The Democratic Party is the oldest voter-based political party in the world and the oldest political party in the United States, tracing its legacy back to anti-Federalism in the 1790s. During the Second Party System (from 1832 to the mid-1850s) under President Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and James K. Polk, the Democrats typically defeated opposition Opposition parties with narrow margins. Both sides are working hard to build a grassroots organization and maximize the number of voters, who often reach 80 percent or 90 percent. Both sides use patronage extensively to finance their operations, including the city's political machines and the national newspaper network. The Democratic Party is a supporter for slave owners across the country, urban workers and Caucasian immigrants.
From 1860 to 1932 in the era of the Civil War to the Great Depression, the opposing Republican Party, organized in the mid-1850s from the ruins of the Whig Party and several other small splinter groups, was dominant in presidential politics. The Democrats voted for only two Presidents to be four terms for 72 years: Grover Cleveland (in 1884 and 1892) and Woodrow Wilson (in 1912 and 1916). During the same period, the Democrats proved more competitive with Republicans in Congress politics, enjoying the majority of the House of Representatives (as in the 65th Congress) in 15 of the 36 elected Congresses, even though only five of them constituted a majority in the Senate. The party was divided between the Democrats of Bourbon, representing the interests of the East business; and agrarian elements consisting of poor peasants in the South and West. The agrarian element, lined up behind the slogan "free silver" (ie supporting inflation), captured the party in 1896 and nominated William Jennings Bryan in 1896, 1900 and 1908, though he lost every time. Both Bryan and Wilson were leaders of the Progressive Movement (1890-1920s).
Starting with 32nd President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 during the Great Depression, the party dominated the Party's Fifth System, with its progressive liberal policies and programs with the New Deal coalition to combat emergency bank closures and ongoing financial depression since the famous Wall Street Crash in 1929 and then entered into a crisis that led to World War II. The Democrats and Democrats eventually lost the White House and controlled the government's executive branch only after Roosevelt's death in April 1945 towards the end of the war and after the ongoing post-war government of Roosevelt Vice President Harry S. Truman, the third, former Senator from Missouri ( for 1945 to 1953, the 1944 election and the "stunner" of 1948). A newly elected Republican President later in the next decade of the early 1950s with two candidate losses, Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson (grandson of former Vice President of the same name in the 1890s) to popular war hero and general commander in the War World II, General Dwight D. Eisenhower (in 1952 and 1956).
With two brief interruptions since the Great Depression and World War II period, the Democrats with an enormous overwhelming majority over the past four decades, controlled the lower house of Congress in the House of Representatives from 1930 to 1994 and the Senate for much of the same period, electing the Speaker of the House and chairman of the majority committee/Representatives committee together with the upper house of the Senate majority leader and committee chairman. Important progressive/liberal Democrat leaders include 33rd President and 36 Harry S. Truman of Missouri (1945-1953) and Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas (1963-1969), respectively; and previous Kennedy brethren from 35th President John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts (1961-1963), Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York and Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts carrying a flag for modern American liberalism. Since the 1976 presidential election, the Democrats won five of the last eleven presidential elections, winning the 1976 presidential election (with 39th President Jimmy Carter of Georgia, 1977-1981), 1992 and 1996 (with 42 President Bill Clinton of Arkansas, 1993 -2001) and 2008 and 2012 (with 44th President Barack Obama from Illinois, 2009-2017).
Social scientist Theodore Caplow et al. argues that "the Democratic Party, nationally, moved from the center-left to the center in the 1940s and 1950s, then moved further toward the center-right in the 1970s and 1980s."
Video History of the United States Democratic Party
Presidensi John Quincy Adams (1825-1829)
The modern Democratic Party emerged in the 1830s from the former Democratic Party-Republican factions, most of which collapsed in 1824. Built by Martin Van Buren who assembled a cadre of politicians in every country behind the war hero Andrew Jackson of Tennessee.
Maps History of the United States Democratic Party
The Presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837)
Jacksonian Democracy
Jackson's democratic spirit moved the party from the early 1830s to the 1850s, forming the Second Party System, with the Whig Party as the main opposition. After the loss of the Federalist after 1815 and the Feeling of Good Era (1816-1824), there was a hiatus of private factions that were organized weakly until about 1828-1832, when the modern Democratic Party appeared alongside its rival, Whig. The new Democratic Party became a coalition of peasants, city workers and Irish Catholics.
Behind party platforms, candidate acceptance speeches, editorials, pamphlets and stubborn speeches, there is broad consensus of political values ​​among Democrats. As Norton explains:
Democrats represent different views but share a fundamental commitment to the Jeffersonian concept of an agrarian society. They view the central government as the enemy of individual freedom. The 1824 "corrupt bargain" has reinforced their suspicions against Washington's politics.... Jacksonians fear the concentration of economic and political power. They believe that government intervention in the economy benefits special interest groups and creates a monopoly of companies that benefit the rich. They are trying to restore the independence of individuals - artisans and ordinary peasants - by ending federal bank and corporate support and restricting the use of paper currency, which they do not trust. Their definition of an appropriate government role tends to be negative, and Jackson's political power is largely expressed in negative actions. He runs a veto over all previous presidential alliances. Jackson and his supporters also oppose reform as a movement. The reformers are eager to turn their program into a law calling for a more active government. But Democrats tend to oppose such programs as education reform in the midst of forming a public education system. They believe, for example, that public schools restrict individual freedom by harassing parental responsibilities and undermining religious freedom by replacing church schools. Jackson also does not share the reformist humanitarian issue. He had no sympathy for the American Indians, initiating the Cherokee removal along the Tears Trail.
