Democratic Party – HISTORY
Contents
The Democratic Party is one of the two major political parties in the United States, and the nations oldest existing political party. After the Civil War, the party dominated in the South due to its opposition to civil and political rights for African Americans. After a major shift in the 20th century, todays Democrats are known for their association with a strong federal government and support for minority, womens and labor rights, environmental protection and progressive reforms.
Though the U.S. Constitution doesnt mention political parties, factions soon developed among the new nations founding fathers.
The Federalists, including George Washington, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, favored a strong central government and a national banking system, masterminded by Hamilton.
But in 1792, supporters of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who favored decentralized, limited government, formed an opposition faction that would become known as the Democratic-Republicans.
Despite Washingtons warning against the danger of political parties in his famous farewell address, the power struggle between Federalists and the Democratic-Republican Party dominated the early government, with Jefferson and his supporters emerging largely triumphant after 1800.
The Federalists steadily lost ground in the early 19th century, and dissolved completely after the War of 1812.
In the highly controversial presidential election of 1824, four Democratic-Republican candidates ran against each other. Though Andrew Jackson won the popular vote and 99 electoral votes, the lack of an electoral majority threw the election to the House of Representatives, which ended up giving the victory to John Quincy Adams.
In response, New York Senator Martin van Buren helped build a new political organization, the Democratic Party, to back Jackson, who defeated Adams easily in 1828.
After Jackson vetoed a bill renewing the charter of the Bank of the United States in 1832, his opponents founded the Whig Party, led by Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky. By the 1840s, Democrats and Whigs were both national parties, with supporters from various regions of the country, and dominated the U.S. political system; Democrats would win all but two presidential elections from 1828 to 1856.
In the 1850s, the debate over whether slavery should be extended into new Western territories split these political coalitions. Southern Democrats favored slavery in all territories, while their Northern counterparts thought each territory should decide for itself via popular referendum.
At the partys national convention in 1860, Southern Democrats nominated John C. Breckinridge, while Northern Democrats backed Stephen Douglas. The split helped Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the newly formed Republican Party, to victory in the 1860 election, though he won only 40 percent of the popular vote.
The Union victory in the Civil War left Republicans in control of Congress, where they would dominate for the rest of the 19th century. During the Reconstruction era, the Democratic Party solidified its hold on the South, as most white Southerners opposed the Republican measures protecting civil and voting rights for African Americans.
By the mid-1870s, Southern state legislatures had succeeded in rolling back many of the Republican reforms, and Jim Crow laws enforcing segregation and suppressing Black voting rights would remain in place for the better part of a century.
As the 19th century drew to a close, the Republicans had been firmly established as the party of big business during the Gilded Age, while the Democratic Party strongly identified with rural agrarianism and conservative values.
But during the Progressive Era, which spanned the turn of the century, the Democrats saw a split between its conservative and more progressive members. As the Democratic nominee for president in 1896, William Jennings Bryan advocated for an expanded role of government in ensuring social justice. Though he lost, Bryans advocacy of bigger government would influence the Democratic ideology going forward.
Republicans again dominated national politics during the prosperous 1920s, but faltered after the stock market crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first Democrat to win the White House since Woodrow Wilson.
In his first 100 days, Roosevelt launched an ambitious slate of federal relief programs known as the New Deal, beginning an era of Democratic dominance that would last, with few exceptions, for nearly 60 years.
Roosevelts reforms raised hackles across the South, which generally didnt favor the expansion of labor unions or federal power, and many Southern Democrats gradually joined Republicans in opposing further government expansion.
Then in 1948, after President Harry Truman (himself a Southern Democrat) introduced a pro-civil rights platform, a group of Southerners walked out of the partys national convention. These so-called Dixiecrats ran their own candidate for president (Strom Thurmond, governor of South Carolina) on a segregationist States Rights ticket that year; he got more than 1 million votes.
Most Dixiecrats returned to the Democratic fold, but the incident marked the beginning of a seismic shift in the partys demographics. At the same time, many Black voters who had remained loyal to the Republican Party since the Civil War began voting Democratic during the Depression, and would continue to do so in greater numbers with the dawn of the civil rights movement.
Although Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed civil rights legislation (and sent federal troops to integrate a Little Rock high school in 1954), it was Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat from Texas, who would eventually sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law.
Upon signing the former bill, Johnson reportedly told his aide Bill Moyers that I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.
Over the course of the late 1960s and 1970s, more and more white Southerners voted Republican, driven not only by the issue of race, but also by white evangelical Christians opposition to abortion and other culture war issues.
After losing five out of six presidential elections from 1968 to 1988, Democrats captured the White House in 1992 with Arkansas Governor Bill Clintons defeat of the incumbent, George H.W. Bush, as well as third-party candidate Ross Perot.
Clintons eight years in office saw the country through a period of economic prosperity but ended in a scandal involving the presidents relationship with a young intern, Monica Lewinsky. Clintons conduct in the affair eventually led to his impeachmentby the House in 1998; the Senate acquitted him the following year.
