat in Congress in 1938, things looked bleak for the Democrats, but FDR decided that with the upcoming crisis that would become World War II, he was irreplaceable, and he broke tradition and ran for a third, and later 4th term, taking a Democratic congress with him.
Presidency of Harry S. Truman (1945–1953)
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...
took over after Roosevelt's death in 1945 and the rifts inside the party that Roosevelt had papered over began to emerge. Major components included the big city machines, the Southern state and local parties, the far-left and the "Liberal coalition" or "Liberal-Labor coalition" comprising the American Federation of Labor, AFL, Congress of Industrial Organizations, CIO and ideological groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP (representing African American, Blacks), the American Jewish Congress (AJC) and the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) (representing liberal intellectuals). By 1948, the unions had expelled nearly all the far-left and communist elements.
The 1946–1948
On the right, the Republicans blasted Truman's domestic policies. "Had Enough?" was the winning slogan as Republicans recaptured Congress in 1946 for the first time since 1928. Many party leaders were ready to dump Truman in 1948, but after General Dwight D. Eisenhower rejected their invitation they lacked an alternative. Truman counterattacked, pushing J. Strom Thurmond and his Dixiecrats out, as well as taking advantage of the splits inside the Republican Party and was thus 1948 United States presidential election, reelected in a stunning surprise. However, all of Truman's Fair Deal proposals, such as universal health care, were defeated by the Southern Democrats in Congress. His seizure of the steel industry was Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, reversed by the Supreme Court.
Foreign policy
On the far-left, former Vice President Henry A. Wallace denounced Truman as a war-monger for his anti-Soviet programs, the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan and NATO. Wallace quit the party and ran for 1948 United States presidential election, president as an independent in 1948. He called for détente with the Soviet Union–United States relations, Soviet Union, but much of his campaign was controlled by communists who had been expelled from the main unions. Wallace fared poorly and helped turn the anti-communist vote toward Truman.
By cooperating with internationalist Republicans, Truman succeeded in defeating United States non-interventionism, isolationists on the right and supporters of softer lines on the Soviet Union on the left to establish a Cold War program that lasted until the dissolution of the Soviet Union, fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Wallace supporters and other Democrats who were farther left were pushed out of the party and the CIO in 1946–1948 by young anti-communists like Hubert Humphrey, Walter Reuther and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Cinema of the United States, Hollywood emerged in the 1940s as an important new base in the party and was led by movie-star politicians such as Ronald Reagan, who strongly supported Roosevelt and Truman at this time.
In foreign policy, Europe was safe, but troubles mounted in Asia as China fell to the communists in 1949. Truman entered the Korean War without formal Congressional approval. When the war turned to a stalemate and he fired General Douglas MacArthur in 1951, Republicans blasted his policies in Asia. A series of petty scandals among friends and buddies of Truman further tarnished his image, allowing the Republicans in 1952 to crusade against "Korea, Communism and Corruption". Truman dropped out of the Presidential race early in 1952, leaving no obvious successor. The convention nominated Adlai Stevenson II, Adlai Stevenson in 1952 United States presidential election, 1952 and 1956 United States presidential election, 1956, only to see him overwhelmed by two Eisenhower landslides.
Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–1961)
The landslide of General Dwight D. Eisenhower over Adlai Stevenson brought to the White House one of the most liked and most experienced leaders of the era. It also brought brief Republican control to both houses of Congress for one term. In Congress, the powerful team of Texans House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority leader Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
held the party together, often by compromising with Eisenhower. In 1958, the party made dramatic gains in the midterms and seemed to have a permanent lock on Congress, thanks largely to organized labor. Indeed, Democrats had majorities in the House every election from 1930 to 1992 (except 1946 and 1952).
Most Southern Congressmen were conservative Democrats and they usually worked with conservative Republicans. The result was a conservative coalition that blocked practically all liberal domestic legislation from 1937 to the 1970s, except for a brief spell 1964–1965, when Johnson neutralized its power. The counterbalance to the conservative coalition was the Democratic Study Group, which led the charge to liberalize the institutions of Congress and eventually pass a great deal of the Kennedy–Johnson program.
Although the Republicans gained brief control of Congress in 1952, the Democrats were back in control in 1954. House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
worked closely with President Eisenhower, so the partisanship was at the lowest intensity in the 20th century.
Presidency of John F. Kennedy (1961–1963)
The election of John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...
in 1960 United States presidential election, 1960 over then-Vice President Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
re-energized the party. His youth, vigor and intelligence caught the popular imagination. New programs like the Peace Corps harnessed idealism. In terms of legislation, Kennedy was stalemated by the conservative coalition.
Though Kennedy's term in office lasted only about a thousand days, he tried to hold back communist gains after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba and the construction of the Berlin Wall and sent 16,000 soldiers to Vietnam War, Vietnam to advise the hard-pressed South Vietnamese army. He challenged America in the Space Race to land an American man on the Moon by 1969. After the Cuban Missile Crisis he moved to de-escalate tensions with the Soviet Union.
Kennedy also pushed for civil rights and racial integration, one example being Kennedy assigning federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders in the South. His election did mark the coming of age of the Catholic component of the New Deal Coalition. After 1964, middle class Catholics started voting Republican in the same proportion as their Protestant neighbors. Except for the Chicago of Richard J. Daley, the last of the Democratic machines faded away. Assassination of John F. Kennedy, President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.
Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson (1963–1969)
Then-vice president Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
was sworn in as the new president. Johnson, heir to the New Deal ideals, broke the conservative coalition in Congress and passed a remarkable number of laws, known as the Great Society. Johnson succeeded in passing major civil rights laws that restarted racial integration in the South. At the same time, Johnson escalated the Vietnam War, leading to an inner conflict inside the Democratic Party that shattered the party in the 1968 United States presidential election, elections of 1968.
The Democratic Party platform of the 1960s was largely formed by the ideals of President Johnson's "Great Society" The New Deal coalition began to fracture as more Democratic leaders voiced support for civil rights, upsetting the party's traditional base of Southern Democrats and Catholics in Northern United States, Northern cities. Segregationist George Wallace capitalized on Catholic unrest in Democratic primaries in 1964 and 1972.
After Harry Truman's platform gave strong support to civil rights and anti-Racial segregation, segregation laws during the 1948 Democratic National Convention, many Southern Democratic delegates decided to split from the party and formed the "Dixiecrats", led by South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond (who as Senator would later join the Republican Party). Thurmond carried the Deep South in the election, but Truman carried the rest of the South. Meanwhile, in the North far left elements were leaving the Democrats to join Henry A. Wallace in his new Progressive Party. They possibly cost Truman New York, but he won reelection anyway.
On the other hand, African Americans, who had traditionally given strong support to the Republican Party since its inception as the "anti-slavery party", after switching the vast majority of their votes in the thirties due to the New Deal benefits, continued to shift to the Democratic Party, largely due to the advocacy of and support for civil rights by such prominent Democrats as Hubert Humphrey and Eleanor Roosevelt, and the switch of local machines to the Democrats as in Chicago. Although Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower carried half the South in 1952 United States presidential election, 1952 and 1956 United States presidential election, 1956 and Senator Barry Goldwater also carried five Southern states in 1964 United States presidential election, 1964, Democrat Jimmy Carter
James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he previously served as th ...
carried all of the South except Virginia and there was no long-term realignment until Ronald Reagan's sweeping victories in the South in 1980 United States presidential election, 1980 and 1984 United States presidential election, 1984.
The party's dramatic reversal on civil rights issues culminated when Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act was passed in both the House and Senate by Republican and Democratic majorities. Most Democrats and all Republicans from the South opposed the act. The year 1968 marked a major crisis for the party. In January, even though it was a military defeat for the Viet Cong, the Tet Offensive began to turn American public opinion against the Vietnam War. Senator Eugene McCarthy rallied intellectuals and Anti-war movement, anti-war students on college campuses and came within a few percentage points of defeating Johnson in the New Hampshire primary:Johnson was permanently weakened. Four days later, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the late President, entered the race.
