Search

The Online Encyclopedia and Dictionary

 
     
 

Encyclopedia

Dictionary

Quotes

   
 

Democratic Party (United States)

(Redirected from United States Democrat Party)


The Democratic Party is one of the two major United States political parties. The Party is currently (as of 2004) the minority in both the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives, as well as in governorships and state legislative seats. Of the two major U.S. parties, the Democratic Party is to the left of the Republican Party, though its politics are not as consistently leftist as the traditional social democratic and labor parties in much of the rest of the world.

Its origins lie in the original Republican Party founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1794 (today, this party is usually referred to as the "Democratic-Republican Party" for the sake of convenience; but such usage is anachronistic). After the disintegration of the Federalist Party, the Republicans were the only major party in American politics. The Presidency of Andrew Jackson, however, destroyed the unity of the Party, with the Jacksonians forming the Democratic-Republican faction, opposed by the National Republicans, led by John Quincy Adams. The Jacksonian "Democratic-Republicans" soon became known as simply "Democrats." From 1833 to 1856, the Democratic Party was opposed chiefly by the Whig Party. From 1856 onward its main opposition has come from the modern Republican Party.

In contemporary times, its primary political ideologies are commitment to tempering capitalism with programs of social welfare. Some other issues have included support for labor unions, civil rights, multilateralism, secularism, multi-culturalism, governmental and private sector actions to create new jobs, environmentalism, public education, progressive taxation, gun control, reproductive rights and Censored page. The political platform of the Democratic Party is usually described as left-wing, as the platform of the Republican Party has generally and especially recently been characterized as right-wing.

The New Democrat movement of the 1980s and 1990s, however, has moved the Democratic agenda in favor of a more centrist approach. This is a primary complaint of many members of the Green Party, leading some Greens, such as David Cobb, to declare, "The Democratic Party is where progressive politics go to die." Democrats generally challenge the validity of the Green critique, citing the important Democratic role in pushing progressive reforms in many states and localities. The Green response to this is that those progressive programs are not being safeguarded by centrist Democrats, and that the country would be better served with election reform measures which would give more progressive third party candidates the opportunity to win races than they have under the current system.

Contents

Symbols

"A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion" by Thomas Nast
Enlarge
"A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion" by Thomas Nast

On January 19, 1870, a political cartoon by Thomas Nast appearing in Harper's Weekly titled "A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion" for the first time symbolized the Democratic Party as a donkey. Since then, the donkey has been widely used as a symbol of the Party, though unlike the Republican elephant, the donkey has never been officially adopted as the Party's logo.

In the early 20th century, the traditional symbol of the Democratic Party in Midwestern states such as Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio was the rooster, as opposed to the Republican eagle. This symbol still appears on Kentucky and Indiana ballots.

For the majority of the 20th Century, Missouri Democrats used the Statue of Liberty as their ballot emblem. This meant that when Libertarian candidates received ballot access in Missouri in 1976, they could not use the Statue of Liberty, their national symbol, as the ballot emblem. Missouri Libertarians instead used the Liberty Bell until 1995, when the mule became Missouri's state animal. From 1995 until 2004 there was some confusion on the behalf of voters, as the Democratic ticket was marked with the Statue of Liberty, and it seemed that the Libertarians were using a donkey.

In addition to the physical symbols of the Democratic Party are its emotional symbols. These include persons (Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy), programs (Social Security, minimum wage, Medicare) and goals (expanded health insurance availability, greater incomes for average American citizens, a fairer tax structure, a foreign policy more successful in pursuing the twin goals of both peace and strength.)

A Democratic activist over the last four decades, and delegate to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, State Representative Mark B. Cohen of Philadelphia, said "One cannot fully understand Democratic policy proposals unless one understands the past. Year after year, the Democrats took ideas that were considered impractical and converted them into programs considered to be necessities by many Americans. Democratic campaign rhetoric is full of symbolic references to these achievements."

Organization

For more information on how American political parties are organized, see Politics of the United States.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) provides national leadership for the United States Democratic Party. It is responsible for developing and promoting the Democratic political platform, as well as coordinating fundraising and election strategy. There are similar committees in every U.S. state and most U.S. counties (though in some states, Party organization lower than state-level is arranged by legislative districts). It can be considered the counterpart of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and their state and local organizations. Its current chairman is Terry McAuliffe.

