Democratic Party

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY is one of the two major political parties in the United States. It is known as a more liberal, left-of-center party, as opposed to the Republican Party. The Democratic Party, which claims Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson as its founders, is the oldest continuous political party in the United States and in the world. This is rather remarkable, because many countries in the world surpass the United States in age. The origins of the Democratic Party can be traced to the conflicts between then Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and then Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. Both responded to their respective constituencies to a sizable extent. Jefferson advocated for rural, agrarian interests, espousing a political philosophy that was more distrustful of executive and judicial power and authority and more populist. Hamilton's political philosophy favored the urban, affluent, commercial interests, tending toward elitist, national, centralized, and Federalist approaches.

The ascendancy of Jefferson to the U.S. presidency marked the decline of the Hamilton or Federalist opposition. The Jefferson election was a landmark election in [Page 243]American history. The impact of Jefferson's political philosophy and ideas was to linger for years.

However, by 1824, there were divisions in the then-named Democratic-Republican Party. Andrew Jackson emerged as a leader of a faction that became known as the Democrats, which presaged the development of the modern-day Democratic Party. It could be said that in some respects it became more populist and more democratic. The Democrats garnered the support of urban workers, Catholic immigrants, and people from the new southern and western states that had been admitted to the Union. The people attracted to the Democratic Party felt to some extent that they had been either ignored or left out of the process. This tradition or phenomenon has persisted to this day. The Democratic Party draws much of its support from segments of the population that have felt left out, oppressed, and disenfranchised.

All of this seemed to be a successful effort, for the Democrats prevailed in Congress. However, this Democratic dominance was not to last. The emerging, troublesome issue of slavery, combined with rising sectionalism (especially, of course, in the south), began to have a profound effect on the entire political process, and particularly for the Democrats.

The 1860 presidential election, surely one of the most important in American history, resulted in the election of a Republican, Abraham Lincoln. Democrats found themselves in a new and uncomfortable position of being the minority party. The next election further represented a decline in Democratic Party fortunes. However, a seminal economic event of profound magnitude altered Democratic Party fortunes in an eventful way: the Great Depression of 1929.

Republican Herbert C. Hoover was president when the Great Depression struck. Many blamed the Republicans for this cataclysmic event, and it had an untoward effect on the Republican Party for years to come. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, and he successfully reinvigorated the Democratic Party and helped to restore the United States economically from the ravages of the Great Depression. The modern Democratic Party owes a great deal to President Roosevelt for a number of reasons. Roosevelt was elected president an unprecedented four times. Furthermore, Democrats were again dominant in the Congress, and were to remain so for years to come.

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