Democratic Party (USA)
The Democratic Party arose from the Democratic-Republican coalition which supported Jefferson's presidential campaign of 1800. The Democratic-Republicans were strong in rural, southern, and western areas, opposed to the Federalists, led by John Adams, whose strength was in the industrial and trading north and east. The party was refounded as the Democrats by Andrew Jackson, President from 1829 to 1837, the first frontiersman to be elected President. In the years leading up to the Civil War, therefore, the Democratic Party was a coalition of rural and frontier interests against urban and industrial interests. As most of the United States was rural and it had an enormous frontier, the Democratic coalition won most federal elections. Some have seen the raising of the slavery issue in national politics in the 1850s, associated with the foundation of the Republican Party, as a deliberate attempt by the persistent losers to break up this Democratic coalition and thereby gain power. If so, it was successful, but at the cost of a civil war. The Civil War united rich and poor in the South behind the Democrats, and therefore when Southern whites were fully enfranchised after 1876 (see also civil rights) the South became a Democratic one-party state in federal and many state and local elections.
The Democrats suffered a setback in the 1896 presidential election when a western faction under W. J. Bryan, which campaigned for an inflationary coinage of silver in order to relieve debtors, captured them. This campaign, of which The Wizard of Oz is an allegory (Dorothy's slippers should be silver, as in the book, not ruby, as in the film), recreated the Democratic Party of Jefferson and Jackson, but by now America was less rural and the party was correspondingly less successful. The next big change in Democratic fortunes came between 1928 and 1936, when the urban poor were consolidated and Northern blacks were brought into the fold for the first time, by the welfare policies of F. D. Roosevelt's New Deal. This began a period of Democratic hegemony in federal politics which lasted until 1968. Since then, scholars are unanimous that the ‘New Deal alignment’ has died, but unclear as to what has taken its place. The Democratic Party controlled the House of Representatives until 1994, usually but not always controls the Senate, but between 1969 and 2001 controlled the Presidency for only 12 years (1977-81 and 1993-2001).
The New Deal coalition was extremely broad. In particular, it embraced most black Americans and most white racist Americans. Though they could agree on welfare policy, they obviously disagreed on race policy. Neither the executive nor the legislature could therefore enact civil rights until 1964, in the wake of the assassination of President Kennedy.
American parties are much weaker than parties in most European regimes. In most states, anybody who wishes may announce that he or she is a Democrat or Republican, vote in that party's primary election, and run for office, acquiring the party label if successful in a primary (or, in some states, in a caucus). The parties do have some control over their members in Congress, especially in the allocation of committee places. Even here, however, seniority of membership of Congress remains important (though less important than it once was). Conservative Southern Democrats held safe seats and therefore easily gained seniority. However, this effect has faded as the South has become solidly Republican.