Johnson stunned the nation on March 31 when he withdrew from the race and four weeks later his Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, entered the race, though he did not run in any primary. Kennedy and McCarthy traded primary victories while Humphrey gathered the support of labor unions and the big-city bosses. Kennedy won the critical California primary on June 4, but Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, he was assassinated that night. Even as Kennedy won California, Humphrey had already amassed 1,000 of the 1,312 delegate votes needed for the nomination, while Kennedy had about 700.
During the 1968 Democratic National Convention, while the Chicago Police Department and the Illinois Army National Guard violently confronted anti-war protesters on the streets and parks of Chicago, the Democrats nominated Humphrey. Meanwhile, Alabama's Democratic governor George C. Wallace launched a third-party campaign and at one point was running second to the Republican candidate Richard Nixon. Nixon barely won, with the Democrats retaining control of Congress. The party was now so deeply split that it would not again win a majority of the popular vote for president until 1976
Events January
* January 3 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force.
* January 5 – The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea.
* January 11 – The 1976 Phila ...
, when Jimmy Carter won the popular vote in 1976 with 50.1%.
The degree to which the Southern Democrats had abandoned the party became evident in the 1968 United States presidential election, 1968 presidential election when the electoral votes of every former Confederate States of America, Confederate state except Texas went to either Republican Richard Nixon or independent Wallace. Humphrey's electoral votes came mainly from the Northern states, marking a dramatic reversal from the 1948 United States presidential election, 1948 election 20 years earlier, when the losing Republican electoral votes were concentrated in the same states.
McGovern-Fraser Commission and George McGovern's presidential campaign (1969–1972)
Following the party's defeat in 1968, the McGovern-Fraser Commission proposed and the party adopted far-reaching changes in how national convention delegates were selected. More power over the presidential nominee selection accrued to the rank and file and presidential primaries became significantly more important. In 1972 United States presidential election, 1972 The Democrats moved left and nominated Senator George McGovern (SD) as the presidential candidate on a platform which advocated, among other things, immediate U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam (with his anti-war slogan "Come Home, America!") and a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans. McGovern's forces at the national convention ousted Mayor Richard J. Daley and the entire Chicago delegation, replacing them with insurgents led by Jesse Jackson. After it became known that McGovern's running mate Thomas Eagleton had received electric shock therapy, McGovern said he supported Eagleton "1000%", but he was soon forced to drop him and find a new running mate.
Numerous top names turned him down, but McGovern finally selected Sargent Shriver, a Kennedy in-law who was close to Mayor Daley. On July 14, 1972, McGovern appointed his campaign manager, Jean Westwood (politician), Jean Westwood, as the first woman chair of the Democratic National Committee. McGovern was defeated in a landslide by incumbent Richard Nixon, winning only Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.
Presidencies of Richard Nixon (1969–1974) and Gerald Ford (1974–1977)
The effects that George McGovern's defeat in the 1972 election had on the Democratic Party would be long lasting, but was interrupted by the Nixon scandal which temporarily halted the party's decline in ways that were entirely unexpected. The Watergate scandal soon destroyed the Nixon Presidency. With Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon soon after his resignation in 1974, the Democrats used the "corruption" issue to make major gains in the off-year elections. In 1976
Events January
* January 3 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force.
* January 5 – The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea.
* January 11 – The 1976 Phila ...
, mistrust of the administration, complicated by a combination of economic recession and inflation, sometimes called "stagflation", led to Ford's defeat by Jimmy Carter
James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he previously served as th ...
, a former Governor of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. Carter won as a little-known outsider by promising honesty in Washington, a message that played well to voters as he swept the South and won narrowly.
Presidency of Jimmy Carter (1977–1981)
Carter was a peanut farmer, a state senator and a one-term governor with minimal national experience. President Carter's major accomplishments consisted of the creation of a national energy policy and two new cabinet departments, the United States Department of Energy and the United States Department of Education. Carter also successfully deregulated the trucking, airline, rail, finance, communications and oil industries (thus reversing the New Deal approach to regulation of the economy), bolstered the social security system and appointed record numbers of women and minorities to significant posts. He also enacted strong legislation on environmental protection through the expansion of the National Park Service in Alaska, creating 103 million acres (417,000 km2) of park land.
In foreign affairs, Carter's accomplishments consisted of the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties, the establishment of China–United States relations, full diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China and the negotiation of the SALT II Treaty. In addition, he championed human rights throughout the world and used human rights as the center of his administration's foreign policy.[John Dumbrell, ''The Carter presidency: A re-evaluation'' (Manchester University Press, 1995)]
Carter's successes were overshadowed by failures. He was unable to implement a national health plan or to reform the tax system as he had promised. His popularity fell as inflation soared and unemployment remained stubbornly high, Abroad, the Iranian hostage crisis, Iranians held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, an embarrassment rehearsed practically every day on television. Worse, his military rescue of the hostages was a fiasco. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan later that year further disenchanted some Americans with Carter, and athletes were disappointed when he cancelled American participation in the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Liberal Senator Ted Kennedy attacked Carter as too conservative but failed to block Carter's renomination in 1980. In the 1980 United States presidential election, November 1980 election, Carter lost to Ronald Reagan. The Democrats lost 12 Senate seats and for the first time since 1954 the Republicans controlled the Senate, though the House remained in Democratic hands. Voting patterns and poll result indicate that the substantial Republican victory was the consequence of poor economic performance under Carter and the Democrats and did not represent an ideological shift to the right by the electorate. Iran released all the American hostages minutes after Reagan was inaugurated, ending a 444-day crisis.
Presidency of Ronald Reagan (1981–1989)
1980s: Battling Reaganism
Democrats who supported many conservative policies were instrumental in the election of Republican Ronald Reagan, President Ronald Reagan in 1980 United States presidential election, 1980. The "Reagan Democrats" were Democrats before the Reagan years and afterward, but they voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 United States presidential election, 1984 and for George H. W. Bush in 1988 United States presidential election, 1988, producing their landslide victories. Reagan Democrats were mostly white ethnics in the Northeast and Midwest who were attracted to Reagan's social conservatism on issues such as abortion and to his strong foreign policy. They did not continue to vote Republican in 1992
File:1992 Events Collage V1.png, From left, clockwise: 1992 Los Angeles riots, Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the Police brutality, police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment buildi ...
or 1996, so the term fell into disuse except as a reference to the 1980s. The term is not used to describe White Southerners
White Southerners, from the Southern United States, are considered an ethnic group by some historians, sociologists and journalists, although this categorization has proven controversial, and other academics have argued that Southern identity do ...
who became permanent Republicans in presidential elections.[Stanley B. Greenberg, ''Middle Class Dreams: Politics and Power of the New American Majority'' (1996).]
Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, analyzed white ethnic voters – largely unionized auto workers – in suburban Macomb County, Michigan, just north of Detroit. The county voted 63 percent for Kennedy in 1960 and 66 percent for Reagan in 1984. He concluded that Reagan Democrats no longer saw Democrats as champions of their middle class aspirations, but instead saw it as a party working primarily for the benefit of others, especially African Americans, advocacy groups of the political left and the very poor.
The failure to hold the Reagan Democrats and the white South led to the final collapse of the New Deal coalition. In 1984 United States presidential election, 1984, Reagan carried 49 states against former vice president and Minnesota senator Walter Mondale, a New Deal stalwart.
In response to these landslide defeats, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) was created in 1985. It worked to move the party rightwards to the ideological center in order to recover some of the fundraising that had been lost to the Republicans due to corporate donors supporting Reagan. The goal was to retain left-of-center voters as well as moderates and conservatives on social issues to become a Big tent, catch all party with widespread appeal to most opponents of the Republicans. Despite this, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, running not as a New Dealer but as an efficiency expert in public administration, lost by a landslide in 1988 United States presidential election, 1988 to Vice President George H. W. Bush.
South becomes Republican
For nearly a century after Reconstruction
Reconstruction may refer to:
Politics, history, and sociology
*Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company
*'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...
, the white South identified with the Democratic Party. The Democrats' lock on power was so strong the region was called the Solid South
The Solid South or Southern bloc was the electoral voting bloc of the states of the Southern United States for issues that were regarded as particularly important to the interests of Democrats in those states. The Southern bloc existed especial ...
