Democratic Party. I INTRODUCTION Democratic Party, one of the two main political parties of the United States. Its origins can be traced to the coalition formed behind Thomas Jefferson in the 1790s to resist the policies of George Washington's administration. This coalition, originally called the Republican, and later the Democratic-Republican Party, split into two factions during the presidential campaign of 1828. One, the National Republican Party, was absorbed into the Whig Party in 1834; the other became the Democratic Party. II THE JACKSONIAN PARTY In the 1830s, under presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, the Democratic Party developed the characteristics it retained until the end of the century. It was willing to use national power in foreign affairs when American interests were threatened, but in economic and social policy it stressed the responsibility of government to act cautiously, if at all. Democrats argued that the national government should do nothing the states could do for themselves, and the states nothing that localities could do. The party's supporters in this period included groups as diverse as southern plantation owners and immigrant workers in northern cities. They all had in common a dislike of government intervention in their lives. The Democrats' opponents, the Whigs, on the other hand, believed in using governmental power to promote, regulate, correct, and reform. A major source of the party's cohesion was its strong organization, which enabled it to fight elections effectively, keep the party together between elections, and shape and influence government decisions. The Democratic organization, with its local, district, and statewide committees, conventions, and party rallies, spread everywhere to promote the party and its principles and candidates on election day. The organization drew up lists of voters, got them to the polls, and provided ballots for them to cast and the arguments to justify their decisions. Afterward, the party helped select government officers and discipline them while in service. In the years after 1828, party competition was very close. The Democrats won the presidency six out of eight times through 1856 and usually controlled Congress. Their Whig opponents, however, always waged strong campaigns against them. Van Buren's leadership role in the party made him Jackson's successor as nominee and president in 1836, but, defeated in 1840, he had to give way to younger men. These new leaders maintained the commitment to the economic and social principles of the Jacksonian era but added a more aggressive stance in foreign affairs. Territorial expansion and war with Mexico followed under President James K. Polk in the 1840s. III THE PERIOD OF NORTH-SOUTH CONFLICT A voter backlash severely changed the party's fortunes in the mid-1850s. The Democratic commitment to limited national power extended to the question of whether or not slavery should expand into new territories. Party leaders such as Lewis Cass and Stephen A. Douglas favored local control, or popular sovereignty, rather than congressional regulation. This did not satisfy some party supporters and others outside the party. Southern gains in the territories provoked bitter anger. At the same time, the Democrats' long-standing interrelationship with immigrant workers also caused severe problems. Greatly increased immigration in the 1850s transformed many areas of the country and seemed to threaten American values. The result was an electoral disaster, as many northern Democrats, seeking to punish their leaders and willing to throw aside their party, joined the emerging Republicans. These defections cost the party a large part of its northern support and enhanced the power of the southern wing within party councils in the late 1850s. IV THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH Increased southern demands for the protection of slavery and the resistance to it by northern Democrats (out of fear of even further party collapse) caused a split in 1860. This enabled the Republicans under Abraham Lincoln to win the presidency. The party's problems were compounded during the Civil War that followed. Remaining consistent, Democrats refused to accept the need to increase government power in order to fight the war. They opposed the draft, social changes, and government encroachment into everyday life. They strongly resisted Republican tariff and taxation policies to finance the war. All of this, however, put them on the defensive. The Republicans charged them with disloyalty and made it an effective campaign slogan for the rest of the 19th century. This tactic, known as "waving the bloody shirt," always hurt the Democrats in close elections until powerful emotional memories faded. They did not regain control of either house of Congress until 1874 and did not win the presidency again until 1884. Democrats won many local and state elections after 1860 and threatened the Republicans in others. They made especially effective use of the race issue in the North, taking advantage of white hostility to blacks. At the same time, the South became an increasingly solid Democratic voting bloc. Neither was enough, however, and party leaders never found the means to attract enough new voters or to convert enough Republicans to win national power in the generation after the Civil War. Between then and the Great Depression the Democrats