How did the Democrats turn toward the left and how did the GOP turn right?

[tpfkaw]

FDR, FDR.

(The Democrats have always represented the cultural left, and the Republicans the cultural right).

[tpfkaw]

FDR, FDR.

(The Democrats have always represented the cultural left, and the Republicans the cultural right).

Roots are with Bryan and his embrace of the Populist planks into his 1896 platform.

You could read the 1896 Democratic platform and then inform us of how left-wing you found it...

[tpfkaw]

And in the 1892 Democratic platform...

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[tpfkaw]

What Beet says is pretty fair (although, as I pointed out, the trust plank is just a mildly reworded version of the 1892 plank, and Cleveland created the ICC); but in any case the Democrats were always associated, despite periodic deviations generally mirrored by the contemporary Republicans, with economic liberalism.  This carried through until the FDR administration.  I also pointed out that the Democrats have always been the cultural left, from the Jacksonians to today.

[tpfkaw]

The Democrat ran to the right of the Republican in at least 1904, 1912, 1924, 1928, 1932, and 1960, and arguably in 1952,* 1956,* and 1976, and a case could be made for 1992.

*depending on how much weight one assigns to civil rights

The parties have only aligned into coherent entities quite recently, but the position of the Democrats as the party of (what would now be considered) economic leftism wasn't solidified until the New Deal.