The
History of the United States Democratic Party is an account of the oldest
political party in the United States and arguably the oldest party in the world.
Origins The Tennessee legislature and a convention of Pennsylvanian Democratic Republicans nominated General
Andrew Jackson, hero of the
Battle of New Orleans, for the presidency before the election of
1824. The convention attacked the legitimacy of the
Congressional nominating caucus nomination of rival
William H. Crawford. Jackson won a
plurality of the popular and electoral votes over his competitors and denounced rivals
John Quincy Adams and
Henry Clay of having engaged in a "
corrupt bargain" to secure Adams the presidency. Jackson resigned from the
United States Senate and launched a stronger campaign to put himself in the
White House. State conventions and legislatures again raised Jackson up as a candidate for the presidency with Vice President
John C. Calhoun as a running mate. By the 1820s,
suffrage with no property restrictions was the norm for nearly all white men in the United States. Jackson's supporters built powerful new party organizations in the states, and built a national base of support, led by Jackson and Van Buren. They resembled the old Jeffersonians especially in terms of anti-elite rhetoric of opposition to "aristocracy," distrust of banks (and paper money), and faith in "the people." By his extensive use of federal
patronage, President Jackson removed old office-holders to make way for party loyalists.
Jackson's main opponents, former supporters of Adams and then Henry Clay, described themselves as "
National Republicans." Many former members of the defunct
Federalist Party (such as
Daniel Webster) joined that party. The
1832 Democratic National Convention, the first of the party, was held to choose a new
running mate for Jackson, as Calhoun and Jackson had become estranged from each other. The convention nominated Martin Van Buren for vice president and endorsed the re-election of Jackson. Jackson defeated Clay in
1832 by an even greater margin than his victory over Adams in 1828. The name "Democratic Party" became common by the 1830s, about the time the opposition
Whig Party was formed by Clay. In the political realignment of 1828-32, some of Jackson's supporters from the election of 1828, especially businessmen and bankers, switched to the opposition Whig Party as Jackson crusaded against the
Second Bank of the United States.
The Jackson Movement After 1830, the Democratic Party became a coalition of farmers, city-dwelling laborers, and Irish Catholics. With the decline of the Federalists, the
Whig Party became the Democrats' main opponent. Democrats were weakest in
New England, the old
Federalist stronghold; nevertheless, they continued to win national elections thanks to strength in
New York,
Pennsylvania,
Virginia, and the frontier. Democrats opposed elites and aristocrats, the
Bank of the United States, and modernizing programs that would build up industry at the expense of the taxpayer. These policies fell under the umbrella term
Jacksonian Democracy.
From 1828 to 1848, banking and tariffs were the central domestic policy issues. Democrats strongly favored 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. Both Democrats and Whigs were divided on the issue of slavery. In the 1830s, the
Locofocos in New York City were radically democratic, anti-
monopoly, and were proponents of
hard money and
free trade. Their chief spokesman was
William Leggett. At this time labor unions were few; some were loosely affiliated with the party.
Jackson's vice-president,
Martin Van Buren, won the presidency in
1836, but the
Panic of 1837 caused his defeat in the
1840 presidential election at the hands of General
William Henry Harrison and
John Tyler; the Democrats got it back in
1844 with
James K. Polk. Polk lowered tariffs, set up a sub-treasury system, and began and directed the
Mexican-American War, in which the United States acquired much of the modern-day
American Southwest. (The declaration of war was notably opposed by one-term Congressman
Abraham Lincoln.)
The
Democratic National Committee (DNC) was created in
1848 at the convention that nominated General
Lewis Cass, who lost to General
Zachary Taylor of the Whigs. A major cause of the defeat was that the new
Free Soil Party, which opposed slavery expansion, split the Democratic Party, particularly in New York, where the electoral votes went to Taylor. Democrats in Congress passed the hugely controversial
Compromise of 1850. In state after state, however, 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 next two presidents would be Democrats: General
Franklin Pierce in
1852 and
James Buchanan in
1856.