The weakest party in New England, but strong everywhere and won most of the national elections thanks to the power in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia (the most state at the time) and the American border. Democrats oppose elites and aristocrats, the Bank of the United States and whiggish modernization programs that will build the industry at the expense of the yeoman or independent smallholders.
The historian Frank Towers has determined an important ideological divide:
Democrats stand for 'popular sovereignty' as expressed in popular demonstrations, constitutional conventions, and majority rule as general principles of government, whigs advocate rule of law, written and unchanged constitutions, and protection for minority interests against the majority tyranny.
From 1828 to 1848, banking and tariffs were central domestic policy issues. Democrats heavily favored - and the Whig opposition to - expand into new areas as characterized by their expulsion from the Eastern States of India and the acquisition of a large number of new land in the West after 1846. The party is like the war with Mexico and oppose anti-immigrant nativism. Both Democrats and Whigs are divided into slavery. In the 1830s, Locofocos in New York City is radically democratic, anti-monopoly and supporting his hard money and free trade. Their chief spokesman is William Leggett. At the moment, unions are few and partially affiliated with the party.
Presidency of Martin Van Buren (1837-1841)
Presidency of John Tyler (1841-1845)
Foreign policy was a major problem in the 1840s, as the war threatened Mexico over Texas and with Britain over Oregon. Democrats strongly support the Manifest Destiny and most Whigs strongly oppose it. The 1844 election was a confrontation, with Democrat James K. Polk defeating Whig Henry Clay on the Texas issue.
John Mack Faragher's analysis of political polarization between the parties is:
Most Democrats are supporters of sincere expansion, while many Whigs (especially in the North) are opposed. Whig welcomes most of the changes brought about by industrialization but advocates strong government policies that will guide growth and development within the borders of the country; they fear (correctly) that the expansion raises a contentious issue, the expansion of slavery into the territories. On the other hand, many Democrats are afraid of industrialization greeted by the Whigs.... For many Democrats, the answer to the nation's social ills is to continue following Thomas Jefferson's vision of building agriculture in new territories to keep pace with industrialization.
The Presidency of James K. Polk (1845-1849)
Presidency Zachary Taylor (1849-1850)
Although Zachary Taylor is a Whig, the lack of party trust and the Democratic majority in Congress maintain the Whig party platform from replacing the Democrats.
Millard Fillmore Presidency (1850-1853)
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) was formed in 1848 at a convention nominating General Lewis Cass, who lost to General Zachary Taylor of Whig. The main cause of defeat is that the new Free Land Party, which opposes the expansion of slavery, divides the Democratic Party, especially in New York, where electoral votes are given to Taylor. Democrats in Congress passed a Compromise of 1850 designed to put the problem of slavery to rest while solving problems involving the territory acquired after the War with Mexico. However, in the state after declaring the Democrats a small but permanent gain on the Whig Party, which eventually collapsed in 1852, was fatally weakened by the division of slavery and nativism. The fragmented opposition could not stop the election of Democrat Franklin Pierce in 1852 and James Buchanan in 1856.
Presidency Franklin Pierce (1853-1857)
Franklin Pierce is a talented politician, but his Southern adviser and lack of clear beliefs helped lead to the Nebraska Kansas Act and the Democratic Party's separation in the coming years.
The Presidency of James Buchanan (1857-1861)
During 1858-1860, Senator Stephen A. Douglas confronted President Buchanan in a fierce battle to seize control of the party. Douglas eventually won, but his nomination hinted at a defeat to the party's Southern Wing and quit the 1860 convention and nominated his own presidential ticket.
Young Americans
Jonathan Eyal (2007) argues that the 1840s and 1850s were the heyday of a young Democratic new faction called "Young America". Led by Stephen A. Douglas, James K. Polk, Franklin Pierce, and New York financier August Belmont, the faction explains, deciding with constructive and rigorous orthodoxy from past trades and embracing commerce, technology, regulation, reform and internationalism. This movement attracts a great circle of writers, including William Cullen Bryant, George Bancroft, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. They sought independence from high European cultural standards and wanted to show the excellence and existence of American literary tradition itself.
In economic policy, Young America sees the need for modern infrastructure by rail, canal, telegraph, turnpike and harbor. They support the "market revolution" and promote capitalism. They called for congressional land grants to the states, allowing Democrats to claim that internal improvements are more local than federally sponsored. Young America claims that modernization will perpetuate the agrarian vision of Jefferson's democracy by allowing yeomen farmers to sell their products and thereby prosper. They are bound to internal improvements for free trade, while receiving moderate tariffs as a necessary source of government revenue. They supported the Independent Treasury (the Jacksonian alternative for the Second Bank of the United States) not as a scheme to override the privileges of the Whiggish elite monopoly, but as a tool for spreading prosperity for all Americans.