Al Gore, Clintons vice president, narrowly captured the popular vote in the general election in 2000, but lost to George W. Bush in the electoral college, after the U.S. Supreme Court called a halt to a manual recount of disputed Florida ballots.
Midway through Bushs second term, Democrats capitalized on popular opposition to the ongoing Iraq War and regained control of the House and Senate.
In 2008, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois rode a wave of popular discontent and economic concerns during the Great Recession to become the first African-American U.S. president.
Opposition to Obama and his policies, particularly health care reform, fueled the growth of the conservative, populist Tea Party movement, helping Republicans make huge gains in Congress during his two terms in office.
And in 2016, after a tough primary battle with Vermontsenator Bernie Sanders, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton captured the Democratic nomination, becoming the first female presidential nominee of any major party in U.S. history.
But against most expectations, Clinton lost in the general election that November to reality TV star Donald Trump, while Republican gains in congressional elections left Democrats in the minority in both the House and Senate.
The slate of candidates running for president from the Democratic Party in the 2020 election was historically large and diverse. Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Beto ORourke, Corey Booker, Andrew Yang, Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard and Tom Steyer were among the major candidates aiming to take on President Trump.
After a slow start to his campaign, former Vice President Joe Biden won his party's nomination.Biden chose California senatorKamala Harris as his vice presidential running mate, making Harris the first Black and Asian American woman to be named on a major party's ticket.Biden ran as a moderate, and pledged to unify the country after a divisive four years under President Trump. On November 7, Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election; he took office as the 46th U.S. president on January 20, 2021, alongside a fully Democratic Congress.
Political Parties in Congress, The Oxford Guide to the United States Government.Eric Rauchway, When and (to an extent) why did the parties switch places? Chronicle Blog Network (May 20, 2010).
See the article here:
Democratic Party - HISTORY
- Opinion | This Trial of the Century Is 100. Its Lessons Could Save the Democrats. - The New York Times - July 10th, 2025 [July 10th, 2025]
- Democrats Inspire Vicious, Escalating Attacks on ICE - The White House (.gov) - July 10th, 2025 [July 10th, 2025]
- John Kerry says 'Trump was right', Democrats allowed migrant 'siege' of border - BBC - July 10th, 2025 [July 10th, 2025]
- New Survey Results: RI Democrats and Republicans are living in different realities - Salve Regina University - July 10th, 2025 [July 10th, 2025]
- DNC chair on the path to winning back voters and lessons Democrats can learn from Mamdani - PBS - July 10th, 2025 [July 10th, 2025]
- Top House Democrats demand release of Epstein files that mention Trump - The Guardian - July 10th, 2025 [July 10th, 2025]
- Jeffriess speech is proof that Democrats are just performative and reactionary - The Hill - July 10th, 2025 [July 10th, 2025]
- Mamdani's far-left allies aim to primary Hakeem Jeffries and other NYC House Democrats - Fox News - July 10th, 2025 [July 10th, 2025]
- Michigan Democrats begin highlighting constituents impacted by Medicaid cuts in Trump tax bill - Michigan Advance - July 10th, 2025 [July 10th, 2025]
- Gavin Newsom swings through South Carolina, where Democrats will play pivotal 2028 nominating role - AP News - July 10th, 2025 [July 10th, 2025]
- Democrats Ignored What Their Voters Were Telling ThemAnd It Cost Them Everything - Vanity Fair - July 10th, 2025 [July 10th, 2025]
- Republicans and Democrats Finally Agree on Nuclear. Its the Industry Thats the Problem. - Politico - July 10th, 2025 [July 10th, 2025]
- Hawley rebukes Democrats' heated rhetoric after attacks on ICE, border patrol facilities: 'Knock it off' - Fox News - July 10th, 2025 [July 10th, 2025]
- Opinion | The Gender Gap That Ate the Democrats - The New York Times - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Letter: Why Democrats are losing ground with minority voters - Reading Eagle - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Ex-gov says Democrats need to rally behind a mayoral candidate, just not Mamdani - PIX11 - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Beyond Democrats and Republicans, CT legislators split into special interests. See what they are. - Hartford Courant - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- After Mamdanis Win, Some Democrats Are Determined to Stop Him - The New York Times - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Democrats retreat on climate: Its one of the more disappointing turnabouts - Politico - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Gavin Newsom swings through South Carolina, where Democrats will play pivotal 2028 nominating role - ABC News - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Democrats call for probe into National Weather Service cuts after Texas floods - MSNBC News - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- "There needs to be blood": Democrats' voters tell them to "get shot" in Trump resistance push - Axios - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Democrats demand CISA explain how its supporting election offices - StateScoop - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Media, Democrats try to blame Trump for Texas flood deaths - Washington Times - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Gavin Newsom swings through South Carolina, where Democrats will play pivotal 2028 nominating role - AJC.com - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Democrats try to spoil Trumps victory party by slamming his greatest domestic win - CNN - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Democrats 'seem to think that poor people are stupid,' Scott Bessent says - Politico - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Opinion | Six things Democrats need to do if they want to win elections again - The Washington Post - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Trump's $5 trillion debt ceiling strategy could force Democrats to the negotiating table - Fox Business - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- How Democrats Will Make Trump Own His Disastrous Spending Bill - Crooked Media - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Opinion | D.C. Democrats tarnish themselves by resisting ranked-choice voting - The Washington Post - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Democrats might be overthinking strategy to recapture voters - The Hill - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Congressional