Jacksonian Democracy: 1828-1854 The main Democratic leader in the Senate,
Stephen A. Douglas of
Illinois, pushed through the pro-slavery
Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 despite strong protest. Against the backdrop of the slavery issue, a major re-alignment took place among voters and politicians, with new issues, new parties, and new rules. The Whig Party dissolved entirely. While the Democrats survived, many northern Democrats (especially
Free Soilers from 1848) joined the newly established
Republican Party. Buchanan split the party on the issue of slavery in Kansas; most Democrats in the North rallied to
Stephen Douglas.
The Democratic Party was unable to compete with the Republican Party, which controlled nearly all northern states by 1860, bringing a solid majority in the electoral college. The Republicans claimed that the northern Democrats, including
Doughfaces such as Pierce and Buchanan, and advocates of popular sovereignty such as
Stephen A. Douglas and
Lewis Cass, were accomplices to
Slave Power. The Republicans argued that slaveholders had seized control of the federal government and were blocking the progress of liberty.
In
1860 the Democrats were unable to stop the election of Republican
Abraham Lincoln, even as they feared his election would lead to the
Civil War. The party split in two, with the northern wing nominating Douglas and the southern wing nominating Vice President
John C. Breckinridge. Douglas campaigned across the country and came in second in the popular vote, but carried only Missouri. Breckinridge carried 11
slave states.
During the
Civil War, Northern Democrats divided into two factions, the
War Democrats, who supported the military policies of President Lincoln, and the
Copperheads, who strongly opposed them. During the Civil War, no party politics were allowed in the
Confederacy, but
partisanship flourished in the North. After the attack on Ft. Sumter, Douglas rallied northern Democrats behind the Union, but when Douglas died, the party lacked an outstanding national figure.
The Democratic Party did well in the 1862 congressional elections, but in
1864 it nominated General
George McClellan, a War Democrat, on a peace platform, and lost badly because many War Democrats bolted to
National Union candidate
Abraham Lincoln. In the
1866 elections, the
Radical Republicans won two-thirds majorities in Congress and took control of national affairs.
Ulysses S. Grant led the Republicans to landslides in
1868 and
1872.
The Democrats lost consecutive presidential elections from 1860 through 1880 (
1876 was in dispute) and 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' resentment of
Reconstruction 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 gave the Democrats control of every Southern state (by the
Compromise of 1877); the
disenfranchisement of blacks took place 1890-1900. From 1880 to 1960 the "
Solid South" voted Democratic in presidential elections (except 1928). After 1900, a victory in a Democratic primary was "tantamount to election" because the Republican Party was so weak in the South.
Although Republicans continued to control the White House until 1884, the Democrats remained competitive, especially in the mid-Atlantic and lower Midwest, and controlled the House of Representatives for most of that period. In the election of
1884,
Grover Cleveland, the reforming Democratic Governor of New York, won the Presidency, a feat he repeated in
1892, having lost in the election of
1888.
Cleveland was the leader of the
Bourbon Democrats. They represented business interests, supported banking and railroad goals, promoted
laissez-faire capitalism, opposed imperialism and U.S. overseas expansion, opposed the annexation of
Hawaii, fought for the
gold standard, and opposed
Bimetallism. They strongly supported reform movements such as
Civil Service Reform and opposed corruption of city bosses, leading the fight against the
Tweed Ring. The leading Bourbons included
Samuel J. Tilden,
David Bennett Hill and
William C. Whitney of New York,
Arthur Pue Gorman of Maryland,
Thomas F. Bayard of Delaware,
William L. Wilson of West Virginia,
John Griffin Carlisle of 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 was
Woodrow Wilson. The Bourbons were in power when the
Panic of 1893 hit, and they took the blame. 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.
Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age: 1854-1896 Religious divisions were sharply drawn.
Ethnocultural Politics: pietistic Republicans versus liturgical Democrats Grover Cleveland led the party faction of conservative, pro-business
Bourbon Democrats, but as the
depression of 1893 deepened, his enemies multiplied. At the
1896 convention the silverite-agrarian faction repudiated the president, and nominated the crusading orator
William Jennings Bryan 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 and
Frederick Jackson Turner) who refused to vote
Republican.