Details of Second Party System (1854-1859)
The confrontation of the allies increased during the 1850s, the Democratic Party separating the North and the South from growing deeper. The conflict was colored by the conventions of 1852 and 1856 by selecting men who were little involved in sectionalism, but they made things worse. Historian Roy F. Nichols explains why Franklin Pierce is not up to the challenges a Democratic president must face:
- As a national political leader, Pierce is an accident. He is honest and resilient from his view but, because he decides with difficulty and often reverses himself before making a final decision, he gives a general impression of instability. Good, polite, generous, he attracts many individuals, but his attempt to satisfy all factions fails and makes him a lot of enemies. In carrying out his strict construction principles, he best fits the Southern people, who generally have a legal letter on their side. He completely fails to realize the depth and sincerity of Northern feelings towards the South and is confused at the general dislike of the law and the Constitution, as he describes it, by his own British people. Never did he catch the popular imagination. His inability to overcome the difficult problems that emerged at the beginning of his reign caused him to lose the respect of a large number, especially in the North, and some of his successes failed to restore public confidence. He is an inexperienced man, suddenly called to assume extraordinary responsibility, who honestly strives to do his best without adequate training or temperamental fitness.
In 1854, for strong opposition, the main Democratic leader in the Senate, Stephen Douglas of Illinois, pushed through the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This stipulates that settlers in the Kansas Territory may elect to decide whether to allow or not to allow slavery. Thousands of people moved from North and South in order to choose slavery down or up and their violence shook the country. A major alignment takes place between voters and politicians, with new issues, new parties, and new leaders. Whig party completely dissolved.
North and South split
The crisis for the Democratic Party came about in the late 1850s when the Democrats increasingly rejected the national policy demanded by the South Democrats. The demand was to support slavery outside the South. The South insist that full equality for their territory requires the government to recognize the legitimacy of slavery outside the South. Southern demands include the law of enslaved slaves to reclaim escaped slaves; opening Kansas for slavery; impose a pro-slavery constitution in Kansas; acquire Cuba (where slavery already exists); accepted Dred Scott's decision from the Supreme Court; and adopted a federal slave code to protect slavery in the region. President Buchanan follows this demand, but Douglas refuses and proves a politician much better than Buchanan, though fierce fighting lasts for years and permanently alienates the North and South wings.
When the new Republican Party was formed in 1854 on the basis of refusing to tolerate the expansion of slavery into the territories, many northern Democrats (especially the Free Soilers of 1848) joined him. The Republican Party in 1854 now has a majority in most, but not all northern states and practically no Southern support from the Mason-Dixon line. The recent formation of the Know-To-Know Party enabled the Democrats to win the presidential election in 1856. Buchanan, the Northern "Doughface" (his support base is in the pro-slavery of the South), divides the party on the issue of slavery in Kansas when he attempts to pass the federal slave code as requested by the South. Most of the Democrats in the North are united with Senator Douglas, who preaches the "Popular Sovereignty" and believes that the Federal slave code will be undemocratic.
The Democratic Party can not compete with the Republicans, who controlled almost all the northern states in 1860, bringing a solid majority in Electoral College. The Republicans claim that the North Democrats, including Doughfaces such as Pierce and Buchanan, as well as supporters of popular sovereignty such as Stephen A. Douglas and Lewis Cass, are all accomplices of Slave Power. Republicans argue that slave owners (all Democrats) have taken over the federal government and hindered the progress of freedom.
In 1860, the Democrats could not stop the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln, although they feared his election would lead to a civil war. The Democrat Party is divided over the choice of President Buchanan's successors along the North and South lines: the party faction provides two separate candidates for the President in the 1860 election, in which the Republicans gain power.
Several delegates from the Southern Democratic Party followed in the footsteps of the Fire Flyers by walking out of the Democratic National Convention at the Charleston Institute Hall in April 1860 and then joining those who, once again led by the Firecrackers, abandoned the following Baltimore Convention in June when the convention rejected a resolution that supports expanding slavery to an area whose voters do not want it. South Democrats nominate the pro-slavery Vice President, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, for President and General Joseph Lane, former Oregon governor, for Vice President.
The North Democrats went on to nominate Douglas of Illinois for the President and former Georgian Governor Herschel Vespasian Johnson for the Vice President, while several southern Democrats joined the Union Constitution Party, backing his nominees (both prominent Whig leaders), former Sen. John Bell of Tennessee for President and politician Edward Everett from Massachusetts to Vice President. This Democratic split makes them powerless. Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16th President of the United States. Douglas campaigned across the country calling for unity and was second in the popular vote, but only brought Missouri and New Jersey. Breckinridge carries 11 slave states, ranks second in the election, but third in elections.
The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865)
Civil War
During the Civil War, the North Democrats were divided into two factions: the Democrats of War, who supported President Lincoln's military policy; and Copperheads, who strongly oppose them. No party politics are allowed in the Confederation, whose political leadership, which is attentive to the things prevalent in American politics before the war and with the urgent need for unity, widely views political parties as contrary to good governance and especially not wise in times of war. As a result, the Democratic Party stopped all operations during the Confederation (1861-1865).
Partisans flourished in the North and strengthened the Lincoln Administration as the Republic automatically rallied behind it. After the attack on Fort Sumter, Douglas gathered the North Democrats behind the Union, but when Douglas died, the party had no prominent figure in the North and in 1862 an increasingly strong anti-war peace element. The most powerful anti-war element is Copperheads. The Democrats did well in the 1862 congressional elections, but in 1864 he nominated General George McClellan (a Democrat of War) on the peace platform and lost badly because many Democrat Wars bolted to candidate National Union Abraham Lincoln. Many former Democrats became Republican, especially soldiers such as the generals Ulysses S. Grant and John A. Logan.