, although the Republicans controlled parts of the Appalachian mountains and they competed for statewide office in the Border states (American Civil War), border states. Before 1948, Southern Democrats believed that their party, with its respect for states' rights and appreciation of traditional southern values, was the defender of the Southern way of life. Southern Democrats warned against aggressive designs on the part of Northern liberals and Republicans and civil rights activists whom they denounced as "outside agitators".
The adoption of the strong civil rights plank by the 1948 convention and the integration of the armed forces by President Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...
's Executive Order 9981, which provided for equal treatment and opportunity for African-American servicemen, drove a wedge between the Northern and Southern branches of the party. The party was sharply divided in the 1948 United States presidential election, following election, as Southern Democrats Strom Thurmond ran as "States' Rights Democratic Party".
With the presidency of John F. Kennedy the Democratic Party began to embrace the Civil Rights Movement and its lock on the South was irretrievably broken. Kennedy's narrow election victory and small working margin in Congress contributed to his cautious navigation of civil rights issues. He was reluctant to lose southern support for legislation on many fronts by pushing too hard on civil rights legislation. Upon signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson prophesied: "We have lost the South for a generation".
Modernization had brought factories, national businesses and larger, more cosmopolitan cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, Charlotte and Houston to the South, as well as millions of migrants from the North and more opportunities for higher education. Meanwhile, the cotton and tobacco economy of the traditional rural South faded away, as former farmers commuted to factory jobs. As the South became more like the rest of the nation, it could not stand apart in terms of racial segregation. Integration and the Civil Rights Movement caused enormous controversy in the white South, with many attacking it as a violation of states' rights. When segregation was outlawed by court order and by the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, a die-hard element resisted integration, led by Democratic governors Orval Faubus of Arkansas, Lester Maddox of Georgia and especially George Wallace of Alabama. These populist governors appealed to a less-educated, blue-collar electorate that on economic grounds favored the Democratic Party and opposed desegregation. After 1965, most Southerners accepted integration (with the exception of public schools).
Believing themselves betrayed by the Democratic Party, traditional White Southerners
White Southerners, from the Southern United States, are considered an ethnic group by some historians, sociologists and journalists, although this categorization has proven controversial, and other academics have argued that Southern identity do ...
joined the new middle-class and the Northern transplants in moving toward the Republican Party. Meanwhile, newly enfranchised black voters began supporting Democratic candidates at the 80–90 percent levels, producing Democratic leaders such as Julian Bond and John Lewis of Georgia and Barbara Jordan of Texas. Just as Martin Luther King Jr. had promised, integration had brought about a new day in Southern politics.
In addition to its white middle-class base, Republicans attracted strong majorities among Evangelicalism, evangelical Christians, who prior to the 1980s were largely apolitical. Exit polls in the 2004 United States presidential election, 2004 presidential election showed that George W. Bush led John Kerry by 70–30% among White Southerners, who were 71% of the voters. Kerry had a 90–9 lead among the 18% of Southern voters who were black. One-third of the Southern voters said they were white Evangelicals and they voted for Bush by 80–20.
Presidency of George H. W. Bush (1989–1993)
Opposition to Gulf War
The Democrats included a strong element that came of age in opposition to the Vietnam War and remained hostile toward American military interventions. On August 1, 1990, Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein, Invasion of Kuwait, invaded Kuwait. President Bush formed an international coalition and secured United Nations approval to expel Iraq. Congress on January 12, 1991, authorized by a narrow margin the use of military force against Iraq, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed. The vote in the House was 250–183 and in the Senate 52–47. In the Senate, 42 Republicans and 10 Democrats voted yes to war, while 45 Democrats and two Republicans voted no. In the House, 164 Republicans and 86 Democrats voted yes and 179 Democrats, three Republicans and one Independent voted no.
Presidency of Bill Clinton (1993–2001)
In the 1990s, the Democratic Party revived itself, in part by moving to the right on economic policy. In 1992
File:1992 Events Collage V1.png, From left, clockwise: 1992 Los Angeles riots, Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the Police brutality, police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment buildi ...
, for the first time in 12 years the United States had a Democrat in the White House. During President Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
's term, the Congress balanced the federal budget for the first time since the Kennedy Presidency and presided over a robust American economy that saw incomes grow across the board. The Democratic Leadership Council advocated a Political realignment, realignment and Triangulation (politics), triangulation, moving to the center on economic issues, under the re-branded "New Democrats, New Democrat" label to adapt to the post-Reagan era.
In 1994, the economy had the lowest combination of unemployment and inflation in 25 years. President Clinton also signed into law several gun control bills, including the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, Brady Bill, which imposed a five-day waiting period on handgun purchases; and he also signed into legislation a Federal Assault Weapons Ban, ban on many types of semi-automatic firearms (which expired in 2004). His Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, Family and Medical Leave Act, covering some 40 million Americans, offered workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-guaranteed leave for childbirth or a personal or family illness. He deployed the U.S. military to Haiti to reinstate deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, took a strong hand in Israeli–Palestinian peace process, Palestinian–Israeli peace negotiations, brokered a historic cease-fire in Northern Ireland and negotiated the Dayton Agreement, Dayton accords. In 1996, Clinton became the first Democratic president to be re-elected since Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
.
However, the Democrats lost their majority in both Houses of Congress in 1994. Clinton vetoed two Republican-backed welfare reform bills before signing the third, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. The tort reform Private Securities Litigation Reform Act passed over his veto. Labor unions, which had been steadily losing membership since the 1960s, found they had also lost political clout inside the Democratic Party and Clinton enacted the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico over unions' strong objections. In 1998, the Republican-led House of Representatives Impeachment of Bill Clinton, impeached Clinton on two charges, though he was subsequently Impeachment trial of Bill Clinton, acquitted by the United States Senate in 1999. Under Clinton's leadership, the United States participated in NATO's Operation Allied Force against Yugoslavia that year.
Free markets
In the 1990s the Clinton Administration continued the free market, or neoliberal, reforms which began under the Reagan Administration. Historian Gary Gerstle states that Reagan was the ideological architect of the neoliberal order which was formulated in the 1970s and 1980s, but it was Clinton who was its key facilitator, and as such this order achieved dominance following the end of the Cold War. However, economist Sebastian Mallaby argues that the party increasingly adopted pro-business, pro free market principles after 1976:
:Free-market ideas were embraced by Democrats almost as much as by Republicans. Jimmy Carter initiated the big push toward deregulation, generally with the support of his party in Congress. Bill Clinton presided over the growth of the loosely supervised shadow financial system and the repeal of Depression-era restrictions on commercial banks.
Historian Walter Scheidel also posits that both parties shifted to free markets in the 1970s:
:In the United States, both of the dominant parties have shifted toward free-market capitalism. Even though analysis of roll call votes show that since the 1970s, Republicans have drifted farther to the right than Democrats have moved to the left, the latter were instrumental in implementing financial deregulation in the 1990s and focused increasingly on cultural issues such as gender, race, and sexual identity rather than traditional social welfare policies.
Both Carter and Clinton quietly abandoned the New Deal style of aggressive support for welfare for the poor and support for the working-class and labor unions. They downplayed traditional Democratic hostility toward business, and aggressive regulation of the economy. Carter and Clinton agreed on a greater reliance on the market economy—As conservatives have long demanded. They gave control of inflation priority over reduction in unemployment. They both sought balanced budgets—and Clinton actually succeeded in generating a federal budget surplus. They both used monetary policy more than fiscal/spending policy to micromanage the economy, and they accepted the conservative emphasis on supply-side programs to encourage private investment, and the expectation it would produce long-term economic growth.
Election of 2000
During the 2000 United States presidential election, 2000 presidential election, the Democrats chose Vice President Al Gore
Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic Part ...
to be the party's candidate for the presidency. Gore ran against George W. Bush, the Republican candidate and son of former President George H. W. Bush. The issues Gore championed include national debt, debt reduction, tax cuts, foreign policy, public education, global warming, judicial appointments and Affirmative action in the United States, affirmative action. Nevertheless, Gore's affiliation with Clinton and the DLC caused critics to assert that Bush and Gore were too similar, especially on free trade, reductions in social welfare and the death penalty. Green Party (United States), Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader in particular was very vocal in his criticisms.
