The Democratic Party

What does the Democratic Party stand for?

One would be diplomacy, or one word you could kind of use would be more of a 'globalist' approach, or a diplomatic approach to foreign policy. Another would be civil liberties or civil libertarianism, which gets on the idea of civil rights, civil liberties and that sort of thing. And then another one would be support for the welfare state. You can put it negatively as 'big' government or something like that but it's the idea of government stepping in to help certain people who are losing out in the free market, is one way to put it and that sort of thing. So it's support for welfare programs and government programs and that sort of thing. And that's kind of the three main pillars, of course there are many more that goes into it but those are kind of the three main pillars that we could lump into the Democratic Party.

How did the Democratic Party start?

The Democratic Party is the oldest political party in the United States and the oldest political party in terms of a democracy in the world. It can trace its origins in one sense back to Thomas Jefferson and 1792 when Thomas Jefferson and James Madison started to become unhappy with George Washington and the Federalist Party. So, he kind of started what he called the Democratic-Republican Party at that point in time. And that party really came into power with the election of Thomas Jefferson in his presidency starting in 1801. But then again, in another sense, the Democratic Party didn't come into it's own until the presidency of Andrew Jackson and until the 1830's. And Jackson kind of turned the Democratic-Republican Party into the Democratic Party, started the Democratic National Committee, and that sort of thing, and kind of created more of an organization to it. The Democratic-Republican Party had started to gain factions within itself, and so he kind of tried to organize one faction to be the dominant faction there, and that's really where the Democratic Party started.

How has the Democratic Party evolved since Andrew Jackson?

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.

How is the Democratic Party changing?

The Democratic Party has had to do some soul searching since 1994, really, when Newt Gingrich and the Republican revolution happened, and they essentially were out of power besides Bill Clinton. But they were out of power until 2006. To be honest, it's still doing that soul searching, and it's still trying to come up with a positive message. In the 80s and 90s, the Republican Party was called the party of ideas because they were the ones who seemed to have all the ideas at the time. So the Democratic Party is in that transition right now. The FDR coalition, which was called the New Deal Coalition, that's pretty much been on the decline. So they're trying to form a new coalition, and I can't really say that their coalition has solidified as of yet.

Who votes for the Democratic Party?

The kind of people who vote for the Democratic Party tend to be people who are involved in unions. The unions have been a huge aspect of the Democratic Party every since The New Deal. Even before hand, to a certain extent, since the progressive movement. Minorities. So this is minorities in the broad sense. I mean, ethnic minorities but also minorities in terms of sexual orientations, women to a certain extent- even though they make up a majority of the country. So those people who classify themselves as kind of minorities tend to vote with the Democrats. Getting into more narrow groups: academics, economists, journalists, tend to overwhelmingly vote democrat. There is a notion that increasing education tends to get you to vote more towards the democrats after a certain point.

What are the strongest Democratic states?

Democratic strongholds are really, the Northeast would be one of them, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Your, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, though Pennsylvania a little bit less. Moving over we have Michigan, that tends to be democratic because it's a big union state. Then, California, the west coast. California, Washington, Oregon are also big democratic strongholds. Then there are swing states that go throughout the middle of the country. But the northeast and the west coast tend to be the big democratic strongholds.