were the minority party in the nation, able to win only when the Republicans were badly split. V PARTY DIVISIONS (1890-1912) Factionalism had always existed among Democrats, as different regional, social, and economic groups maneuvered to define the party's stance and candidates; sometimes, as in the realignment of the 1850s, such factionalism cost the party dearly. Late in the 19th century, however, it got entirely out of hand, as three groups fought for control in an increasingly harsh atmosphere. One bloc comprised the traditional Democrats behind New York's Grover Cleveland, who was president from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. Strong in their memories of Jackson and the Civil War, they still espoused the conventional policies of limited government activities. A second group consisted of the urban political machines, which won the support of immigrants by helping them adjust to conditions in a new country. A third faction was made up of restive groups in the South and West, reacting against the new industrial and centralized economy. Angry farmers and small-town entrepreneurs, feeling badly squeezed by the new economic forces, wanted a shift of Democratic policies toward more vigorous government intervention in their behalf. They were strongly resisted by the traditionalists who ignored, were complacent about, or sometimes cooperated with the new forces the agrarians detested. The urban political machines remained at arm's length from both, feeling estranged from their values and outlook. In the 1890s the storm broke. The cautious and traditional reaction of Cleveland's second administration to the depression after 1893, its hostility to unions and strikes, and its harsh attitudes toward the machines on behalf of civil service reform provoked a revolt by Democratic voters in the South and West. They found in William Jennings Bryan a presidential candidate who overthrew the Cleveland wing in 1896 and dominated the party for a decade afterward. It did them little good, however. Bryan, although supported by the dissident People's Party, was abandoned by many traditional and urban Democrats, who opposed his program and stance, and he was defeated by the Republican William McKinley. VI THE WILSONIAN ERA AND THE 1920S At the beginning of the 20th century the Democrats' minority position among voters remained central to their existence. The Progressive split in Republican ranks helped elect Woodrow Wilson twice, but the entry of the United States into World War I ended that. The war, popular at first, backfired against the Wilson administration when large numbers of German Americans and Irish Americans protested with their votes against U.S. involvement on England's side. The result was another Republican landslide in 1920, and for the rest of the decade the Democrats remained beset by a new outburst of factionalism. The national convention in 1924 was raucously stalemated between the urban-ethnic wing and the older Bryanite-southern groups. The 1928 nomination of the Irish Catholic Al Smith broke the solid South, part of which went Republican for the first time ever in reaction to the social and cultural values that Smith represented in the eyes of the defecting group. VII THE NEW DEAL In the mid-20th century the basic character of the Democratic appeal began to change, first slowly and then rapidly. In the 1930s and 1940s the Democrats became a party of vigorous government intervention in the economy and in the social realm, willing to regulate and redistribute wealth and to protect those least able to help themselves in an increasingly complex society. The urban political machines had brought to the party a commitment to social welfare legislation in order to help their immigrant constituents. At first resisted by Southern Democrats and the other limited-government advocates of the party's traditional wing, the new look began to win out in the late 1920s. The Great Depression after 1929 and the coming to power of Franklin D. Roosevelt, with his New Deal, solidified and expanded this new commitment. Increasingly, under Democratic leadership, the government expanded its role in social welfare and economic regulation. Given the economic situation, this proved to be electorally attractive. Traditional Democrats surged to the polls, new voters joined, and the party won over groups, such as the blacks, who had been Republicans for generations--at first haltingly, then enthusiastically and overwhelmingly. The result was the New Deal coalition that dominated the country for more than 30 years. More people than ever before identified themselves as Democrats. Roosevelt became an even more powerful symbol than Jackson had been, winning four successive terms. In addition, Roosevelt's New Deal coalition of southern populists and northern liberals laid the base for the Democrats to control Congress in all but four of the 48 years between 1933 and 1981. Despite defections on the left and right, President Harry Truman won reelection in 1948 running on the New Deal record. Although the war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower easily won the presidency in 1952 and 1956, the Democrats ran Congress for six of his eight years in office. VIII AFTER EISENHOWER The Democrats regained the White House with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and passed much vigorous legislation, culminating in the Great