Talk Elections

Was it from some of Bryan's ideas or did Wilson start to bring the liberals (of the time) to the Democratic camp?

For the GOP was it Robert Taft who started the conservatism movement in the GOP?

But then they all went right after Republicans went to an educational Al-qaeda bootcamp.

Racism.

The Panic of 1893.

FDR, FDR.

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

Two reasons: the Civil Rights Act and Watergate.

So Wilson's Child Labor laws were not leftist for that time or his support for the right of women to vote?

That's true especially with the Tea Party.

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

I suppose you can see some shifts much earlier on, the New Deal obviously being one of them. But the turns that established the status-quo of today to me for the Democrats becoming advocates for Civil Rights (and the GOP taking advantage of the Southern Democrats disenchantment) and for the GOP, they needed a new base to suck-up votes from after Watergate, and from the 1976 election on, they focused on evangelical Christians.

The ironic thing is that the establishment of the GOP never really changed, which is why they're terrified of Santorum, he represents what they've kept at bay... a genuine fire-breathing social conservative.

You could read the 1896 Democratic platform (http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29586) and then inform us of how left-wing you found it...

What do you mean by cultural? Because supporting an end to slavery doesn't sound that conservative of the time, & remember Mr. Evangelical Bryan.

And, for God's sake, pretty much the rest of this thread is just a Democratic hack thread. "Racism"! Hah!

I said roots. That does not mean the party dramatically lurched to the left, but began the process. And if you read the question, that is what the OP asked. If you take time to read the very link you posted, the roots are there:



Sure is government intervention in here.

In addition, Bimetallism was brought into the Democratic platform, to benefit the poor farmers.

And in the 1892 Democratic platform...

It's pretty left wing.

The Democratic party in 1896 was in transition from Jacksonianism to what we would today recognize as leftism. The fact that much Jacksonian anti-government rhetoric sounds right wing to today's ears is confusing, but it was considered left-wing at the time because government was still identified with the interests of elites. Because of this 19th century leftism is what we would today call libertarianism. Its origins lie with the radical (Benjamin Franklin; Thomas Paine) and agrarian (Jefferson) wings of the American revolution, with antifederalism, with the first Republican party, with the Democratic-Republican party, and finally with Jacksonian Democracy, which cast a shadow on the 19th century Democratic party almost as long as FDR did on the 20th. After the Civil War, the agrarian ideal was permanently crushed and the guts of the Jacksonian legacy ripped out with it, but the Democratic party continued on in a zombie-like state, under the Bourbon Democrats, until 1896. At that time it was swallowed by the Populist party. The 1896 platform is fascinating because it combines traditional Jacksonian attacks on big government and the centralization of power with the beginnings of usage of government for progressive purposes through the regulatory ICC.

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.

I'm not sure that the party of Clement Vallandingham could be considered left in any way. The absorption of the Populists seems like a pretty good place to me (although there were of course times after that where the Democratic candidate for President ran to the right of the Republican, and partisan ideological differentiation at lower levels is a very recent thing).

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.

Mckinely was very religious or atleast moralist himself. It was the time period.

Beet and Worms have it pretty well put.

Looking at the opposite side of the coin for a minute. Until 1896, strong central gov't was Conservative. Part of this was a post French Revolution reaction, and part of it was that the elites, that dominated that Federalists/Whigs/Republicans (GOP), preferred a stronger government because of the spectacle of Shays, Whiskey Rebellions, Civil War etc. And since gov't was so tiny, it didn't pose a problem or hinderance. It is only after the government starts to get bigger, that these interests start to clamor for a smaller government. That is why you see business seeking and benefiting from less gov't in the 1920's, a response to the perceived excesses of the progressive era. The same applies to the Wilkies and other business people who experienced New Deal gov't and found themselves desiring a smaller, less intrusive state.

To answer the question, you had this guy named Alexander Hamilton who sought to created a modern industrial economy, based off manufacturing and dominated by business elites. As a response, you had a reaction seeking to preserve the ideals of the Revolution and serve the interests of the common man, led by Thomas Jefferson with help from his buddies James². That is how it happened in the 1790's.

This depends a bit on how deterministic one is.

What I would say is that after 1896 the Democrats were destined to become the party of the left. They weren't, in any definite way, of course. But it was inevitable. The same way that by WWII it was inevitable for the Dixiecrats to jump ship, even if it had not happened yet.

Back before that it seems to me as if the parties could theoretically have gone either way.

Um, the 92 and 96 planks on trusts have virtually nothing in common. They could easily be two major centre-right and centre-left parties' stances of a given year.

What does he mean by "cultural left", anyways? Tolerance for non-protestant, ethnic Whites?

A lot of that occurred between 1990 and 2010. Keep in mind in 1990 a lot of Congressional representatives were representing opposite party territory.


As to what did it, social values, carbon taxation, universal health care, and Iraq. IE, fundamentally the size and scope of a swelling government.

I'm just going to leave this stand among the rest of the interesting historical discussion.

1896 is a good benchmark. What I want to know is who among us would consider Bryan of the 'cultural left'? A lot of things about him that today seem extremely conservative or reactionary were actually associated with the progressive movement in his time period.