The Presidency of Andrew Johnson (1865-1869)
In the 1866 elections, the Radical Republic won a two-thirds majority in Congress and took over the national affairs. The vast majority of Republicans make Democratic Congress powerless, though they unanimously oppose the policies of Radical Reconstruction. Recognizing that the old problem was holding him back, the Democrats tried the "New Departure" that underestimated the War and emphasized issues such as corruption and white supremacy.
Ulysses S. Grant Presidency (1869-1877)
Regardless, war hero Ulysses S. Grant led the Republican Party to a landslide in 1868 and 1872.
The Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881)
Although Republicans continued to control the White House until 1884, Democrats remained competitive (especially in the Midwest Atlantic and lower) and controlled the House for most of that period. In the election of 1884, Grover Cleveland, the reformist New York Democratic Governor, won the Presidency, a feat he repeated in 1892, after losing the election in 1888.
Cleveland is the leader of the Democratic Party of Bourbon. They represent business interests, support banking and railroad goals, promote laissez-faire capitalism, oppose imperialism and US foreign expansion, oppose Hawaiian annexation, fight for the gold standard and oppose bimetallism. They are very supportive of reform movements such as Civil Service Reform and against the corruption of city bosses, leading the struggle against the Tweed Ring.
Notable Bourbons include Samuel J. Tilden, David Bennett Hill and William C. Whitney of New York, Arthur Pue Gorman of Maryland, Thomas F. Bayard of Delaware, Henry M. Mathews and William L. Wilson of West Virginia, John Griffin Carlisle Kentucky , William F. Vilas of Wisconsin, J. Sterling Morton of Nebraska, John M. Palmer of Illinois, Horace Boies of Iowa, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar of Mississippi and railroad builder James J. Hill of Minnesota. A prominent intellectual is Woodrow Wilson.
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The Presidency of Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893)
The Presidency of Grover Cleveland (1893-1897)
The Bourbons came to power when the Panic of 1893 hit and they were blamed. A fierce fight within the party ensued, with huge losses to Bourbon and an agrarian faction in 1894, which led to a confrontation in 1896. Just before the election of 1894, President Cleveland was warned by an adviser:
- We are on a very dark night, unless the return of commercial prosperity eases popular discontent with what they believe is the Democratic incompetence to make laws, and consequently with the Democratic Administration anywhere and everywhere.
The warning is correct, as Republicans win their biggest landslide in decades, taking full control of the House, while the populists lose most of their support. However, the Cleveland faction's foes rule Democrats in state by state, including full control in Illinois and Michigan and make huge gains in Ohio, Indiana, Iowa and other states. Wisconsin and Massachusetts are two of the few countries that remain under the control of the Cleveland ally. The Democratic opposition party almost controlled two-thirds of the vote at the 1896 national convention, which they needed to nominate their own candidates. However, they are not united and have no national leaders, such as Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld has been born in Germany and is not eligible to be nominated as president.
The Presidency of William McKinley (1897-1901)
The religious split is very sharp. Methodist, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Scandinavian Lutheran and other pietisms in the North are closely tied to Republicans. In contrast, liturgical groups, especially Catholics, Episcopalians, and Lutherans of Germany, looked to the Democratic Party for protection from the moralism of pietism, especially the prohibition. Both sides crossed the class structure, with Democrats getting more support from the lower classes and Republicans more support from the upper classes.
Cultural issues, especially prohibitions and foreign language schools, are a matter of contention because of the sharp religious divisions in the electorate. In the North, about 50 percent of voters are pietistic Protestants (Methodist, Lutheran Scandinavian, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Disciples of Christ) who believe that government should be used to reduce social sins, such as drinking alcohol.
The liturgical churches (Roman Catholic, German Lutheran, and Episcopal) consisted of more than a quarter of the votes and wanted the government to stay away from the business of morality. The prohibition of debate and referendum has heated up politics in most countries for a decade, as the national ban was finally passed in 1918 (repealed in 1932), a major issue between wet Democrats and the dry Republic.
Free Silver Movement
Grover Cleveland presided over a faction of the conservative, pro-business Bourbon Democrats party, but the depression of 1893 deepened his enemies doubled. At the 1896 convention, the silver-agrarian faction rejected the President and nominated the orator of William Jennings Bryan's Crusade on a free silver coin platform. The idea is that printing silver coins will flood the economy with cash and end depression. Cleveland supporters formed the National Democratic Party, which attracted politicians and intellectuals (including Woodrow Wilson and Frederick Jackson Turner) who refused to vote for the Republican Party.
Bryan, a sensation last night for his "Cross of Gold" speech, launched a new style of crusade against supporters of the gold standard. Crossing the Midwest and East with a 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 gave 36 speeches to the workers present throughout the city, all in one day. Most of the Democratic newspapers were hostile to Bryan, but he controlled the media by making daily news as he threw lightning in the direction of East monash interests.
The rural people of the South and Midwest are overjoyed, showing unexpected enthusiasm, but ethnic Democrats (mainly Germans and Irishmen) fear and fear by Bryan. The middle class, businessmen, newspaper editors, factory workers, railroad workers and affluent peasants generally reject Bryan's crusade. Republican William McKinley promised a return to prosperity based on gold standards, support for industry, railroads and banks and pluralism that would allow any group to move forward.