Society policies of President Lyndon Johnson. These continued and expanded New Deal social commitments, this time to encompass civil rights and to aid minorities and the unorganized. As the party solidified its support among blacks, however, it lost southern whites and northern labor and ethnic voters. The country prospered, but conflicts over social and military policy intensified. The Vietnam War (1959-1975) provoked many within the party to challenge it on its anti-Communist foreign policy, which had directly led to involvement in Vietnam. At the same time, the revolt of the young against the draft and on matters of personal behavior and discipline contributed to a strong challenge to party norms and regular patterns of doing business. The clumsy reactions of party leaders and the Chicago police culminated in street battles between groups of protesters and police units during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. People within the party who tried to come to terms with the new forces of peace and individual liberty lost in 1968 but were able to seize control of the party in 1972. New nominating rules, inspired by the restlessness within the party, and the weakening power of its leaders after 1968 led to the nomination of George McGovern. His campaign ended in overwhelming defeat, but the party bounced back after the excesses of Watergate and the tapering off of the fervor induced by the war. IX DEMOCRATS RETURN TO THE WHITE HOUSE The nomination of a Southerner, Jimmy Carter, in 1976 brought the solid South back into the Democratic camp for the first time since 1944, but only temporarily. The clash of social values, on one hand, and changing economic issues, on the other, shifted the center of gravity within the party and continued to drive many away. Issues such as inflation divided the party badly. Political parties in general were in decline, as fewer voters remained loyal to them or accepted their dictates. X THE REAGAN SETBACK Landslide victories by Republican presidential nominee Ronald Reagan over Carter in 1980 and Walter Mondale in 1984 further wounded the Democrats, but the party rebounded in 1986 to take control of the U.S. Senate, which had been in Republican hands for six years. The Democrats entered the fall 1988 presidential campaign more unified than at any time since 1976 but were unable to overcome the portrayal of their nominee, Michael Dukakis, as "out of the mainstream" on social, economic, and defense issues; Republican George Bush won the election. However, the Democrats did increase their Senate, House, gubernatorial, and state legislative majorities in the 1988 elections. XI THE CLINTON ERA In 1992 the Democratic Party recaptured the presidency after 12 years when Bill Clinton won the election. Clinton and his vice president, Al Gore, pledged to improve the economy, which had been depressed during much of Bush's presidency. Although Clinton was successful in revitalizing the economy, the Democrats lost their majority in Congress in the 1994 elections. Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress for the first time in more than 40 years after the 1994 elections. The Democratic president and the Republican Congress often had trouble agreeing on legislation. The Republican Congress passed bills for welfare reform and tax cuts, which President Clinton vetoed. In addition, the federal government had two partial shutdowns when the Republicans and Democrats could not agree on a federal budget for the 1996 fiscal year. In 1996 President Clinton and Vice President Gore were reelected. However, Republicans retained their control of Congress. In the spring of 1997 Clinton and Congress announced that they had agreed on a federal budget plan to eliminate the deficit in five years. The government actually eliminated the deficit in one year, and by 1998 the budget showed a surplus. In 1997 the Democratic Party came under scrutiny for illegal campaign contributions and fundraising practices. At issue were allegations that the Democratic Party had collected contributions from foreign companies and individuals, who under campaign finance rules are not allowed to contribute money to political campaigns. There were also questions about whether Clinton tried to raise funds by holding coffee groups and allowing donors to spend the night in the White House. Committees formed by both houses of Congress began to investigate whether the Democratic Party had accepted illegal campaign contributions and whether these contributions were used as a way for people to gain access to the president. In addition, the Department of Justice began an investigation but refused to appoint an independent counsel, claiming no conflict of interest. In 1998 the party was shaken by revelations that Clinton had had an affair with a 24-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, and then tried to conceal it. Democratic leaders and members of Congress rallied behind the president when he insisted that he had not had sexual relations with Lewinsky. However, an independent counsel investigated the Lewinsky matter and uncovered evidence that Clinton had lied. Clinton was eventually impeached by the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, but the Senate failed to remove him from office. The Republicans could not muster the required 67 votes. Although the scandal left Democrats disillusioned and embittered with the