How has the Democratic Party evolved since Andrew Jackson?

How has the Democratic Party evolved since Andrew Jackson?

Matthew Jones (Political Science Instructor) gives expert video advice on: What does the Democratic Party stand for?; How did the Democratic Party start?; How has the Democratic Party evolved since Andrew Jackson? and more...

Andrew Jackson created this coalition and part of this coalition was the southern slave states and that became a huge part of the coalition. John C. Calhoun and others were big politicians at the time. Obviously, after the Civil War that started to change because the southern states lost the Civil War. And really, after the Industrial Revolution, the Progressive Movement started, and the Progressive Movement was more populous, more workers' rights, more the welfare state trying to rid of the excesses of the Industrial Revolution and that took hold in the Democratic Party with William Jennings Bryan, who was the champion for that. Progressivism took hold of the Democratic Party and FDR really was the one who was critically important to the modern Democratic Party because he created the coalition of the welfare state coalition that allowed for African-Americans, who used to be primarily Republican, and southern Democrats to come together in this coalition with other lower-class, working-class groups and this coalition lasted up until the 1960's and 70's when it started to fragment. In the 1960's and 70's it started to fragment with Goldwater and Nixon and the southern strategy started to pull away those southern Democrats away from the Democratic Party as the Democratic Party started to move more socially liberal or socially left. And so now we have, of course, the South being primarily Republican and the Democratic Party has moved to more of the social libertarian or social left, socially liberal ideas, and that's moved to New England, the Northeast and to western California and Oregon.