Bryan, an overnight sensation because of his "
Cross of Gold" speech, waged a new-style crusade against the supporters of the gold standard. Criss-crossing the Midwest and East by special train-—he was the first candidate ever 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 all over 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. The rural folk in the South and Midwest were ecstatic, showing an enthusiasm never before seen. Ethnic Democrats, especially Germans and Irish, however, were alarmed and frightened by Bryan. The middle classes, businessmen, newspaper editors, factory workers, railroad workers, and prosperous farmers generally rejected Bryan's crusade. McKinley 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 in a landslide, he did win the hearts and minds of a majority of Democrats. The victory of the Republican Party in the
election of 1896 marked the start of the "Progressive Era," from 1896 to 1932, in which the Republican Party usually was dominant.
The Bryan Movement 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 and Midwest, and half the West. Bryan, with a base in the South and Plains states, was strong enough to get the nomination in 1900 (losing to McKinley) and 1908 (losing to Taft).
Theodore Roosevelt dominated the first decade of the century, and to the annoyance of Democrats "stole" the trust issue by crusading against trusts.
Anti-Bryan conservatives controlled the convention in 1904, but faced a Theodore Roosevelt landslide. Bryan dropped his free silver and anti-imperialism rhetoric and supported mainstream
progressive issues, such as the income tax, anti-trust, and direct election of Senators. He backed
Woodrow Wilson in 1912, was rewarded with the State Department, then resigned in protest against Wilson's non-pacifistic policies in 1916. Northern Democrats were progressive on most issues, but generally opposed prohibition, were lukewarm regarding women's suffrage, and were reluctant to undercut the "boss system" in the big cities.
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 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 (which was reversed by the Supreme Court). Wilson ordered the segregation of the federal
Civil Service. Furthermore, bipartisan constitutional amendments for prohibition and women's suffrage 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 the
First World War, and helped write the
Versailles Treaty, which included the
League of Nations. But in 1919 Wilson's political skills faltered, and suddenly everything turned sour. The Senate rejected Versailles and the League, a nationwide wave of strikes and violence caused unrest, and Wilson's health collapsed.
At the
1924 Democratic National Convention, a resolution denouncing the
white-supremacist Ku Klux Klan was introduced by 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 1920, 1924, and 1928. However,
Al Smith did build 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 center stage.
The New Deal and World War II: 1933-1945 Harry Truman took over unexpectedly in 1945, and the rifts inside the party that Roosevelt had papered over began to emerge. Former Vice President
Henry A. Wallace denounced Truman as a war-monger for his anti-Soviet programs, the
Truman Doctrine,
Marshall Plan, and
NATO. By cooperating with internationalist Republicans, Truman succeeded in defeating isolationists on the right and pro-Soviets on the left to establish a
Cold War program that lasted until the fall of Communism in 1991. Wallace supporters and fellow travelers of the far left were pushed out of the party and the CIO in 1946-48 by young anti-Communists like
Hubert Humphrey,
Walter Reuther, and
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr..
Hollywood emerged in the 1940s as an important new base in the party, led by movie-star politicians such as
Ronald Reagan, who strongly supported Roosevelt and Truman at this time.
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, but they lacked an alternative. Truman counterattacked, pushing
J. Strom Thurmond and his
Dixiecrats out, and taking advantage of the splits inside the Republican Party. He was reelected in a stunning surprise. However all of Truman's Fair Deal proposals, such as universal health care were defeated by the
Conservative Coalition in Congress. His seizure of the steel industry was reversed by the Supreme Court. In foreign policy, Europe was safe but troubles mounted in Asia. China fell to the Communists in 1949. Truman entered the
Korean War without formal Congressional approval—the last time a president would ever do so. 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 in
1952 and
1956, only to see him overwhelmed by two Eisenhower landslides.
In Congress the powerful duo of House Speaker
Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority leader
Lyndon B. Johnson 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, however, 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 1964-65, 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.