District 7 race: Democrats Grijalva, Hernandez lead the pack in fundraising - KJZZ - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Democrats Must Find Their Nerve - And Fast - CityWatch LA - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- What Democrats Think They Can Learn From Zohran Mamdani - NOTUS - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Virginia Democrats are eyeing 13 potential seats that could flip blue this year - WVTF - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Democrats call for probes of deadly Kerr County flooding to discover what went wrong - Dallas News - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Democrats trying to field candidate slate to win first statewide race in 32 years - Texarkana Gazette - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- These Democrats have forgotten who they represent, GOP lawmaker says - Fox News - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Opinion | Democrats in Race to Separate Themselves from Biden - WSJ - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Democrats Are Calling For Probe Into National Weather Service After Deadly Floods In Texas - HuffPost - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Will Trump's megabill help Democrats win the House? - NPR - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- A congressman on how Democrats can regain the initiative on the economy - The Economist - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- Democrats see Trumps big bill as key to their comeback. It may not be so easy - AP News - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- Democrats going after Trumps megabill tell their own stories of needing Medicaid and other aid programs - CNN - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- Mass. Democrats say cuts from Trump's bill will be 'devastating,' brace for impact - WBUR - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- Democrats respond to Trump signing megabill - CNN - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- Pols & Politics: Whats next for Beacon Hill Democrats after finishing early-term priorities - Boston Herald - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- Trump on Democrats who voted against GOP megabill: I hate them - The Hill - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- Trumps Budget Bill Would Explode Funding for ICE. Top Democrats Arent Talking About It. - The Intercept - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- Opinion | For Democrats, Mamdani Is a Wake-Up Calland a Bad Example - WSJ - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- Democrats and Republicans were out on the Virginia campaign trail. Heres what they had to say. - The Virginian-Pilot - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- Exclusive | Just half of Democrats consider themselves patriots, compared to 91% of Republicans, poll reveals - New York Post - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- First Thing: Corrupt kleptocracy Democrats furious over passage of Trump bill - The Guardian - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- In Trumps Bill, Democrats See a Path to Win Back Voters - The New York Times - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Trump Kicks Off Celebration of America by Declaring His Hatred for Democrats - The Daily Beast - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Democrats frustrated over lack of a heads-up from Hakeem Jeffries on delaying Trumps spending bill - Fox News - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- A dark day for our country: Democrats furious over Trump bills passage - The Guardian - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Democrats See Trumps Big Bill as Key to Their Comeback. It May Not Be So Easy - U.S. News & World Report - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Democrats to focus on unpopular GOP cuts in bid to take back the House - The Washington Post - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Opinion | Zohran Mamdani Won by Listening. Democrats Should Try It. - The New York Times - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- House Democrats filibuster but only delay the final passage of Trumps big bill - Washington Times - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Abundance at the fore of Democrats new ideas sweepstakes - The Washington Post - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Democrats Denied This City Had a Gang Problem. The Truth Is Complicated. - The New York Times - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Democrats Should Become the Pro-Porn Party - The Nation - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- 175+ Democrats supporting NAACP suit against dismantling Department of Education - ABC News - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Pro-Israel Jewish Democrats say Mamdanis stances are cause for concern and action - The Times of Israel - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Psaki: Republicans will regret passing Trump's bill as Democrats look to reprise 2018's House flip - MSNBC News - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Democrats Bet Jobs in Red States Would Save Clean Power Projects. They Lost. - The New York Times - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Can the abundance movement save the Democrats? - The Washington Post - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- FBI headquarters will remain in downtown DC, roiling Washington-area Democrats - Politico - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- The Big Beautiful Bill Is Massively Unpopular and Democrats Plan to Keep It That Way - Time Magazine - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- Stephen A. Smith: Democrats will have no chance if they become like Mamdani - The Hill - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- Senate Judiciary Democrats launch probe into whether Trump officials violated court orders - The Hill - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- Frustration grows over NY Democrats' 'lack of political courage' on immigration - Gothamist - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- Schumer and other Senate Democrats condemn the phrase globalize the intifada - The Jerusalem Post - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- Analysis | Why Democrats are excited about Texas for real this time - The Washington Post - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- Arizona Democrats will bypass struggling state party in midterms, with key races on ballot - AP News - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- Virginia Democrats hold town hall after Senate passage of 'Big, Beautiful Bill' - 13newsnow.com - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- Democrats will force out-loud reading of 940-page megabill - Politico - June 29th, 2025 [June 29th, 2025]