Even though Bryan lost a major election, he won the hearts and minds of the Democratic majority, as demonstrated by his candidacy in 1900 and 1908. At the end of 1924, Democrats put his brother Charles W. Bryan on their national tickets.. The Republican victory in the 1896 election marked the beginning of the "Progressive Era", which lasted from 1896 to 1932, where Republicans were usually dominant.
Theodore Roosevelt Presidency (1901-1909)
The election of 1896 marks a political rearrangement in which Republicans control the presidency for 28 of 36 years. Republicans dominate most of the Northeast and Midwest and half the West. Bryan, with a base in South and Plains said, was strong enough to get nominated in 1900 (lost to William McKinley) and 1908 (lost to William Howard Taft). Theodore Roosevelt dominated the first decade of this century and annoyed the Democrats "stealing" the issue of trust with the crusade against trust.
The conservative Anti-Bryan controlled the convention in 1904, but faced the avalanche of Theodore Roosevelt. Bryan dropped his silver rhetoric and free anti-imperialism and supported mainstream progressive issues, such as income tax, anti-trust and direct election of the Senator.
The Presidency of William Howard Taft (1909-1913)
The Democrats benefited from the split of the Taft-Roosevelt Republic during Taft's tenure, electing the first Democratic President and the Democratic Congress completely in 20 years.
The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921)
Taking advantage of the deep division of the Republican Party, the Democrats took over the House of Representatives in 1910 and was elected Woodrow Wilson's intellectual reformer in 1912 and 1916. Wilson managed to lead Congress into a series of progressive law, including reduced tariffs, a stronger antitrust. laws, new programs for farmers, hour-and-pay benefits for railway workers and child labor ban (revoked by the Supreme Court).
Wilson tolerated the separation of the federal Civil Service by members of the Southern Cabinet. Subsequently, bipartisan constitutional amendments for the prohibition and right of women were elected in their second term. As a result, Wilson laid down to break the tariff, money and antitrust problems that have dominated politics for 40 years.
Wilson oversaw the US role in World War I and helped write the Versailles Treaty, including 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 wave of national violence, unsuccessful attacks and racial unrest causing Wilson's riots and health to collapse.
The Democrats lost to a major landslide in 1920, doing very badly in the cities, where the German-Americans left the ticket; and Irish Catholics, who dominate the party apparatus, sit in their hands.
The Presidency of Warren G. Harding (1921-1923)
Although they found many reasons in the 1922 Congress election, the whole decade saw the Democrats as a powerless minority in Congress and as a weak force in most of the North.
The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929)
At the 1924 Democratic National Convention, a resolution denouncing the Ku Klux Klan was introduced by troops allied to Al Smith and Oscar W. Underwood to embarrass front-runner William Gibbs McAdoo. After much debate, the resolution failed with one vote. The KKK faded soon afterwards, but the deep divisions within the party over cultural issues, particularly the prohibition, facilitated the Republican landslide in 1920, 1924 and 1928. However, Al Smith built a strong Catholic base in the big cities in 1928 and Franklin D Roosevelt's election as governor of New York that year brought a new leader to the main stage.
The Herbert Hoover Presidency (1929-1933)
The Great Depression tarnished Hoover's term, as the Democrats made a big advantage in the 1930 congress and won a landslide victory in 1932.
The Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945)
The stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression set the stage for a more progressive government and Franklin D. Roosevelt won a landslide victory in the 1932 elections, campaigning on "Help, Recovery and Reform" platforms, namely unemployment and hardship in the countryside, economic recovery return to normal and long-term structural reforms to prevent repetition of the Depression. This is then called "The New Deal" after the phrase in Roosevelt's acceptance speech.
The Democrats also swept the vast majority in both houses of Congress and among state governors. Roosevelt changed the nature of the party, away from capitalism's laissez-faire and toward the ideology of economic and insurance arrangements against adversity. The two old words contain a new meaning: "liberal" now means the supporters of New Deal while "conservative" means the opposite.
The Conservative Democrats were furious and led by Al Smith they formed the American Liberty League in 1934 and carried out a counterattack. They failed and retired from politics or joined the Republican Party. Some of them, like Dean Acheson, find their way back to the Democratic Party.
The 1933 programs, called the "First New Deal" by historians, represent a broad consensus. Roosevelt seeks to reach out to businesses and labor, farmers and consumers, towns and villages. However, in 1934 he moved towards a more confrontational policy. After making a profit in the state governor and at the Congress, in 1934 Roosevelt embarked on an ambitious legislative program later called "The Second New Deal". This is characterized by building trade unions, nationalizing welfare by WPA, establishing Social Security, imposing more rules on business (especially transportation and communications) and raising taxes on business profits.
Roosevelt's New Transaction Program focuses on job creation through public works projects as well as social welfare programs such as Social Security. It also includes a thorough reform of the banking system, work regulations, transport, communications and stock markets, as well as efforts to regulate prices. His policy soon paid off by bringing together various Democratic coalition coalitions called the New Deal coalition, which included unions, South, minorities (most significant, Catholics and Jews) and liberals. This unified base of voters allows the Democrats to be elected to Congress and the presidency for over 30 years into the future.
