The US Democratic Party’s origins are as an opposition to the dominant Federalist party in the early days after the adoption of the US Constitution. Confusingly, at that time it was called the Republican Party, later the Democratic-Republican Party, before taking its present name under Andrew Jackson in 1828. Jackson represented a populist political force opposed to the centralizing élitist views of the followers of Thomas Jefferson, who favoured much stronger federal control at the expense of the autonomy of the individual states. To this day the Democratic Party stresses states’ rights more strongly than the Republican Party. This, and factors such as it still being more populist and less influenced by the intellectual and financial élites of the East Coast, explains why it is so hard to characterize in the political language of Europe. On most issues, and in a very broad sense, the Democrats are to the left of the Republicans, or, in the American usage, are more ‘liberal’. At least since the Second World War, it has been the party of blacks, of organized labour, and has usually attracted the votes of the civil liberties oriented and more egalitarian members of the upper middle class as well. However in the past, and still at times today, the anti-federalist stance has forced them to take up distinctly reactionary policies. The classic historical example of this was in the Civil War, where the bulk of the Democrats opposed the use of force to bring the seceding Southern states back into the Union, a policy, which later became an outright war against slavery, which was advocated by the Republican Party. A long-term consequence of this was that the Southern wing of the Democratic Party was often more conservative in Congress than most Republicans, especially on civil rights issues. Even today this tendency is still present, and Republican presidents often owe their legislative successes to ad hoc coalitions of Southern Democrats with members of their own party.
At the same time the more liberal wing of the Democrats, mainly elected from Northern cities, tends to combine with Republicans from the north and west to put their own legislation through. The Democrats had a majority in the House of Representatives for nearly the whole of the second half of the 20th century, because their populism and welfarism made them more naturally the party of the less-affluent majority of the population. They often controlled the Senate as well, but usually only with a very small majority. However, the rise of the Republicans in previously ‘safe’ Democratic states in the south in the 1990s enabled the Republicans to hold majorities in both chambers of Congress during the presidency of the Democrat, Bill Clinton. Conversely when it comes to the presidency the very different nature of the issues, where capacity for economic management is seen to be more naturally a talent of those who come from the rich corporate sector of American life, and where foreign policy used to be seen as requiring a more aristocratic background, the Democrats were less successful. Prior to Clinton’s election they had held the presidency for only 19 years between 1945 and 1992.
Changing social and demographic patterns eventually forced the Democratic Party itself to change. Organized labour covers only a small fraction of the working population; the mass immigration flows that were the other base of its power in the cities are over; and Republicans were increasingly doing well in the South, previously almost a Democrat monopoly. Having been very unsure of itself and of what it stood for in recent years, the party tried to compete with the Republicans on their own ground of economic management. It was the promise of Clinton in 1992 to get America back to work after years of increasing unemployment and recession, and to guarantee broader access to health provision, that restored the presidency to the Democratic Party, after 12 years of Reagan and Bush administrations, with a strengthened hold on Congress (subsequently lost). The defeat of Clinton’s Democrat successor by the Republican George W. Bush, son of a previous president, was so marginal, and so controversial, as to give no indication of the long-term future for the party.
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