Gore won a popular plurality of over 540,000 votes over Bush, but lost in the United States Electoral College, Electoral College by four votes. Many Democrats blamed Nader's third-party spoiler effect, spoiler role for Gore's defeat. They pointed to the states of New Hampshire (4 electoral votes) and Florida (25 electoral votes), where Nader's total votes exceeded Bush's margin of victory. In Florida, Nader received 97,000 votes and Bush defeated Gore by a mere 537. Controversy plagued the election and Gore largely dropped from elective politics.
Despite Gore's close defeat, the Democrats gained five seats in the Senate (including the election of Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
in New York) to turn a 55–45 Republican edge into a 50–50 split (with a Republican vice president breaking a tie). However, when Republican Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont decided in 2001 to become an independent and vote with the Democratic caucus, the majority status shifted along with the seat, including control of the floor (by the Majority Leader) and control of all committee chairmanships. However, the Republicans regained their Senate majority with gains in 2002 and 2004, leaving the Democrats with only 44 seats, the fewest since the 1920s.
Presidency of George W. Bush (2001–2009)
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, September 11, 2001 attacks, the nation's focus was changed to issues of national security. All but one Democrat (Representative Barbara Lee) voted with their Republican counterparts to authorize President Bush's War in Afghanistan (2001–2021), 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. House leader Richard Gephardt and Senate leader Thomas Daschle pushed Democrats to vote for the Patriot Act, USA PATRIOT Act and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, invasion of Iraq. The Democrats were split over invading Iraq in 2003 and increasingly expressed concerns about both the justification and progress of the War on Terrorism as well as the domestic effects from the Patriot Act.
In the wake of the financial fraud scandal of the Enron Corporation and other corporations, Congressional Democrats pushed for a legal overhaul of business accounting with the intention of preventing further Accounting scandals, accounting fraud. This led to the bipartisan Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. With job losses and bankruptcies across regions and industries increasing in 2001 and 2002, the Democrats generally campaigned on the issue of economic recovery. That did not work for them in 2002, as the Democrats lost a few seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. They lost three seats in the Senate (Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia as Max Cleland was unseated, Minnesota as Paul Wellstone died and Walter Mondale, his succeeding Democratic candidate lost the election and Missouri as Jean Carnahan was unseated). While Democrats gained governorships in New Mexico (where Bill Richardson was elected), Arizona (Janet Napolitano), Michigan (Jennifer Granholm) and Wyoming (Dave Freudenthal). Other Democrats lost governorships in South Carolina (Jim Hodges), Alabama (Don Siegelman) and—for the first time in more than a century—Georgia (Roy Barnes). The election led to another round of soul searching about the party's narrowing base. Democrats had further losses in 2003, when a voter recall unseated the unpopular Democratic governor of California Gray Davis and replaced him with Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. By the end of 2003, the four most populous states had Republican governors: California, Texas, New York and Florida.
Election of 2004
The 2004 campaign started as early as December 2002, when Gore announced he would not run again in the 2004 United States presidential election, 2004 election. Howard Dean, a former Governor of Vermont and opponent of the Iraq War, was the front-runner at first. An unusual gaffe known as the "Dean Scream" and subsequent negative media coverage doomed his candidacy. The nomination went to Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, a centrist with heavy support from the Democratic Leadership Council. Democrats pulled together in attacking Bush's war in Iraq. Kerry lost by a 3 million vote margin out of 120 million votes and lost four Senate seats. The Democrats had only 44 Senators, their fewest since the 1920s. A bright spot came with the win by Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
in Illinois.
After the 2004 election, prominent Democrats began to rethink the party's direction. Some Democrats proposed moving towards the right to regain seats in the House and Senate and possibly win the Presidency in 2008, while others demanded that the party move more to the left and become a stronger opposition party. One topic of deep debate was the party's policies surrounding reproductive rights. In ''What's the Matter with Kansas? (book), What's the Matter with Kansas?,'' commentator Thomas Frank wrote that the Democrats needed to return to campaigning on economic populism.
Howard Dean and the fifty-state strategy (2005–2007)
These debates were reflected in the 2005 campaign for Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, which Howard Dean won over the objections of many party insiders. Dean sought to move the Democratic strategy away from the establishment and bolster support for the party's state organizations, even in Red states and blue states, red states (the fifty-state strategy).
When the 109th Congress convened, Harry Reid, the new Senate Minority Leader, tried to convince the Democratic Senators to vote more as a bloc on important issues and he forced the Republicans to abandon their push for Social Security debate in the United States, privatization of Social Security.
With scandals involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff as well as Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay, Mark Foley scandal, Mark Foley and Bob Taft, the Democrats used the slogan "2006 Republican party scandals, Culture of corruption" against the Republicans during the 2006 campaign. Negative public opinion on the Iraq War, widespread dissatisfaction over the ballooning federal deficit and the inept handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster dragged down President Bush's job approval ratings.
As a result of gains in the United States general elections, 2006, 2006 midterm elections, the Democratic Party gained control of both houses of Congress. The Democrats also went from controlling a minority of governorships to a majority. There were also gains in various state legislatures, giving the Democrats control of a plurality of them nationwide. No Democratic incumbent was defeated and no Democratic-held open seat was lost in a major race. Both conservative and populist candidates did well. Exit polling suggested that corruption was a key issue for many voters. Nancy Pelosi was elected as the first female House speaker and immediately pushed for passage of the 100-Hour Plan of eight new liberal programs.
2008 presidential election
The Democratic Party (United States) presidential primaries, 2008, 2008 Democratic presidential primaries left two candidates in close competition: Illinois Senator Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
and New York Senator Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
. Both had won more support within a major American political party than any previous African American or female candidate. Before official ratification at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Obama emerged as the party's presumptive nominee. With President George W. Bush of the Republican Party ineligible for a third term and the Vice President Dick Cheney not pursuing his party's nomination, Senator John McCain of Arizona more quickly emerged as the GOP nominee.
Throughout most of the 2008 United States presidential election, 2008 presidential election, polls showed a close race between Obama and John McCain. However, Obama maintained a small but widening lead over McCain in the wake of the Financial crisis of 2007–2008, liquidity crisis of September 2008.
On November 4, Obama defeated McCain by a significant margin in the Electoral College and the party also made further gains in the Senate and House, adding to its 2006 gains.
Presidency of Barack Obama (2009–2017)
On January 20, 2009, Obama was First inauguration of Barack Obama, inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States in a ceremony attended by nearly 2 million people, the largest congregation of spectators ever to witness the inauguration of a new president. That same day in Washington, D.C., Republican House of Representative leaders met in an "invitation only" meeting for four hours to discuss the future of the Republican Party under the Obama administration.
One of the first acts by the Obama administration after assuming control was an order signed by White House Chief of Staff, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel that suspended all pending federal regulations proposed by outgoing President George W. Bush so that they could be reviewed. This was comparable to prior moves by the Bush administration upon assuming control from Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
, who in his final 20 days in office issued 12 Executive order (United States), executive orders. In his first week, Obama also established a policy of producing a weekly Saturday morning video address available on Whitehouse.gov and YouTube, much like those released during his transition period. The policy is likened to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's fireside chats and George W. Bush's weekly radio addresses.
President Obama signed into law the following significant legislation during his first 100 days in the White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...
: Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, Children's Health Insurance Reauthorization Act of 2009 and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Also during his first 100 days, the Obama administration reversed the following significant George W. Bush administration policies: supporting the UN declaration on sexual orientation and gender identity, relaxing enforcement of cannabis laws and lifting the 7½-year ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Obama also issued Executive Order 13492, ordering the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, although it remained open throughout his presidency. He also lifted some travel and money restrictions to Cuba, ended the Mexico City Policy and signed an order requiring the Army Field Manual to be used as guide for terror interrogations, which banned tortures such as waterboarding.
