Democratic Party

V

Party Divisions (1890-1912)

Factionalism had always existed among Democrats, as different regional, social, and economic groups maneuvered to define the party’s stance and candidates; sometimes, as in the realignment of the 1850s, such factionalism cost the party dearly. Late in the 19th century, however, it got entirely out of hand, as three groups fought for control in an increasingly harsh atmosphere. One bloc comprised the traditional Democrats behind New York’s Grover Cleveland, who was president from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. Strong in their memories of Jackson and the Civil War, they still espoused the conventional policies of limited government activities. A second group consisted of the urban political machines, which won the support of immigrants by helping them adjust to conditions in a new country. A third faction was made up of restive groups in the South and West, reacting against the new industrial and centralized economy. Angry farmers and small-town entrepreneurs, feeling badly squeezed by the new economic forces, wanted a shift of Democratic policies toward more vigorous government intervention in their behalf. They were strongly resisted by the traditionalists who ignored, were complacent about, or sometimes cooperated with the new forces the agrarians detested. The urban political machines remained at arm’s length from both, feeling estranged from their values and outlook.

In the 1890s the storm broke. The cautious and traditional reaction of Cleveland’s second administration to the depression after 1893, its hostility to unions and strikes, and its harsh attitudes toward the machines on behalf of civil service reform provoked a revolt by Democratic voters in the South and West. They found in William Jennings Bryan a presidential candidate who overthrew the Cleveland wing in 1896 and dominated the party for a decade afterward. It did them little good, however. Bryan, although supported by the dissident People’s Party, was abandoned by many traditional and urban Democrats, who opposed his program and stance, and he was defeated by the Republican William McKinley.

VI

The Wilsonian Era and the 1920s

At the beginning of the 20th century the Democrats’ minority position among voters remained central to their existence. The Progressive split in Republican ranks helped elect Woodrow Wilson twice, but the entry of the United States into World War I ended that. The war, popular at first, backfired against the Wilson administration when large numbers of German Americans and Irish Americans protested with their votes against U.S. involvement on England’s side. The result was another Republican landslide in 1920, and for the rest of the decade the Democrats remained beset by a new outburst of factionalism. The national convention in 1924 was raucously stalemated between the urban-ethnic wing and the older Bryanite-southern groups. The 1928 nomination of the Irish Catholic Al Smith broke the solid South, part of which went Republican for the first time ever in reaction to the social and cultural values that Smith represented in the eyes of the defecting group.

VII

The New Deal

In the mid-20th century the basic character of the Democratic appeal began to change, first slowly and then rapidly. In the 1930s and 1940s the Democrats became a party of vigorous government intervention in the economy and in the social realm, willing to regulate and redistribute wealth and to protect those least able to help themselves in an increasingly complex society. The urban political machines had brought to the party a commitment to social welfare legislation in order to help their immigrant constituents. At first resisted by Southern Democrats and the other limited-government advocates of the party’s traditional wing, the new look began to win out in the late 1920s. The Great Depression after 1929 and the coming to power of Franklin D. Roosevelt, with his New Deal, solidified and expanded this new commitment.

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Increasingly, under Democratic leadership, the government expanded its role in social welfare and economic regulation. Given the economic situation, this proved to be electorally attractive. Traditional Democrats surged to the polls, new voters joined, and the party won over groups, such as the blacks, who had been Republicans for generations—at first haltingly, then enthusiastically and overwhelmingly. The result was the New Deal coalition that dominated the country for more than 30 years. More people than ever before identified themselves as Democrats. Roosevelt became an even more powerful symbol than Jackson had been, winning four successive terms. In addition, Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition of southern populists and northern liberals laid the base for the Democrats to control Congress in all but four of the 48 years between 1933 and 1981. Despite defections on the left and right, President Harry Truman won reelection in 1948 running on the New Deal record. Although the war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower easily won the presidency in 1952 and 1956, the Democrats ran Congress for six of his eight years in office.

VIII

After Eisenhower

The Democrats regained the White House with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and passed much vigorous legislation, culminating in the Great Society policies of President Lyndon Johnson. These continued and expanded New Deal social commitments, this time to encompass civil rights and to aid minorities and the unorganized. As the party solidified its support among blacks, however, it lost southern whites and northern labor and ethnic voters. The country prospered, but conflicts over social and military policy intensified.

The Vietnam War (1959-1975) provoked many within the party to challenge it on its anti-Communist foreign policy, which had directly led to involvement in Vietnam. At the same time, the revolt of the young against the draft and on matters of personal behavior and discipline contributed to a strong challenge to party norms and regular patterns of doing business. The clumsy reactions of party leaders and the Chicago police culminated in street battles between groups of protesters and police units during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. People within the party who tried to come to terms with the new forces of peace and individual liberty lost in 1968 but were able to seize control of the party in 1972. New nominating rules, inspired by the restlessness within the party, and the weakening power of its leaders after 1968 led to the nomination of George McGovern. His campaign ended in overwhelming defeat, but the party bounced back after the excesses of Watergate and the tapering off of the fervor induced by the war.

IX

Democrats Return to the White House

The nomination of a Southerner, Jimmy Carter, in 1976 brought the solid South back into the Democratic camp for the first time since 1944, but only temporarily. The clash of social values, on one hand, and changing economic issues, on the other, shifted the center of gravity within the party and continued to drive many away. Issues such as inflation divided the party badly. Political parties in general were in decline, as fewer voters remained loyal to them or accepted their dictates.

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