Grade William Henry Harrison's presidency

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

How is William Henry Harrison 'conservative', and Martin Van Buren 'liberal'?  Do you have some sort of definition for these terms for antebellum America?  

I think he meant it in terms of policies that favor the working class (mostly small farmers and urban immigrants at that time) vs policies that favor the elite (industrialists, merchants, large farmers, etc).

tl;dr, but it sounds like someone is just making things up so that they can make the seemingly anti-slavery man a liberal even though he was Jackson's right-hand guy economically. Jackson was a classical liberal, but they don't want credit for him because of the Trail of Tears. (Edit: Did read now - I didn't realize Mechaman was making the post. This isn't the reason, but it still seems like a weird comparison as the beliefs don't line up.)

Meanwhile the Whigs were founded to implement big government. American System, anybody? Tariffs, Centralized government (Except state's rights on slavery for WHH - and from what I have read on here from HST, it seems like he tried to expand it?), and massive improvements and taxes. Subsidizing businesses doesn't make WHH not to the left of Van Buren. Obviously, he's not a leftist in the forum sense, but isn't that in line with what most centrist/centre-left Democrats would do today.

Obviously Van Buren wasn't completely opposed to slavery either, just opposing the spread of it, but being the nominee of the Free Soil Party legacy has helped his legacy a ton, especially on here.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

How is William Henry Harrison 'conservative', and Martin Van Buren 'liberal'?  Do you have some sort of definition for these terms for antebellum America?  

I think he meant it in terms of policies that favor the working class (mostly small farmers and urban immigrants at that time) vs policies that favor the elite (industrialists, merchants, large farmers, etc).

tl;dr, but it sounds like someone is just making things up so that they can make the seemingly anti-slavery man a liberal even though he was Jackson's right-hand guy economically. Jackson was a classical liberal, but they don't want credit for him because of the Trail of Tears. (Edit: Did read now - I didn't realize Mechaman was making the post. This isn't the reason, but it still seems like a weird comparison as the beliefs don't line up.)

Meanwhile the Whigs were founded to implement big government. American System, anybody? Tariffs, Centralized government (Except state's rights on slavery for WHH - and from what I have read on here from HST, it seems like he tried to expand it?), and massive improvements and taxes. Subsidizing businesses doesn't make WHH not to the left of Van Buren. Obviously, he's not a leftist in the forum sense, but isn't that in line with what most centrist/centre-left Democrats would do today.

Obviously Van Buren wasn't completely opposed to slavery either, just opposing the spread of it, but being the nominee of the Free Soil Party legacy has helped his legacy a ton, especially on here.

My histtorical analysis of Martin Van Buren has very little do with his anti-slavery views.  It had more to do wiith Antonio V's conclusions.  Slavery was too much of a grey area issue that involved everyone from moralistic Puritans to Know Nothings to German Marxists.  Any objective historian should mention the Puritan work ethic (hardly a liberal philosophy) alongside the "Commuunist Manifesto reasing radicals" when discussing it.

In regards to big government vs. small government I believe that is an oversimplification of old school politics.  You ask any random Democratic politician why they are Democrats I doubt very many of them will say "well because they happen to be the liberal party at the moment."  Very few people go into politics thinking that their political party could "change sides" at any moment (blue dogs and "moderate" New Englanders are the exceptions, not the rule).  If you asked most Democratic officeholders why they are Democrats you will more than likely hear something along the lines of "the Democratic Party is the party of the working class", "Democrats fight for the poor", etc. etc. etc..  This is the point that gets missed alot, but what has changed over the past hundred and fifty years is not the ends of liberalism, but the means.

You have to rememberr that for the vast majority of human history that oligarchial rule had been the rule and not the exception.  In Old Europe monarchs and their Parliaments (which were generally used to expand the influence and authority of rich landowners) used the power of government to institute regressive taxation to keep the poor in perpetual poverty (one of the causes of the French Revolution).  Further, laws like the Penal Laws used big government laws to disenfranchise and strip millions of people of many things we would consider basic political rights like free speech, the right to own property, the right to marry, and the right not to swear allegiance to the Anglican Church.
Government intervention was used far more on the side of the wealthy and powerful than it was to advance the cause of the disadvantaged up to that point in history.  Thus why small government back then was often viewed as a liberal view more so than a conservative one.  This attitude would be dominant in liberal psyche until about the early 20th century when liberals started adopting the socialistic (emphasis) arguments in favor of turning the "tool of the rich" against them.  It should be noted that as late as the 1910s that labor unions were skeptical of government intervention into the workplace (something that showed up in the aftermath of that New York City fire that the Democratically controlled (emphasis) New York Assembly passed workplace safety laws on).