Obama also announced stricter guidelines regarding lobbying in the United States, lobbyists in an effort to raise the ethical standards of the White House. The new policy bans aides from attempting to influence the administration for at least two years if they leave his staff. It also bans aides on staff from working on matters they have previously lobbied on, or to approach agencies that they targeted while on staff. Their ban also included a gift-giving ban. However, one day later he nominated William J. Lynn III, a lobbyist for defense contractor Raytheon, for the position of Deputy Secretary of Defense. Obama later nominated William Corr, an anti-tobacco lobbyist, for Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services.
During the beginning of Obama Presidency emerged the Tea Party movement, a conservative movement that began to heavily influence the Republican Party within the United States, shifting the GOP further right-wing and partisan in their ideology. On February 18, 2009, Obama announced that the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan would be bolstered by 17,000 new troops by summer. The announcement followed the recommendation of several experts including Defense Secretary Robert Gates that additional troops be deployed to the strife-torn South Asian country. On February 27, 2009, Obama addressed United States Marine Corps, Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina and outlined an exit strategy for the Iraq War. Obama promised to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq by August 31, 2010, and a "transitional force" of up to 50,000 counterterrorism, advisory, training and support personnel by the end of 2011.
Obama signed two presidential memorandum, presidential memoranda concerning energy independence, ordering the United States Department of Transportation, Department of Transportation to establish higher fuel efficiency standards before 2011 models are released and allowing states to raise their emissions standards above the national standard. Due to the Late 2000s recession, economic crisis, the President enacted a pay freeze for senior White House staff making more than $100,000 per year. The action affected approximately 120 staffers and added up to about a $443,000 savings for the United States government. On March 10, 2009, in a meeting with the New Democrat Coalition, Obama told them that he was a "New Democrat", "pro-growth Democrat", "supports free and fair trade" and "very concerned about a return to protectionism".["Obama: 'I am a New Democrat'"](_blank)
On May 26, 2009, President Obama Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination, nominated Sonia Sotomayor for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Sotomayor was confirmed by the Senate becoming the highest ranking government official of Puerto Rican heritage ever. On July 1, 2009, President Obama signed into law the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010. On July 7, 2009, Al Franken was sworn into the Senate, thus Senate Democrats obtained the 60 vote threshold to overcome the Senate filibuster.
On October 28, 2009, Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, which included in it the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which expanded federal hate crime laws to include sexual orientation, gender identity and disability. On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5–4 decision in the case of ''Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission'' that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting Independent expenditure, independent political expenditures by a nonprofit corporation. On February 4, 2010, Republican Scott Brown (politician), Scott Brown of Massachusetts was sworn into the Senate, thus ending Senate Democrats 60 vote threshold to overcome a filibuster.
On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed into law his signature legislation of his presidency, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, together with the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, which represents the most significant regulatory overhaul of the Health care in the United States, U.S. healthcare system since the passage of Medicare (United States), Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. On May 10, 2010, President Obama Elena Kagan Supreme Court nomination, nominated Elena Kagan for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. On July 21, 2010, President Obama signed into law the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and Elena Kagan was confirmed by the Senate on August 5, 2010, by a 63–37 vote. Kagan was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts on August 7, 2010.
On 19 August 2010, the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division was the last American combat brigade to withdraw from Iraq. In a speech at the Oval Office on August 31, 2010, Obama declared: "[T]he American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country". About 50,000 American troops remained in the country in an advisory capacity as part of "Iraq War#2010: US drawdown and Operation New Dawn, Operation New Dawn", which ran until the end of 2011. New Dawn was the final designated U.S. campaign of the war. The U.S. military continued to train and advise the Iraqi Forces, as well as participate in combat alongside them.
On November 2, 2010, during United States elections, 2010, the 2010 midterm elections, the Democratic Party had a net loss of six seats in the Senate and 63 seats in the House. Control of the House of Representatives switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. The Democrats lost a net of six state governorships and a net 680 seats in state legislatures. The Democrats lost control of seven state Senate legislatures and 13 state Houses. This was the worst performance of the Democratic Party in a national election since the United States elections, 1946, 1946 elections. The Blue Dog Coalition numbers in the House were reduced from 54 members in 2008 to 26 members in 2011 and were half of the Democratic defeats during the election. This was the first United States national election in which Super PACs were used by Democrats and Republicans. Many commentators contribute the electoral success of the Republican Party in 2010 to the conservative Super PACs' campaign spending, Tea Party movement, backlash against President Obama, failure to mobilize the Obama coalition to get out and vote and the failure of President Obama to enact many of his progressive and liberal campaign promises.
On December 1, 2010, Obama announced at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point that the U.S. would send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Anti-war organizations in the U.S. responded quickly and cities throughout the U.S. saw protests on 2 December. Many protesters compared the decision to deploy more troops in Afghanistan to the expansion of the Vietnam War under the Lyndon B. Johnson#Vietnam War, Johnson administration.
During the lame-duck session of the 111th United States Congress, President Obama signed into law the following significant legislation: Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010, Shark Conservation Act of 2010 and the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, FDA Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010. On December 18, 2010, the Arab Spring began. On 22 December 2010, the U.S. Senate gave its advice and consent to ratification of New START by a vote of 71 to 26 on the resolution of ratification. The 111th United States Congress has been considered one of the most productive Congresses in history in terms of legislation passed since the 89th United States Congress, 89th Congress, during Lyndon B. Johnson, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.
On February 23, 2011, United States Attorney General Eric Holder announced the United States federal government would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act within federal courts. In response to the First Libyan Civil War, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
joined with United States Ambassador to the United Nations, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and Office of Multilateral and Human Rights Director Samantha Power led the hawkish diplomatic team within the Obama administration that helped convince President Obama in favor airstrikes against Libyan government. On March 19, 2011, the United States began 2011 military intervention in Libya, military intervention in Libya.
US domestic reactions to the 2011 military intervention in Libya, United States domestic reaction to the 2011 military intervention in Libya were mixed in the Democratic Party. Opponents to the 2011 military intervention in Libya within the Democratic Party include Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Sen. Jim Webb, Rep. Raul Grijalva, Rep. Mike Honda, Rep. Lynn Woolsey and Rep. Barbara Lee. The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), an organization of Progressivism in the United States, progressive Democrats, said that the United States should conclude its campaign against Libyan air defenses as soon as possible. Support for the 2011 military intervention in Libya within the Democratic Party include President Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
, Sen. Carl Levin, Sen. Dick Durbin, Sen. Jack Reed (Rhode Island politician), Jack Reed, Sen. John Kerry, Party leaders of the United States House of Representatives, Minority Leader of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Legal Adviser of the Department of State Harold Hongju Koh and Ed Schultz.
On April 5, 2011, Vice President Joe Biden announced that Debbie Wasserman Schultz was President Obama's choice to succeed Tim Kaine as the 52nd Chair of the Democratic National Committee. On May 26, 2011, President Obama signed the Patriot Act, PATRIOT Sunsets Extension Act of 2011, which was strongly criticized by some in the Democratic Party as violation of civil liberties and a continuation of the Presidency of George W. Bush, George W. Bush administration. House Democrats largely opposed the PATRIOT Sunsets Extension Act of 2011, while Senate Democrats were slightly in favor of it.
On October 21, 2011, President Obama signed into law three of the following United States free trade agreements: Free trade agreement between the United States of America and the Republic of Korea, Panama–United States Trade Promotion Agreement and the United States–Colombia Free Trade Agreement. In the House of Representatives, Democratic Representatives largely opposed these agreements, while Senate Democrats were split on the agreements. This was a continuation of President Bill Clinton's policy of support for free trade agreements.
When asked by David Gregory (journalist), David Gregory about his views on same-sex marriage on ''Meet the Press'' on May 5, 2012, Biden stated he supported same-sex marriage. On May 9, 2012, a day after North Carolina voters approved North Carolina Amendment 1, Amendment 1, President Obama became the first sitting United States president to come out in favor of same-sex marriage.