The Democrats own rhetoric always made them more likely than not to turn into the comparatively left-wing of two distinctly unradical parties.

I see where your coming from as far as the Democratic Party of the early 1900's through (with some exceptions) the 1950's.

I know that's an oversimplification, but yes, racism is the reason the parties are the way they are. LBJ decided that he liked black people (not blah people) so he did some civil rights stuff. He became unpopular in the Democratic south for this, and it won over the Republicans of the North. The Democrats of the south were appealed to by Nixon in 1968, using the racists as a way to get elected.

Ford and Carter weren't racist, so neither party really developed. But then Republicans found someone who would not only become despised by blacks, but also become the most charismatic president in American history. Said person was very right-wing, and the Republicans followed him further and further right, with the Democrats in opposition to him.

Racism is the answer.

Back to "cultural left".

There definitely is, in the post Civil War era, an alignment of the Republicans as the Ins, the All-American, Grand Ole, fandumb gungho patriotic party, and the Democrats as the Outs, the groups whose membership in the American body politic was less core: White Southerners, ex-copperheads, Roman Catholics, immigrants.
Blacks, far more of an "out" group than any of the others, are the big excemption up to 1876, but the Republicans left them dangling from the bridge that the Democrats had strung them to that year. That Blacks continued to vote Republican where they were allowed to vote for another sixty years is due entirely to lack of alternative.

If that is what wormy meant, then yes, he's right for a change. There was nothing unavoidable about it until at least 1896, and possibly 1932, but the seeds were sown then. 1896 builds on this 1868 base, 1932 builds on 1896, the 60s build on the 30s, the 90s and 2000s builds on the 60s. Even though there's nothing immediately recognizable left from 1865 except Republicans questioning Democratic patriotism.

The Democrats have never really been "left". Yes, they have usually been the more "populist" of the two parties (though "populism" is a suspicious word, given that its meaning can change drastically in a relatively short time period). But in the distinctively right-wing American political spectrum, that isn't saying much.

The Jacksonian Democrats that mainly came out of the Southern and (then) Western parts of America were what you would today call "Liberal" or "classical liberal" (I hate that term, btw. :P) They represented the small holders, small farmers, self-employed artisans and craftsmen, along with immigrant and native laborers. They were opposed to the more professional "middle class" Whigs, who didn't have the popular organization of the Democrats but had an influential network of support that included newspapers and businesses. Both parties were divided over slavery.

The Whigs' successor in the American two-party system,  the Republicans, were the first party in American history to be created that was not only unified in its opposition to chattel slavery, but was also the first major party to be formed in the emerging industrial capitalist North. Thus, the Republicans were the party of Northern farmers, homesteaders, businessmen and professionals, and other well-educated, politically active, and often affluent men. They were the party of the emerging capitalist middle and upper classes in the Northern United States. The Republicans were mainly a party of creditors, while the Democrats were more divided between debtor and immigrant constituencies who could organize political machines, and a segment of the middle-to-upper classes who hated Democratic machine politics but considered the Republicans to be wrong on vital issues like tariffs and Reconstruction of the South:  the latter group would be known as the so-called "Bourbon Democrats." In the South, the Democrats were the only game in town,  associated with the remnants of the segregationist planter class, along with poor white farmers and laborers as a base of voter support.

So what to make of this history? Well, I think this the beginning of the practical divide between the Republican and Democratic Parties; the Republicans have always been better organized and more cohesive, owing to their more middle-to-upper class support, while the Democrats being the party of "Everyone else" have always been rather poorly organized, but with a potentially larger constituency and consequently, a larger base of popular support.

However, it should be kept in mind that those are generalizations of the parties as collectives; there are so many individual exceptions to the party dynamics within America.  Considering the sheer size of the nation and its vast diversity, one must always be careful to generalize too much.

I'd say Coolidge and Davis were about even in conservatism. Both come from a Jeffersonian mold of governance.

The Democrats have gotten locked in to favors and promises of free handouts ever since 1964. Each time they promise more as if they're going to make everything perfect in life from cradle to grave. Civil Rights is far better today than it was then, but that party still manages to make things sound differently. This pushes them further and further to the left. As for Republicans, they've moved to the right because religion is under attack now. Let's take John F. Kennedy's speech about secularism. That was fine for 1960 when religion wasn't under attack and the only problems may have been between Catholics, Protestants, and a few Jews.  Now your kids can't pray in school, wearing crosses is forbidden for teachers, and homosexuality is taught in kindergarden. I'm sure Kennedy would reverse that speech today. Ronald Reagan even pointed out in 1980 that he agreed with Kennedy but that was in a different era and times had changed even within 20 years. From that point on, the GOP has moved to the right on social issues. Also foreign policy is bigger now than it has been in recent decades and Republicans are very involved with protecting our nation's security which has been turned into a rightwing mindset by liberals. Both parties have separated that's for sure. During the 50's, 60's, and 70's both Democrats and Republicans were more than less centrist with different views on how to balance the budget and collect taxes.

religion is under attack!! to the fort!