The election of
John F. Kennedy in
1960 over then Vice President
Richard Nixon 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 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 Republicans in the same proportion as their Protestant neighbors. Except for the Chicago of
Richard J. Daley, the last of the Democratic machines faded away. President Kennedy was assassinated on
November 22,
1963, in
Dallas, Texas. Soon after then-Vice President
Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the new
president. Johnson, heir to the
New Deal broke the
Conservative Coalition in Congress and passed a remarkable number of liberal laws, known as the
Great Society. Johnson succeeded in passing major
civil rights laws that started the 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 elections of 1968. Kennedy's involvement in Vietnam proved momentous, for his successor Lyndon Johnson decided to stay, and double the investment, and double the bet again and again until over 500,000 American soldiers were fighting in that small country.
Truman to Kennedy: 1945-1963 The New Deal Coalition began to fracture as more Democratic leaders voiced support for
civil rights, upsetting the party's traditional base of conservative
Southern Democrats and ethnic Catholics in
Northern cities. After Harry Truman's platform gave strong support to civil rights and anti-
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 a Senator, would later join the Republican Party). Over the next few years, many conservative Democrats in the "
Solid South" drifted away from the party. On the other hand,
African Americans, who had traditionally given strong support to the Republican Party since its inception as the "anti-slavery party," shifted to the Democratic Party due to its New Deal economic opportunities and support for civil rights—largely due to New Deal relief programs, patronage offers, and the advocacy of civil rights by First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt. Although Republican
Dwight D. Eisenhower carried half the South in 1952 and 1956, and Senator
Barry Goldwater also carried five Southern states in 1964, Democrat
Jimmy Carter 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 and 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. On doing so he commented, "We [the Democrats] have lost the South for a generation." Meanwhile, the Republicans, led again by Richard Nixon, were beginning to implement their
Southern strategy, which aimed to resist federal encroachment on the states, while appealing to conservative and moderate white Southerners in the rapidly growing cities and suburbs of the South. Southern Democrats took notice of the fact that 1964 Republican Presidential candidate
Barry Goldwater had voted against the Civil Rights Act, and in the
presidential election of 1964, Goldwater's only electoral victories outside his home state of
Arizona were in the states of the
Deep South.
The year 1968 was a trying one for the party as well as the United States. 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 anti-war forces on college campuses and came within a few percentage points of defeating Johnson in the
New Hampshire primary. Four days later Senator
Robert Kennedy, brother of the former president, entered the race. Johnson stunned the nation on March 31 when he withdrew from the race; four weeks later his vice-president,
Hubert H. Humphrey, entered. Kennedy and McCarthy traded primary victories while Humphrey stayed out the primaries and gathered the support of labor unions and the big-city bosses. Kennedy won the California primary on June 4 and may have been able to wrest the nomination from Humphrey, but he was assassinated in Los Angeles. (Even as Kennedy won California, Humphrey had already amassed 1000 of the 1312 delegate votes needed for the nomination, while Kennedy had about 700.) During the
1968 Democratic National Convention, while police and the 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 M. Nixon. Nixon barely won, with the Democrats retaining control of Congress.
The degree to which the Southern Democrats had abandoned the party became evident in the
1968 presidential election when the electoral votes of every former
Confederate state except
Texas went to either Republican
Richard Nixon or independent
George Wallace, the latter a former Southern Democrat. Defeated Democrat
Hubert Humphrey's electoral votes came mainly from the Northern states, marking a dramatic shift from the
1948 election 20 years earlier, when the losing Republican candidate's electoral votes were mainly concentrated in the Northern states.
The Civil Rights Movement: 1963-1968 In
1972, the Democrats nominated Sen.
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. With his campaign stalled for several weeks 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 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.
The sordid
Watergate scandal soon destroyed the Nixon presidency, giving the Democrats a flicker of hope. 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, mistrust of the administration, complicated by a combination of economic recession and inflation, sometimes called
stagflation, led to Ford's defeat by
Jimmy Carter, a former Governor of
Georgia. Carter won as a little-known outsider by promising honesty in Washington, a message that played well to voters as he won narrowly.