The 2012 Democratic Party platform for Obama's reelection ran over 26,000 words and included his position on numerous national issues. On security issues, it pledges "unshakable commitment to Israel's security", says the party will try to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. It calls for a strong military, but argues that in the current fiscal environment, tough budgetary decisions must include defense spending. On controversial social issues it supports abortion rights, same-sex marriage and says the party is "strongly committed to enacting comprehensive immigration reform". On the economic side the platform calls for extending the tax cuts for families earning under $250,000 and promises not to raise their taxes. It praises the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare", but does not use that term). It "adamantly oppose any efforts to privatize Medicare (United States), Medicare". On the rules of politics it attacks the recent Supreme Court decision ''Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission'' that allows much greater political spending. It demands "immediate action to curb the influence of lobbyists and special interests on our political institutions".
Intense budget negotiations in the divided 112th Congress, wherein Democrats resolved to fight Republican demands for decreased spending and no tax hikes, threatened to government shutdown, shut down the government in April 2011 and later spurred fears that the United States would United States debt-ceiling crisis of 2011, default on its debt. Continuing tight budgets were felt at the state level, where public-sector trade union, public-sector unions, a key Democratic constituency, battled Republican efforts to limit their collective bargaining powers in order to save money and reduce union power. This led to 2011 United States public employee protests, sustained protests by public-sector employees and walkouts by sympathetic Democratic legislators in states like 2011 Wisconsin protests, Wisconsin and Ohio. The 2011 "Occupy movement". a campaign on the left for more accountable economic leadership, failed to have the impact on Democratic Party leadership and policy that the Tea Party movement had on the Republicans. Its leadership proved ineffective and the Occupy movement fizzled out. However, echoes could be found in the presidential nomination campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders in 2015–2016.
Conservatives criticized the president for "passive" responses to crises such as the 2009 Iranian protests and the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Additionally, liberal and Democratic activists objected to Obama's decisions to send reinforcements to War in Afghanistan (2001–present), Afghanistan, resume military trials of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay detention camp and to help enforce a 2011 military intervention in Libya, no-fly zone over Libya during that country's 2011 Libyan civil war, civil war. However, the demands of anti-war advocates were heeded when Obama followed through on a campaign promise to Withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq (2007–2011), withdraw combat troops from Iraq.
The 2012 United States presidential election, 2012 election was characterized by very high spending, especially on negative television ads in about ten critical states. Despite a weak economic recovery and high unemployment, the Obama campaign successfully mobilized its coalition of youth, blacks, Hispanics and women. The campaign carried all the same states as in 2008 except two, Indiana and North Carolina. The election continued the pattern whereby Democrats won more votes in all presidential elections after 1988, except for 2004. Obama and the Democrats lost control of the Senate in the United States elections, 2014, 2014 midterm elections, losing nine seats in that body and 13 in the GOP House.
2016 United States elections
2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries
National polling from 2013 to the summer of 2015 showed Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
with an overwhelming lead over all of her potential primary opponents. Her main challenger was Independent politician#Congress – House of Representatives and Senate, independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, whose rallies grew larger and larger as he attracted strong support among Democrats under age 40. The sharp divide between the two candidates was cast as a conflict between the political establishment and an outsider, with Clinton considered the establishment candidate and Sanders the outsider. Clinton received the endorsements from an overwhelming majority of office holders. Clinton's core base voters during the primaries were women, African Americans, Latino Americans, sexual minorities, moderates and older voters, while Sanders' core base included younger voters under the age of 40 and progressives.
= Ideological differences
=
The ideological differences between the two candidates represented the ideological divide within the Democratic Party as a whole. Clinton aligned herself with the New Democrat wing of the Democratic Party, which had been its dominant ideological faction during the presidencies of Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
, George W. Bush and Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
. Bernie Sanders, who remained an independent in the Senate throughout the primaries (despite running for president as a Democrat), is a self-described democratic socialist, and represented the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which includes politicians such as Ed Markey, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Elizabeth Warren.
During the primaries, Sanders attacked Clinton for her ties to Wall Street and her previous support of the Defense of Marriage Act, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Keystone Pipeline, the 2011 military intervention in Libya and the Iraq War, while Clinton attacked Sanders for voting against the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act and the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007. Clinton generally moved to the left as the campaign progressed and adopted variations of some of Sanders' themes, such as opinions regarding trade and college tuition. Although she was generally favored to win in polls, United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote, and won the popular vote by two percent, she lost the 2016 United States presidential election, general election to Donald Trump in the United States Electoral College, Electoral College votes by state.
Presidency of Donald Trump (2017–2021)
Initiatives
On January 12, 2017, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a 527 organization that focuses on Redistricting in the United States, redistricting reform and is affiliated with the Democratic Party, was created. The chair, president and vice president of the umbrella organization is the 82nd United States Attorney General, Attorney General Eric Holder, Elizabeth Pearson and Alixandria "Ali" Lapp respectively. President Obama has said he would be involved with the committee.
On January 17, 2017, Third Way (United States), Third Way, a public policy think tank, launched New Blue, a $20 million campaign to study Democratic shortcomings in the 2016 elections and offer a new economic agenda to help Democrats reconnect with the voters who have abandoned the party. The money will be spent to conduct extensive research, reporting and polling in Rust Belt states that once formed a Blue wall (politics), Blue Wall, but which voted for President Donald Trump in 2016. Many progressives have criticized this as a desperate measure for the so-called establishment wing of the party to retain leadership.
On May 15, 2017, Onward Together, a 501(c)(4) organization, political action organization was launched by Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
to fundraise for liberal organizations, such as Swing Left, Indivisible movement, Indivisible, Color of Change, Emerge America, and Run for Something.
Response to the Donald Trump Administration
Protests
At the inauguration of Donald Trump, 67 Democratic members of the United States House of Representatives boycotted the inauguration. This was the largest boycott by members of the United States Congress since the second inauguration of Richard Nixon, where it was estimated that between 80 and 200 Democratic members of United States Congress boycotted.
The 2017 Women's March was a large-scale nationwide protest in favor of women's rights and against the policies of the Trump administration. The march found much support within the Democratic Party including participation from sitting Senators Cory Booker, Booker, Tammy Duckworth, Duckworth, Kamala Harris, Harris, Bernie Sanders, Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren, Warren.
The George Floyd protests, George Floyd Protests and other Black Lives Matter, protests against police brutality received backlash from the Trump administration but found support from many Democratic congresspeople.
Impeachments of Donald Trump
In 2019, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives initiated Impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump, impeachment inquiries into President Trump's Trump–Ukraine scandal, alleged coercion against Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by withholding military funds in order to gain politically sensitive material against Joe Biden. The House of Representatives First impeachment of Donald Trump, voted to impeach Trump, with most Democrats voting for both articles. Trump First impeachment trial of Donald Trump, was acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate, with all Democratic Senators voting guilty.
In 2021, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives Second impeachment of Donald Trump, voted again to impeach Trump over his involvement in January 6 United States Capitol attack, the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol, with all Democrats voting to impeach. Trump Second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, was again acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate, will all Democratic Senators voting guilty.
115th United States Congress
As of September 13, 2017, 16 Senate Democrats cosponsored the Medicare for All Act, Medicare for All Act of 2017. As of September 26, 2017, 120 House Democrats cosponsored the Medicare for All Act, Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act. This was all for naught, as the Republican majority made sure that the Democratic minority remained impotent.
116th United States Congress
In the 2018 United States elections, 2018 midterm elections, Democrats gained a net 41 seats in the House of Representatives, retaking the majority in the chamber. A record 102 women were elected to the House of Representatives, of which 90 were members of the Democratic Party. Nancy Pelosi was 2019 Speaker of the United States House of Representatives election, reelected Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States, speaker of the House and Jim Clyburn was elected as the Party leaders of the United States House of Representatives#Whips, majority whip. The House Democrats promised to focus on healthcare, voting rights and oversight of investigations into the myriad of alleged scandals of the Presidency of Donald Trump, Trump administration. In addition, there is growing support for a Green New Deal: A set of laws, taxes, and projects that seek to drastically reduce carbon emissions and provide Americans with a plethora of jobs in the process.