After re-election in 1936, he announced plans to enlarge the Supreme Court, which tends to oppose the New Deal, by five new members. An opposition storm erupted, led by Vice President John Nance Garner himself. Roosevelt was defeated by a conservative Alliance of Republicans and Democrats, who formed a conservative coalition that managed to block almost all liberal laws (only the law of minimum wages worked). Disturbed by the conservative wing of his own party, Roosevelt made an effort to break free from it and in 1938 he actively campaigned against five conservative Democratic senators in power, although all five senators won re-election.
Under Roosevelt, the Democratic Party is closely identified with modern liberalism, which includes the promotion of social welfare, unions, civil rights, and business regulation. Opponents, who emphasize long-term growth and support for entrepreneurship and low taxes, are now beginning to call themselves "conservative".
The Presidency of Harry S. Truman (1945-1953)
Coalition
Harry Truman took over after Roosevelt's death in 1945 and divisions within the party that Roosevelt had begun to emerge. The main components include large city machines, Southern states and local parties, the left wing and the "Liberal coalition" or "Liberal-Labor coalition" consisting of AFL, CIO and ideological groups such as NAACP (representing Blacks), American Jewish Congress (AJC) and America for Democratic Action (ADA) (representing liberal intellectuals). In 1948, unions had expelled almost all the left-wing and communist elements.
To the right, Republicans denounced Truman's domestic policy. "It is enough?" was the winning slogan when Republicans recaptured the 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 declined their invitation, they had no alternative. Truman attacked back, pushing J. Strom Thurmond and Dixiecrat him out, and taking advantage of the divisions within the Republican Party and thus re-elected in a surprising shock. However, all 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 canceled by the Supreme Court.
Foreign policy
On the left side, former Vice President Henry A. Wallace denounced Truman as a warrior for his anti-Soviet program, Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, and NATO. Wallace quit the party and run for president in 1948. He called for dÃÆ' Â © tente with the Soviet Union, but most of his campaign was controlled by communists who had been expelled from the main trade unions. Wallace fared badly and helped turn the anti-communist vote toward Truman.
In collaboration with the internationalist Republican, Truman succeeded in defeating the rightist isolationists and supporters of the soft line in the Soviet Union on the left to form a Cold War program that lasted until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Supporters of Wallace and other Democrats further left were pushed out of the party and the CIO in 1946-1948 by anti-communist youths such as Hubert Humphrey, Walter Reuther and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.Ã, Hollywood emerged in the 1940s as an important new base in the party and led by movie star politicians such as Ronald Reagan , which strongly supports Roosevelt and Truman today.
In foreign policy, Europe was safe, but trouble escalated in Asia when China fell into communist hands in 1949. Truman entered the Korean War without official approval from Congress. When the war turned into a deadlock and he dismissed General Douglas MacArthur in 1951, Republicans criticized his policy in Asia. A series of small scandals among Truman's friends and friends further tarnished his image, allowing Republicans in 1952 to crusade against "Korea, Communism, and Corruption". Truman quit the presidential election in early 1952, leaving no clear successor. The convention nominated Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956, only to see it engulfed by two Eisenhower landslides.
Domestic policy
In Congress, powerful duo House Speaker Sam Rayburn and majority Senate leader Lyndon B. Johnson held a joint party, often by compromising with Eisenhower. In 1958, the party made dramatic gains in midterms and appeared to have a permanent key in Congress, largely thanks to organized work. Indeed, Democrats have a majority in the House of Representatives every election from 1930 to 1992 (except 1946 and 1952).
Most members of the Southern Congress are conservative Democrats and they usually work with conservative Republicans. The result was a conservative coalition that blocked almost all liberal domestic laws from 1937 to the 1970s, except for the short spell of 1964-1965, when Johnson neutralized his powers. A counterweight to the conservative coalition is the Democratic Study Group, which leads demands to liberalize Congressional institutions and ultimately pass many Kennedy-Johnson programs. The Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961)
The Presidency of John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)
The election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 after that - Vice President Richard Nixon again revived the party spirit. His youth, spirit, and intelligence capture popular imagination. New programs like Peace Corps take advantage of idealism. In terms of legislation, Kennedy was stuck by a conservative coalition.
Although Kennedy's tenure lasted only about a thousand days, he tried to hold back the communist gains after the Bay of Pigs invasion failed in Cuba and the construction of the Berlin Wall and sent 16,000 troops to Vietnam to advise the hard-pressed South Vietnamese army.. He challenged America in Space Race to land an American man on the moon in 1969. After the Cuban Missile Crisis he moved to ease tensions with the Soviet Union.
Kennedy also encourages civil rights and racial integration, one example is Kennedy commissioning federal marshals to protect Freedom Riders in the South. His election did mark the arrival of the age of the Catholic component of the New Deal Coalition. After 1964, middle-class Catholics began to elect the Republic in proportion to their Protestant neighbors. With the exception of Chicago Richard J. Daley, the last Democratic machine faded. President Kennedy was assassinated on 22 November 1963 in Dallas, Texas.
The Lyndon B. Johnson Presidency (1963-1969)
Then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as new President. Johnson, the heir of the New Deal's ideals, destroyed the conservative coalition in Congress and issued a number of extraordinary laws, known as the Great Society. Johnson successfully passed a major civil rights law that restarted racial integration in the South. At the same time, Johnson stepped up the Vietnam War, which caused an inner conflict within the Democratic Party that destroyed the party in the 1968 election.