Carter represented the total outsider, who promised honesty in government. He had served as a naval officer, a farmer, a state senator, and a one-term governor. His only experience with federal politics was when he chaired the Democratic National Committee's congressional and gubernatorial elections in 1974. Some of Carter's major accomplishments consisted of the creation of a national energy policy and the consolidation of governmental agencies, resulting in 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 eliminating the
New Deal approach to regulation of the economy), bolstered the
social security system, and appointed record numbers of women and minorities to significant government and judicial 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 land. In foreign affairs, Carter's accomplishments consisted of the
Camp David Accords, the
Panama Canal Treaties, the creation of 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.
Even with all of these successes, Carter failed to implement a national health plan or to reform the tax system, as he had promised in his campaign. Inflation was also on the rise. Abroad, the Iranians held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, and Carter's diplomatic and military rescue attempts failed. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan later that year weakened the perception Americans had of Carter. Even though he had already been defeated for re-election, Carter fortunately was able to negotiate the release of every American hostage. They were lifted out of Iran minutes after Reagan was inaugurated and Carter served as Reagan's emissary to greet them when they arrived in Germany. In
1980, Carter defeated
Edward Kennedy to gain renomination, but lost to
Ronald Reagan in November. The Democrats lost 12 Senate seats, and for the first time since 1954, the Republicans controlled the Senate. The House, however, remained in Democratic hands.
Transformation years: 1969-1992 Instrumental in the election of Republican
President Ronald Reagan in
1980, were Democrats who supported many conservative policies. The "Reagan Democrats" were Democrats before the Reagan years, and afterward, but they voted for
Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 (and for
George H. W. Bush in 1988), producing their landslide victories. Reagan Democrats were mostly white ethnics in the Northeast 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 or 1996, so the term fell into disuse except as a reference to the 1980s. The term is not used to describe southern whites who became permanent Republicans in presidential elections. Stanley 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, probably because of his union background. He concluded that Reagan Democrats no longer saw Democrats as champions of their middle class aspirations, but instead saw it as being a party working primarily for the benefit of others, especially African Americans,
special interest groups of the
political left, and the very poor. But after Reagon's appointment of Donald Dotson as the chairman of the National Labor Relations Board and his notoriously pro-employer stance, Bill Clinton would reclaim the Reagan Democrats with considerable success in 1992 and 1996.
The failure to hold the Reagan Democrats and the white South led to the final collapse of the
New Deal coalition. Reagan carried 49 states against former Vice President and Minnesota Senator
Walter Mondale, a New Deal stalwart, in
1984. 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. With the party retaining left-of-center supporters as well as supporters holding moderate or conservative views on some issues, the Democrats became generally a
catch all party with widespread appeal to most opponents of the Republicans. Massachusetts Governor
Michael Dukakis, running not as a New Dealer but as an efficiency expert in public administration, lost by a landslide in
1988 to Vice President
George H. W. Bush.
1980s: Battling Reaganism For nearly a century after
Reconstruction, the white South identified with Democratic Party. The Democrats' lock on power was so strong, the region was called the
Solid South, although the Republicans controlled parts of the
Appalachian mountains and they competed for statewide office in the
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'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.
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. Upon signing the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, President
Lyndon B. Johnson prophesied, "We have lost the South for a generation."
The South becomes Republican In the 1990s the Democratic Party revived itself, in part by moving to the
right on economic and social policy. In
1992, for the first time in 16 years, the United States elected a Democrat to the White House. During President
Bill Clinton'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. In 1994, the economy had the lowest combination of unemployment and inflation in 25 years. However, President Clinton did sign into law many liberal causes, including the
Brady Bill, which imposed a five-day waiting period on handgun purchases; he also signed into legislation a
ban on many types of
semi-automatic firearms (which expired in 2004). His
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 helped temporarily restore democracy to
Haiti, took a strong (if ultimately unsuccessful) hand in Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations, brokered a historic cease-fire in
Northern Ireland, and negotiated the
Dayton accords, which helped bring an end to nearly four years of terror and killing in the former
Yugoslavia. In
1996, Clinton became the first Democratic president to be reelected since
Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944.