2020 United States elections
The 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, 2020 primaries saw an unprecedentedly competitive field of 29 major candidates vie for the party's nomination, with the contest ultimately narrowing down to a binary race between Senator Sanders and former Vice President Biden after Super Tuesday, a similar dynamic to the entirety of the 2016 primary. However, the two-person period of this contest was never extended as long as in 2016, as the consolidation of the moderates in the party, a series of wins in key swing states by Biden, and the COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19 global pandemic, allowed Biden to finally defeat his last rival, Senator Sanders. Representing the more centrist side of the party, former Vice President Biden positioned himself as an elder statesman ready to lead in moments of crisis that demanded strong executive experience. Biden promised electability and the defeat of Trump.
In terms of voter support, Biden dominated with African Americans, suburban whites, voters over the age of 50, and newly minted conservative Democrats who had joined the party after leaving the GOP in response to Presidency of Donald Trump, Trump and the stigma attached to his policies. Senator Sanders led a similarly diverse coalition of Latinos, staunch progressives, and voters of all races under the age of 50. The gender balance between the Biden and Sanders campaigns was relatively the same, with equal parts women and men supporting each, a key difference between 2016 and 2020. Other major candidates were Elizabeth Warren, Michael Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar. Throughout all of the general election campaign, Biden was shown to have a significant advantage in public opinion polling.
On November 3, 2020, Joe Biden defeated incumbent President Donald Trump by an Electoral College result of 306–232. His victory is the first time a challenger beat a president running for re-election since George H. W. Bush's loss in 1992. Biden's running mate, Kamala Harris, would be the first female and person of African and South Asian descent to become vice president in history. In Congress, Democrats retained their majority in the House and claimed the majority in the US Senate with a 50–50 split. This brought the House, Senate, and Presidency under simultaneous Democratic control for the first time since 2011.
Presidency of Joe Biden (2021–present)
On January 20, 2021, Biden was Inauguration of Joe Biden, inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States. He came into office with a full government trifecta, holding the House and Senate, with Democrats winning both 2020–21 United States Senate election in Georgia, regular and 2020–21 United States Senate special election in Georgia, special Senate elections in Georgia. The United States Electoral College, Electoral College confirmation of Biden's election was disrupted by unrest including the January 6 United States Capitol attack and attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.
President Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 during his first 100 days in the White House, an economic stimulus bill to address the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden signed the $1.2 trillion bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which incorporated aspects of his Build Back Better Plan#American Jobs Plan, American Jobs Plan. He was unable to secure an agreement to pass a sweeping social safety net expansion known as the Build Back Better Act, but negotiations led to the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 which contains expansive climate investments, tax enforcement reform, and prescription drug pricing reform. Key negotiators were Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, along with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. He confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson Supreme Court nomination, Kentanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, and rejoined the Paris Agreement. In foreign policy, he completed the Withdrawal of United States troops from Afghanistan (2020–2021), withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, and supported the United States and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainians against Russia with arms and aid. He signed the CHIPS and Science Act to bolster US semiconductors against China, and the Honoring our PACT Act of 2022 expanding veterans' healthcare benefits for toxic exposures.
See also
*Democratic National Convention
* List of Democratic National Conventions
* Political positions of the Democratic Party
; United States politics:
* American election campaigns in the 19th century
* History of the Republican Party (United States)
Notes
Further reading
Secondary sources
* ''American National Biography'' (20 volumes, 1999) covers all politicians no longer alive; online and paper copies at many academic libraries. Older ''Dictionary of American Biography''.
* Dinkin, Robert J. ''Voting and Vote-Getting in American History'' (2016), expanded edition of Dinkin, ''Campaigning in America: A History of Election Practices.'' (Greenwood 1989)
* Kazin, Michael. ''What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party'' (2022
excerpt
* Kurian, George Thomas ed. ''The Encyclopedia of the Democratic Party'' (4 vol. 2002
online
* Robert V. Remini, Remini, Robert V. ''The House: The History of the House of Representatives'' (2006), extensive coverage of the party
online
* Sabato, Larry, ed. ''Encyclopedia of American political parties and elections'' (2006
online
* Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr., Schlesinger Jr., Arthur Meier ed. ''History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–2000'' (various multivolume editions, latest is 2001). For each election includes history and selection of primary documents. Essays on some elections are reprinted in Schlesinger, ''The Coming to Power: Critical presidential elections in American history'' (1972)
* Schlesinger, Arthur Meier, Jr. ed. ''History of U.S. Political Parties'' (1973) multivolume
* Shafer, Byron E. and Anthony J. Badger, eds. ''Contesting Democracy: Substance and Structure in American Political History, 1775–2000'' (2001), most recent collection of new essays by specialists on each time period:
** Includes: "State Development in the Early Republic: 1775–1840" by Ronald P. Formisano; "The Nationalization and Racialization of American Politics: 1790–1840" by David Waldstreicher; "'To One or Another of These Parties Every Man Belongs;": 1820–1865 by Joel H. Silbey; "Change and Continuity in the Party Period: 1835–1885" by Michael F. Holt; "The Transformation of American Politics: 1865–1910" by Peter H. Argersinger; "Democracy, Republicanism, and Efficiency: 1885–1930" by Richard Jensen; "The Limits of Federal Power and Social Policy: 1910–1955" by Anthony J. Badger; "The Rise of Rights and Rights Consciousness: 1930–1980" by James T. Patterson, Brown University; and "Economic Growth, Issue Evolution, and Divided Government: 1955–2000" by Byron E. Shafer
Before 1932
* Allen, Oliver E. ''The Tiger: The Rise and Fall of Tammany Hall'' (1993)
* Baker, Jean. ''Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century'' (1983
online
* Cole, Donald B. ''Martin Van Buren and the American Political System'' (1984
online
* Bass, Herbert J. ''"I Am a Democrat": The Political Career of David B. Hill'' 1961.
* Craig, Douglas B. ''After Wilson: The Struggle for the Democratic Party, 1920–1934'' (1992)
* Earle, Jonathan H. ''Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824–1854'' (2004)
* Eyal, Yonatan. ''The Young America Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, 1828–1861'' (2007) 252 pp.
* Flick, Alexander C. ''Samuel Jones Tilden: A Study in Political Sagacity'' 1939.
* Formisano, Ronald P. ''The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s–1840s'' (1983)
* Gammon, Samuel Rhea. ''The Presidential Campaign of 1832'' (1922
online
* Hammond, Bray. ''Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War'' (1960), Pulitzer prize. Pro-Bank
* Hettle, Wallace, ''The Peculiar Democracy: Southern Democrats in Peace and Civil War'' (UP of Georgia, 2001)., 240pp.
* Howe, Daniel Walker. ''What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848'' (2009); Pulitzer Prize; 026pp
* Jensen, Richard. ''Grass Roots Politics: Parties, Issues, and Voters, 1854–1983'' (1983)
* Jensen, Richard. ''The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888–1896'' (1971)
* Keller, Morton. ''Affairs of State: Public Life in Late Nineteenth Century America'' (1977
online
* Kleppner, Paul et al. ''The Evolution of American Electoral Systems'' (1983), scholarly surveys 1790s to 1980s
online
* Kleppner, Paul. ''The Third Electoral System 1853–1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures'' (1979), analysis of voting behavior, with emphasis on region, ethnicity, religion and class
online
* McCormick, Richard P. ''The Second American Party System: Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era'' (1966
online
* Merrill, Horace Samuel. ''Bourbon Democracy of the Middle West, 1865–1896'' (1953).
* Allan Nevins, Nevins, Allan. ''Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage'' 1934. Pulitzer Prize]
online
*Neely, Mark E. Jr. ''Lincoln and the Democrats: The Politics of Opposition in the Civil War'' (2017)
* Remini, Robert V. ''Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party'' (1959)
* Rhodes, James Ford. ''The History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850'' 9 vol (1919), detailed political coverage to 1909
online
* Sanders, Elizabeth. ''Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877–1917'' (1999). argues the Democrats were the true progressives and GOP was mostly conservative
* David Sarasohn, Sarasohn, David. ''The Party of Reform: Democrats in the Progressive Era'' (1989), covers 1910–1930.