As it regards American politics, policies like high tariffs were generally viewed as "the rich milking the poor" for good reason.  Free Trade has only become a conservative view in recent times due to the international workplace and globalization where any rich first world country can move operations overseas.  Back in the day it took months for trade shipments to reach port and the third world working conditions were happening in Lowell and not Laos (very hard to blame low tariffs for low pay in other words).  Factory workers were paid barely survivable wages while working inhumane hours while their robber baron bosses made hand over fist.  Protectionism in theory benefits the entire community, but the Gilded Age revealed it to be little more than a scheme for rich industrialists to force everyone poorer than them to buy their overpriced goods while providing very little benefits or pay improvements for their laborers (and thus why no sane economist recommends returning to it).  Free trade had such a strong following among the working class due to the idea that free and fair competition between domestic and foreign companies (remember, this was before globalization) would force domestic owners to increase worker wages in order to motivate labor to produce the best product at the lowest price possible (something Cleveland and Bryan agreed on).  Basically, the concept of perfect competition.

In regards to internal improvements, Democratic opposition to such improvement was widely based on the knowledge that said improvements would be made at the cost of the poor (crippling taxes and tariffs rarely felt by domestic industry but definitely by the poor farmer and laborer) for the benefit of the middle and upper classes (remember middle class is much smaller).  Further, working conditions on such projects were far from humane, as the several hundred strikes by Irish work gangs before the Civil War would show (and further note here, the Know Nothings largely got their numbers from people who used to ID as National Republicans and Whigs, are they "liberal" because they supported big government expansion and centralized government?  I don't think so).
A comparison with the Keystone XL Pipeline could be made re: environmental impact.  Just because something is sold as "improving people's lives" don't mean it's "liberal".

Martin Van Buren, a master of New York machinery, an advocate of freer trade, who blamed the failings of the economy on a rich elite class of bankers, was hardly conservative.

Incredibly interesting perspective. This is why I missed you so much the past few months. I have to disagree in two senses: 1) I don't necessarily view a society through the rich vs. poor mentality. There is a way for everyone to grow together fairly. I do suppose it was not the same through much of history though, and you'd probably argue even today. Looking back from today's perspective would be pretty inaccurate - I'd assume 90% of todays America would be for Van Buren. It was rightfully mentioned as horrible to compare time periods. (You should whip some sense into those Dems voting for the American System in that other poll!) 2) Today's far right does rail against banks as well. Whether they're economically populist or libertarian, both groups spend a ton of time hating on Wall St for its elite interests. it seems to be a common trait of the extremes whereas the centre loves it.

Also, re: Keystone XL, the Democrats' biggest moneyed interests were pushing that for quite awhile. I suppose the Republicans always supported it because they're in the pockets of Big Oil, but it wasn't obviously partisan to begin with. There was a clash between the two members of the coalition, and arguably the more elite one won. You can argue "Ultimately that policy aided them from an environmental disaster that would've been more harmful to them" but Republicans can shape the narrative on a host of issues as well, hopefully starting with how their policies can affect income inequality.

And thanks for reminding me why I love both Cleveland and Bryan!

We finally have something for GPG (Edit: Agh, Antonio beat me in adding it.)

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Incredibly interesting perspective. This is why I missed you so much the past few months. I have to disagree in two senses: 1) I don't necessarily view a society through the rich vs. poor mentality. There is a way for everyone to grow together fairly. I do suppose it was not the same through much of history though, and you'd probably argue even today. Looking back from today's perspective would be pretty inaccurate - I'd assume 90% of todays America would be for Van Buren.

I'm not so sure about that - a lot of Americans today wouldn't go for a party that is categorically unwilling to support redistributing federal dollars to build infrastructure in their state.

Let me introduce you to the Republican Party.

Incredibly interesting perspective. This is why I missed you so much the past few months. I have to disagree in two senses: 1) I don't necessarily view a society through the rich vs. poor mentality. There is a way for everyone to grow together fairly. I do suppose it was not the same through much of history though, and you'd probably argue even today. Looking back from today's perspective would be pretty inaccurate - I'd assume 90% of todays America would be for Van Buren.

I'm not so sure about that - a lot of Americans today wouldn't go for a party that is categorically unwilling to support redistributing federal dollars to build infrastructure in their state.

Today, I think you would have Democrats be the dominant party with Whigs only having outside support. Lets look at the main issues.

Whigs:
-Federal involvement in economy
-Tends to support the rich, even to the point of hurting the poor.
-More liberal on social issues.

Democrats:
-Little government involvement in the economy.
-Based in the poor, with distrust towards the rich.
-Conservative on social issues.

In terms of minorities, Whigs would be out of touch with Blacks and Latinos. They would have a chance with Asians.

In terms of the gender gap, I feel like women might actually trend to the Whig Party.

For North vs. South, the Democrats would be comfortably ahead in the South, but there would a strong Whig contingent in places like Florida. Whigs would run best in New England.

Places like Maryland and Virginia would support the Whigs because of a large number of government employees.

I like this, but I'm curious where you are getting social issues from. Is there really anything to go off of other than slavery and possibly immigration? Even those two issues show very little correlation to each other.