president, it benefited the party. The Republicans misjudged the voters' fatigue with the issue and their support of the president, and they made the scandal a central issue in the 1998 elections. Democrats, who were expected to lose seats as the president's party traditionally does in off-year elections, gained five seats in the House of Representatives and avoided losses in the Senate. After the election, congressional Democrats wanted to express their displeasure with Clinton's conduct by adopting an official rebuke, called a censure, but Republicans moved ahead with impeaching the president. People seemed to side with the Democrats, and the scandal left the Republicans, rather than the Democrats, in disarray. XII DISPUTED PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION In the 2000 presidential race, the Democratic Party nominated Vice President Al Gore as the party's presidential candidate. Gore chose Joseph Lieberman, a senator from Connecticut, as his running mate. Lieberman was the first Jewish person to be nominated on a major party's ticket. Gore ran against George W. Bush, the Republican nominee for president. In the 2000 election, Democrats gained seats in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Republicans maintained a slight majority in the House, but the Senate was split evenly between the two parties. One of the newly elected Democratic senators was Hillary Clinton, who captured a seat from New York. It was the first time in U.S. history that a first lady was elected to the Senate. The presidential election, however, was so close that it was not decided until five weeks after Election Day. After much legal wrangling, Gore lost the election to Bush. See also Disputed Presidential Election of 2000. The even split in the Senate ended in mid-2001 when Republican senator James Jeffords left his party and became an independent. His switch gave the Democrats control of the Senate, which they maintained until the 2002 midterm elections. In those elections the Democrats lost control of the Senate to the Republican Party. They also lost seats in the House of Representatives, which the Republicans continued to control. Many Democrats attributed the losses to President Bush's popularity. As the 2004 presidential election approached, however, many Democrats saw an opportunity for the party to regain the White House. Bush's approval ratings began to decline as the U.S. economy failed to generate jobs and the U.S. war in Iraq began to resemble the Vietnam War quagmire. Bush's ratings fell below 50 percent prior to the November election, a dangerous sign for an incumbent president. The Democrats selected U.S. Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts as their nominee after he won nearly all of the party's state caucuses and primaries. Kerry picked U.S. Senator John Edwards of North Carolina as his running mate. XIII BUSH'S SECOND TERM Nevertheless, Bush won the election with 51 percent of the popular vote, and the Republican Party widened its majority in both the House and the Senate. Bush's victory stirred considerable soul-searching in the Democratic Party, which failed to carry a single Southern state and only one of the Great Plains states. Following the 2004 presidential election, the party regrouped under the leadership of Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont and a presidential candidate in 2004. Dean advocated campaigning in every state, reversing a trend in which the Democrats focused almost exclusively on Democratic and tossup states and failed to campaign in areas considered secure for the Republicans. The ongoing war in Iraq became a pivotal issue as the 2006 midterm elections approached. Polls showed that voters disapproved of Bush's handling of the war and that most voters favored a pullout of U.S. occupation forces. Bush's public approval ratings fell to their lowest ever with more than 60 percent of voters voicing disapproval of his job performance. The Republicans were also harmed by corruption scandals, which led to indictments of several congressmen. The Bush administration's delayed and ineffective response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster cast further doubt on the competency of the Republicans' leadership. Just weeks before the elections, Republican Mark Foley of Florida resigned from Congress after it was disclosed that he sent inappropriate messages laced with sexual innuendos to teenage congressional pages. Bush tried to link the war in Iraq with the war on terror and at a campaign rally said that a victory for the Democrats would represent a victory for the terrorists. In the elections the Democrats regained control of the Senate and won a majority in the House. They also won a majority of the state houses with upset victories over Republicans in six gubernatorial contests, including the battleground states of Colorado and Ohio. Democratic candidates won key Senate races in Montana and Virginia, states that had previously been considered Republican territory, and in Missouri and Ohio, which are traditionally seen as bellwether states. Some polls indicated that independent voters went Democratic by a 2-to-1 margin and that nearly a third of Christian evangelicals, considered the core of the Republican base, voted for Democrats. The midterm results appeared to reinvigorate the Democratic Party. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