The Democratic Party also has fundraising and strategy committees for U.S. House races (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee), U.S. Senate races (Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee), gubernatorial races (Democratic Governors Association ), and state legislative races (Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee).

History

The Democratic Party was formed from the Andrew Jackson-led "Democratic-Republican" faction of the old Republican Party (now, referred to as the "Democratic-Republicans" for convenience). Following his defeat in the election of 1824 despite having a plurality of the popular vote, Jackson set about building a political coalition strong enough to defeat President John Quincy Adams in the election of 1828. The coalition that he built was the foundation of the subsequent Democratic Party.

In the 1850s, following the disintegration of the Whig Party, the Southern wing of the Democratic Party became increasingly associated with the expansion of slavery, in opposition to the newly revamped United States Republican Party. Democrats in the Northern states opposed this new trend, and at the 1860 nominating convention the Party split and nominated two candidates (see U.S. presidential election, 1860). As a result, the Democrats went down in defeat – part of the chain of events leading up to the United States Civil War. After the war, the Democrats were a shattered party, but eventually gathered enough support to elect reform candidate Grover Cleveland to two (non-consecutive) terms in the Presidency.

In 1896 the Democrats chose Populist William Jennings Bryan over Cleveland as their candidate, who then lost to William McKinley. The Democrats did not regain the Presidency until William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt split the Republican vote and Woodrow Wilson won with a modest plurality in 1912. The Republicans again took the lead in 1920 by championing laissez-faire regulatory policies. The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression set the stage for a more interventionist government and Franklin Delano Roosevelt won a landslide victory in 1932, campaigning on a platform of "relief, recovery, and reform". (see U.S. presidential election, 1932) After winning re-election in 1936, Roosevelt claimed a mandate and embarked on an ambitious legislative program. He was stymied, however, by an alliance of Republicans and conservative Democrats. Frustrated by the conservative wing of the party, Roosevelt made an attempt to rid himself of it, and in 1938, he actively campaigned against five incumbent conservative Democratic senators. However, Roosevelt's attempt to purge the party of its conservatives failed when all five senators won re-election over Roosevelt's efforts. (Sixty years later, the party did find itself largely divorced from its southern conservative wing, but with much less satisfaction at the result than Roosevelt might have anticipated.)

Roosevelt's New Deal programs focused on job-creation through public works projects as well as on social welfare programs such as Social Security. The political coalition of labor unions, minorities (most significantly, Catholics and Jews), liberals, and Southern whites (the New Deal Coalition) allowed the Democrats to control the government for much of the next 30 years, until the issue of civil rights divided conservative Southern whites from the rest of the Party (see Dixiecrat). From the time of the founding of the Republican Party, African-Americans gave strong support to the anti-slavery party, which lasted until Roosevelt's New Deal dramatically opened up new economic opportunities. With the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, and President Lyndon Johnson's support, blacks made an almost complete shift to the Democratic Party. Another consequence of this was the start of the flight of Southern whites to the Republican Party.

Of the seven U.S. Presidents since Lyndon Johnson, two (Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton) have been Democrats; the rest have been Republicans, who have often controlled one or both chambers of the U.S. Congress at the same time. During right-wing Republican President Ronald Reagan's term, conservative Democrats who supported many of Reagan's policies were called "Reagan Democrats". Many of them left the Democratic Party and became Republican.

The Democratic Leadership Council has in recent years worked to position the Party towards a centrist position. While the Party may retain left-of-center supporters, the Democrats are generally a catch all party with widespread appeal to most opponents of the Republicans. This includes organized labor, educators, environmentalists, supporters of civil rights, progressive taxation proponents, gays, supporters of gun control, pro-choice groups and other opponents of the social conservatism favored by many Republicans.

In the 1990s the Democratic Party re-invigorated itself, in part by moving to the right on economic and social policy. President Bill Clinton implemented a balanced federal budget and welfare reform, traditionally Republican causes. 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 NAFTA free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico over the strong objection of the unions.