The Democratic Party's platform in the 1960s was largely shaped by the ideals of President Johnson's "Great Community", the "New Deal Coalition" began to crack as more Democratic leaders voiced support for civil rights, disrupting the traditional bases of South and Catholic Democrats in the northern cities.. After the Harry Truman platform provided strong support for civil rights and anti-segregation laws during the 1948 Democratic National Convention, many Southern Democrat delegates decided to split from the party and form "Dixiecrats", led by South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond (who as Senator will later join the Republican Party). However, some other Democrats left the party.
On the other hand, African Americans, who traditionally provided strong Republican support from the start as "anti-slavery parties", continued to shift to the Democratic Party, largely due to advocacy and support for civil rights by prominent Democrats such as Hubert Humphrey and the former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt; and to a lesser extent, the economic opportunities offered by the New Deal aid program. Although Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower brought the South half in 1952 and 1956 and Senator Barry Goldwater also brought five Southern states in 1964, Democrat Jimmy Carter brought all the South except Virginia and no long-term rearrangement until victory swept through Ronald Reagan in the South in 1980 and 1984.
The party's dramatic reversal on civil rights issues culminated when Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act Act of 1964. The action was passed in both House and Senate by a majority of Republicans. Many of the Democrats, mostly South Democrats, oppose the action. Meanwhile, Republicans are leading again by Richard Nixon who is beginning to implement their new economic policies aimed at fighting federal encroachment in the states, while appealing to conservatives and moderates in the rapidly growing southern cities and suburbs.
The year 1968 marked a major crisis for the party. In January, despite a military defeat to Viet Cong, the Tet Offensive began to change American public opinion against the Vietnam War. Senator Eugene McCarthy gathered anti-war intellectuals and students on campuses and achieved a few percentage points in defeating Johnson in New Hampshire: Johnson weakened permanently. Four days later, Senator Robert Kennedy, brother of the late President, entered the race.
Johnson shocked the country on March 31 when he retired from the race and four weeks later Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey entered the race, although he did not run in a primary election. Kennedy and McCarthy traded major victories while Humphrey garnered the support of unions and big city bosses. Kennedy won an important California primary on June 4, but he was killed that night. Even when Kennedy won California, Humphrey had collected 1,000 of the 1,312 votes the delegates needed for the nomination, while Kennedy had about 700).
During the Democratic National Convention of 1968, while police and the National Guard violently confronted anti-war demonstrators in the streets and parks of Chicago, Democrats nominated Humphrey. Meanwhile, Alabama's Democratic Governor George C. Wallace launched a third-party campaign and at one point came second from Republican candidate Richard Nixon. Nixon almost won, with the Democrats retaining Congress control. The party is now so divided that it will no longer win a majority of popular votes for the president until 1976, when Jimmy Carter won the ballot in 1976 with 50.1%.
The extent to which the South Democrats had left the party became clear in the 1968 presidential election when the electoral vote of any Confederate state except Texas went to either Republican Richard Nixon or Wallace independently. Humphrey voters' votes came mainly from the northern states, marking a dramatic reversal of the 1948 election 20 years earlier, when the votes of defeated Republicans were concentrated in the same countries.
The Presidency of Richard Nixon (1969-1974)
After the 1968 disaster, the McGovern-Fraser Commission proposed and the party adopted a very far-reaching change on how the delegates of the national convention were chosen. More power over the election of presidential candidates given to rank and file and presidential election is becoming more important significantly. In 1972, Democrat nominated Senator George McGovern (SD) as a presidential candidate on a platform that advocated, inter alia, the immediate US withdrawal from Vietnam (with his anti-war slogan "Come Home, America!") And a minimum income guarantee for all Americans. McGovern's troops at the national convention overthrew Mayor Richard J. Daley and the entire Chicago delegation, replacing them with rebels led by Jesse Jackson. Having learned that McGovern team mate Thomas Eagleton has received electrical shock therapy, McGovern said he supported Eagleton "1000%", but he was soon forced to drop him and find a new partner.
Many top names rejected it, but McGovern finally chose Sargent Shriver, a Kennedy-in-law who was close to Mayor Daley. On July 14, 1972, McGovern appointed his campaign manager, Jean Westwood, as the first female head of the Democratic National Committee. McGovern was defeated in a landslide by Richard Nixon's petahana, winning only Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.
The Presidency of Gerald Ford (1974-1977)
The cruel Watergate scandal immediately destroyed the Nixon Presidency, giving hope to the Democratic Party. With the pardon of Gerald Ford Nixon soon after his resignation in 1974, Democrats used "corruption" problems to make huge gains in the election out of the year. In 1976, distrust of government, compounded by a combination of economic recession and inflation, sometimes called "stagflation", led to Ford's defeat by Jimmy Carter, a former Georgian governor. Carter triumphed as a little-known outsider by promising honesty in Washington, a message that played well to voters as he swept the South and won thinly.
Jimmy Carter Presidency (1977-1981)
Carter served as a naval officer, a farmer, a state senator, and a one-time governor. His only experience with federal politics was when he led the election of the Congress and governors of the Congress of the National Committee in 1974. Some of Carter's major achievements consisted of the establishment of a national energy policy and the consolidation of government institutions, resulting in two new cabinet departments, the US Department of Energy and the United States Department of Education. Carter also succeeded in deregulating the trucking industry, airlines, railways, finance, communications, and oil (thus withdrawing from New Deal's approach to economic regulation), strengthening the social security system and establishing the number of women and minorities for significant government and judicial posts. He also enacted a strong law on environmental protection through the expansion of the National Park Service in Alaska, creating 103 million acres (417,000 km²) of parkland.