* Sharp, James Roger. ''The Jacksonians Versus the Banks: Politics in the States after the Panic of 1837'' (1970)
* Silbey, Joel H. ''A Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil War Era, 1860–1868'' (1977)
* Silbey, Joel H. ''The American Political Nation, 1838–1893'' (1991)
* Kenneth M. Stampp, Stampp, Kenneth M. ''Indiana Politics during the Civil War'' (1949
online
* Trainor, Sean. ''Gale Researcher Guide for: The Second Party System'' (Gale, Cengage Learning, 2018), 16 pp.
* Welch, Richard E. ''The Presidencies of Grover Cleveland'' (1988).
* Whicher, George F. ''William Jennings Bryan and the Campaign of 1896'' (1953), primary and secondary sources.
* Sean Wilentz, Wilentz, Sean. ''The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln'' (2005), highly detailed synthesis.
* Williams, R. Hal. ''Realigning America: McKinley, Bryan, and the Remarkable Election of 1896'' (2010)
* C. Vann Woodward, Woodward, C. Vann. ''Origins of the New South, 1877–1913'' 1951
online
Since 1932
* ''The Almanac of American Politics 2022'' (2022) details on members of Congress, and the governors: their records and election results; also state and district politics; revised every two years since 1975
details
see The Almanac of American Politics
* ''American National Biography'' (20 volumes, 1999) covers all politicians no longer alive; online at many academic libraries and a
Wikipedia Library
* Allswang, John M. ''New Deal and American Politics'' (1970)
* Andelic, Patrick. ''Donkey Work: Congressional Democrats in Conservative America, 1974–1994'' (UP Kansas, 2019
online review
* Andersen, Kristi. ''The Creation of a Democratic Majority, 1928–1936'' (1979)
* Bell, Jonathan. "Social Democracy and the Rise of the Democratic Party in California, 1950–1964." ''Historical Journal'' 49.2 (2006): 497–524
online
* Brodkin, Kimberly, “‘We are neither male nor female Democrats’ Gender Difference and Women's Integration within the Democratic Party,” ''Journal of Women's History,'' 19 (Summer 2007), 111–37
online
* Burns, James MacGregor. ''Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox'' (1956), to 194
online
* Cantril, Hadley and Mildred Strunk, eds. ''Public Opinion, 1935–1946'' (1951), compilation of public opinion polls from US and elsewhere
online
* Crotty, William J. ''Winning the presidency 2008'' (Routledge, 2015).
* Dallek, Robert. ''Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President'' (2004)
* Fraser, Steve, and Gary Gerstle, eds. ''The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980'' (1990), essays.
* Grant, Keneshia Nicole. ''The Great Migration and the Democratic Party: Black Voters and the Realignment of American Politics in the 20th Century'' (Temple University Press, 2020).
* Alonzo Hamby, Hamby, Alonzo. ''Liberalism and Its Challengers: From F.D.R. to Bush'' (1992).
* Jensen, Richard. ''Grass Roots Politics: Parties, Issues, and Voters, 1854–1983'' (1983)
* Jensen, Richard. "The Last Party System, 1932–1980," in Paul Kleppner, ed. ''Evolution of American Electoral Systems'' (1981)
* Judis, John B. and Ruy Teixeira. ''The Emerging Democratic Majority'' (2004) demography is destiny
** "Movement Interruptus: September 11 Slowed the Democratic Trend That We Predicted, but the Coalition We Foresaw Is Still Taking Shape" ''The American Prospect'' Vol 16. Issue: 1. January 2005.
* Kennedy, David M. ''Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945'' (2001), synthesis
* Kleppner, Paul et al. ''The Evolution of American Electoral Systems'' (1983), essays, 1790s to 1980s.
* Ladd Jr., Everett Carll with Charles D. Hadley. ''Transformations of the American Party System: Political Coalitions from the New Deal to the 1970s'' 2nd ed. (1978).
* Lamis, Alexander P. ed. ''Southern Politics in the 1990s'' (1999)
* John Bartlow Martin, Martin, John Bartlow. ''Adlai Stevenson of Illinois: The Life of Adlai E. Stevenson'' (1976),
* Moscow, Warren. ''The Last of the Big-Time Bosses: The Life and Times of Carmine de Sapio and the Rise and Fall of Tammany Hall'' (1971)
* Panagopoulos, Costas, ed. ''Strategy, Money and Technology in the 2008 Presidential Election'' (Routledge, 2014).
* Patrick Andelic. ''Donkey Work: Congressional Democrats in Conservative America, 1974–1994'' (UP of Kansas, 2019). xxvi, 274 pp.
* Patterson, James T. ''Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974'' (1997) synthesis.
* Patterson, James T. ''Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush vs. Gore'' (2005) synthesis.
* Patterson, James. ''Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, 1933–39'' (1967)
* Plotke, David. ''Building a Democratic Political Order: Reshaping American Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s'' (1996).
* Rae, Nicol C. ''Southern Democrats'' Oxford University Press. 1994
* Reiter, Howard L. “The Building of a Bifactional Structure: The Democrats in the 1940s,” ''Political Science Quarterly,'' 116 (Spring 2001), 107–29
online
* Riccards, Michael P., and Cheryl A. Flagg eds. ''Party Politics in the Age of Roosevelt: The Making of Modern America'' (2022
excerpt
emphasis on FDR and his Democratic party
* Larry J. Sabato, Sabato, Larry J. ''Divided States of America: The Slash and Burn Politics of the 2004 Presidential Election'' (2005), analytic.
* Saldin, Robert P., “Foreign Affairs and Party Ideology in America The Case of Democrats and World War II,” ''Journal of Policy History'', 22 #4 (2010), 387–422.
* Shafer, Byron E. ''Quiet Revolution: The Struggle for the Democratic Party and the Shaping of Post-Reform Politics'' (1983)
* Shelley II, Mack C. ''The Permanent Majority: The Conservative Coalition in the United States Congress'' (1983)
* Sundquist, James L. ''Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States'' (1983
online
Popular histories
* Ling, Peter J. ''The Democratic Party: A Photographic History'' (2003).
* Rutland, Robert Allen. ''The Democrats: From Jefferson to Clinton'' (1995).
* Schlisinger, Galbraith. ''Of the People: The 200 Year History of the Democratic Party'' (1992)
* Jeff Taylor (politician), Taylor, Jeff. ''Where Did the Party Go?: William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian Legacy'' (2006), for history and ideology of the party.
* Witcover, Jules. ''Party of the People: A History of the Democrats'' (2003)
Primary sources
* Schlesinger, Arthur Meier Jr. ed. ''History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–2000'' (various multivolume editions, latest is 2001). For each election includes history and selection of primary documents.
* Th
Digital Book Index
includes some newspapers for the main events of the 1850s, proceedings of state conventions (1850–1900), and proceedings of the Democratic National Conventions. Other references of the proceedings can be found in the linked article years on the List of Democratic National Conventions.
Further reading
*
* Graff, Henry F., ed. ''The Presidents: A Reference History'' (3rd ed. 2002
online
short scholarly biographies from George Washington to William Clinton.
External links
; Campaign text books
The national committees of major parties published a "campaign textbook" every presidential election from about 1856 to about 1932. They were designed for speakers and contain statistics, speeches, summaries of legislation, and documents, with plenty of argumentation. Only large academic libraries have them, but some are online:
''Address to the Democratic Republican Electors of the State of New York''
(1840). Published before the formation of party national committees.
''The Campaign Text Book: Why the People Want a Change. The Republican Party Reviewed...''
(1876)
''The Campaign Book of the Democratic Party''
(1882) I HDFHKKL
''The Political Reformation of 1884: A Democratic Campaign Book''
''The Campaign Text Book of the Democratic Party of the United States, for the Presidential Election of 1888''
''The Campaign Text Book of the Democratic Party for the Presidential Election of 1892''
''Democratic Campaign Book. Presidential Election of 1896''
{{DEFAULTSORT:History Of The Democratic Party (United States)
History of the Democratic Party (United States),
Democratic Party (United States)
Political history of the United States, Democratic Party
Second Party System
History of organizations based in the United States, Democratic Party
History of the United States by topic