In the extremely close 2000 Presidential election, some progressives, unhappy with the centrist shift of the Party, instead supported the leftist Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. Many angry Democrats cited this "spoiler effect" as the cause for Gore's defeat. Furthermore, some point out that while Nader probably did influence the contested Florida election, Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan won more votes in some states (Wisconsin, Iowa and Oregon) than Bush lost by. Many Greens also criticize the Democrats for calling them "spoilers", and simultaneously not supporting electoral reform such as Instant Runoff Voting. In addition a number of Republicans have highlighted a double standard from Democrats by pointing to the fact that if Ross Perot had not run in 1992 and therefore taken away votes from President George H.W. Bush then Bill Clinton would never have been elected. The issue of the "Nader Factor" surfaced again in the 2004 election, when Nader ran as an Independent but benefited from financial and get-on-the-state-ballot petition support by some Republicans eager to re-elect President George W. Bush.

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the nation's focus changed to issues of national security and increasing isolation of the United States as the sole remaining and increasingly proactive superpower. Virtually all Congressional Democrats voted with their Republican colleagues to authorize President Bush's 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, but they were split over the 2003 invasion of Iraq and increasingly expressed concerns about both the justification and progress of the War on Terrorism, the jobless recovery, and the domestic effects including challenges to civil liberties and privacy from the USA PATRIOT Act. By 2004, the failure of George W. Bush's administration to find weapons of mass destruction, mounting combat casualties in Iraq, and the lack of any end point for the War on Terror were also issues in the American national elections. John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran and U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, won his Party's nomination by upsetting anti-war candidate, former Governor of Vermont Howard Dean, in the Iowa caucus and winning the majority of state primary races that followed. However, Kerry lost the 2004 Presidential election to Bush by a narrow margin (albeit a significantly wider one than that in the disputed 2000 Presidential election, including winning the national popular vote). The Democratic Party also lost seats in both the House and Senate in that election.

Prominent Democratic-Party figures

Presidents

  1. Andrew Jackson (18291837)
  2. Martin Van Buren (18371841)
  3. James K. Polk (18451849)
  4. Franklin Pierce (18531857)
  5. James Buchanan (18571861)
  6. Grover Cleveland (1885-1889) and (1893-1897)
  7. Woodrow Wilson (19131921)
  8. Franklin D. Roosevelt (19331945)
  9. Harry S. Truman (19451953)
  10. John F. Kennedy (19611963)
  11. Lyndon Johnson (19631969)
  12. Jimmy Carter (19771981)
  13. Bill Clinton (19932001)

Presidential nominees

Vice Presidential nominees

Other currently notable Democrats

(Years of birth are indicated.)

Historically notable Democrats

(Years of birth and death are indicated.)

State affiliates

In most states the Democratic Party is simply known as the "Democratic Party". However, two of its state Party organizations have slightly different names, namely the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party. See List of state Democratic Parties in the U.S.

A Note on Style

The usual adjective used in connection with the party is "Democratic", e.g., "Democratic Party", "Democratic candidates", etc., whereas members of the party are "Democrats." In order to avoid the positive connotation of the word "democratic", Republicans will occasionally use "democrat" as the adjective form, but this is relatively rare and generally regarded as incorrect. The abbreviation "Dems" is sometimes used to refer to members of the Party, but unlike "GOP", it is generally not acceptable in formal contexts, such as the text of news articles. When identifying an elected representative, the single letter "D" is used to denote a Democrat, followed by a hyphen and an abbreviation of the locale he or she represents. For example, Barbara Boxer, a Democratic U.S. senator from California may be referred to as "U.S. Sen. Barbara L. Boxer (D-CA)," or, in Associated Press style, "U.S. Sen. Barbara L. Boxer, D-Calif., ...".

See also

External links

  • Democratic National Committee http://www.democrats.org/
  • Young Democrats of America http://www.yda.org/
  • College Democrats of America http://www.collegedems.com/
  • Kicking Ass: Daily Dispatches from the DNC http://www.kickingass.org/
  • Progressive Democrats of America http://www.pdamerica.org/



 
Political Parties in the United States

Flag of the United States

Constitution Party | Democratic Party | Green Party | Libertarian Party | Reform Party | Republican Party



Last updated: 02-19-2005 00:08:23
Last updated: 05-03-2005 17:50:55