In foreign affairs, Carter's achievements consist of the Camp David Agreement, Panama Canal Agreement, the establishment of full diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China and the negotiations of the SALT II Treaty. In addition, he championed human rights throughout the world and used human rights as the center of his foreign policy.
Even with all these successes, Carter failed to implement a national health plan or to reform the tax system as promised in his campaign and inflation also increased. Abroad, Iranians arrested 52 Americans for 444 days and Carter's diplomatic and military rescue efforts failed. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of the year further upsets some Americans with Carter. In 1980, Carter defeated Senator Ted Kennedy for a re-nomination, but lost to Ronald Reagan in November. The Democrats lost 12 Senate seats and for the first time since 1954 the Republican Party controlled the Senate, although the House remains in the hands of Democrats. After his defeat, Carter negotiated the release of every American hostage held in Iran and they were expelled from Iran minutes after Reagan was inaugurated, ending a 444-day crisis.
The Ronald Reagan Presidency (1981-1989)
1980s: combating Reaganism
Democrats who supported many conservative policies played an important role in the election of Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1980. "Reagan Democrats" were Democrats before the Reagan years and thereafter, but they chose Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 and for George HW Bush in 1988 , resulting in their landslide victory. The Reagan Democrats are mostly white ethnicity in the Northeast and Midwest who are interested in Reagan's social conservatism on issues such as abortion and his strong foreign policy. They did not continue to vote for the Republic in 1992 or 1996, so the term became unused except as a reference to the 1980s. The term is not used to describe the Southern White man who is a permanent Republican in the presidential election.
Stan Greenberg, a Democrat poll, analyzes white ethnic voters - mostly car workers who are unionized - in the suburbs of Macomb County, Michigan, north of Detroit. The country voted 63 percent for Kennedy in 1960 and 66 percent for Reagan in 1984. He concluded that Democrat Reagan no longer sees Democrats as champions of their middle-class aspirations but instead sees them as a party that works primarily for the benefit of others, African Americans, advocacy groups from left politics and very poor.
The failure to hold Reagan and South White Democrats led to the final collapse of the New Deal coalition. In 1984, Reagan brought 49 states against former Minnesota Vice President and Senator Walter Mondale, a New Testament supporter.
In response to this landslide defeat, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) was formed in 1985. It served to move the party to an ideological center to recover some fundraising that had been lost to the Republicans because of the support of corporate donors. Reagan. The goal is to retain middle-left and moderate and conservative voters on social issues to capture all parties with wide appeal to most of the Republican opponents. Nevertheless, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, not as a New Dealer but as an efficiency expert in public administration, was defeated in 1988 in the presence of Vice President George H. W. Bush.
South to Republic
For nearly a century after Reconstruction, the Southern white man was identified with the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party's power lock is so strong that the region is called South Solid, though Republicans control part of the Appalachian mountains and they compete for state offices in border states. Before 1948, the South Democratic Party believed that their party, with its respect for state rights and the appreciation of traditional southern values, was the defender of the Southern way of life. Southern Democrats warned against aggressive designs on the part of the liberals of the North and the Republic and civil rights activists they criticized as "outside agitators".
The adoption of a strong civil rights panel by the 1948 convention and the integration of the armed forces by President Harry S. Truman's Executive Order 9981, which gives equal treatment and opportunity to African-American soldiers, makes wedges between the North and South party branches. The party was sharply divided in the next election, when South Democrat Strom Thurmond ran for "Democratic Rights Party".
With the presidency of John F. Kennedy, the Democratic Party began to embrace the Civil Rights Movement and its locking in the South was irreversible. After signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson prophesied: "We have lost the South for a generation".
Modernization has brought the larger, more cosmopolitan factories, businesses and cities like 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 economics of cotton and tobacco in the traditional countryside in the South faded, as former farmers returned to factory work. When the South becomes more like the rest of the nation, it can not stand apart in terms of racial segregation.
Integration and the Civil Rights Movement caused great controversy in the white South, with many attacking it as a violation of the rights of the state. When separation was prohibited by court order and by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1965, die-hard elements rejected integration, led by Democratic governors Orval Faubus of Arkansas, Lester Maddox of Georgia and especially George Wallace of Alabama. These populist governors appeal to less-educated voters, blue-collar voters who for economic reasons support the Democrats and oppose desegregation. After 1965, most South Koreans received integration (with the exception of public schools).
Confidently betrayed by the Democratic Party, the traditional white man joined the new middle class and the Northern transplant in moving towards the Republican Party. Meanwhile, newly-accredited black voters began supporting Democratic candidates at 80-90 percent level, which resulted in Democratic leaders such as Julian Bond and John Lewis of Georgia and Barbara Jordan from Texas. As Martin Luther King has promised, integration has brought a new day in Southern politics. Southern Republican strategy is increasingly distancing black party voters.
In addition to its white middle class base, the Republicans attracted a strong majority among evangelical Christians, who, before the 1980s, were largely un-political. Exit polls in the 2004 presidential election show that George W. Bush led John Kerry by 70-30% among the Southern White, comprising 71% of voters. Kerry leads 90-9 among the 18 percent of black South voters. A third of Southern voters say they are white Evangelicals and they vote for Bush on 80-20.
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