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; Clinton enacted the
North American Free Trade Agreement with
Canada and
Mexico over their strong objections. In 1998, the Republican-led House of Representatives
impeached Clinton on two charges; he was subsequently 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.
When the DLC attempted to move the Democratic agenda in favor of more
centrist positions, prominent Democrats from both the centrist and conservative factions (such as
Terry McAuliffe) assumed leadership of the party and its direction. Some liberals and progressives felt alienated by the Democratic Party, which they felt had become unconcerned with the interests of the common people and left-wing issues in general. Some Democrats challenged the validity of such critiques, citing the Democratic role in pushing for progressive reforms.
The New Democrats: 1992-2004 Main article: United States presidential election, 2000 Election of 2000 In the aftermath of the
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
2001 invasion of Afghanistan. House leader
Richard Gephardt and Senate leader
Thomas Daschle pushed Democrats to vote for the
USA PATRIOT Act and the
invasion of Iraq. The Democrats were split over entering Iraq in 2003 and increasingly expressed concerns about both the justification and progress of the
War on Terrorism, as well as the domestic effects, including threats to
civil rights and
civil liberties, from the
USA PATRIOT Act. Senator
Russ Feingold was the only Senator to vote against the act; it received considerably more resistance when it came up for renewal.
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 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 as
Max Cleland was unseated,
Minnesota as Paul Wellstone died and
his succeeding Democratic candidate lost the election, and
Missouri as
Jean Carnahan was unseated) in the Senate. While Democrats gained governorships in
New Mexico (where
Bill Richardson was elected),
Arizona (
Janet Napolitano) 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. The party's miseries mounted in 2003, when a voter recall unseated their unpopular governor of California, Gray Davis, and replaced him which a charismatic Republican
Arnold Schwarzenegger. By the end of 2003 the four largest states had Republican governors: California, Texas, New York and Florida.
2001-2003 Main articles: U.S. presidential election, 2004, John Kerry presidential campaign, 2004, and Democratic Party (United States) presidential primaries, 2004 Election of 2004 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.
In the 2006 Democratic caucus leadership elections, Democrats chose Rep.
Steny Hoyer of Maryland for
House Majority Leader and nominated Rep.
Nancy Pelosi of California for
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Senate Democrats chose
Harry Reid of Nevada for
United States Senate Majority Leader. Pelosi was elected as the first female House Speaker at the commencement of the 110th Congress. The House of Representatives soon passed the measures that comprised the Democrats'
100-Hour Plan.
Recent history: 2005-present American election campaigns in the 19th century History of the United States Republican Party See also Notes Secondary sources 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).
Cole, Donald B.
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Bass, Herbert J.
"I Am a Democrat": The Political Career of David B. Hill 1961.
Craig, Douglas B.
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Earle, Jonathan H.
Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854 (2004)
Flick, Alexander C.
Samuel Jones Tilden: A Study in Political Sagacity 1939.
Formisano, Ronald P.
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Gammon, Samuel Rhea.
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Hammond, Bray.
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Jensen, Richard.
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Keller, Morton.
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Kleppner, Paul et al.
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Kleppner, Paul.
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McCormick, Richard P.
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Merrill, Horace Samuel.
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Nevins, Allan.
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Pulitzer Prize 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 8 vol (1932)
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
Sarasohn, David.
The Party of Reform: Democrats in the Progressive Era (1989), covers 1910-1930.
Sharp, James Roger.
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Wilentz, Sean.
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Woodward, C. Vann.
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online edition at ACLS History ebooks Since 1932 Ling, Peter J.
The Democratic Party: A Photographic History (2003).
Rutland, Robert Allen.
The Democrats: From Jefferson to Clinton (1995).
Schlisinger, Galbraith.
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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)
Modern worship
Early years
Oversight hearings
CPAN structure