Democratic party

one of the two major political parties in the U.S., founded in 1828.

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One of the two major political parties in the U.S., historically the party of labour, minorities, and progressive reformers.

In the 1790s a group of Thomas Jefferson's supporters called themselves "Democratic Republicans" or "Jeffersonian Republicans" to demonstrate their belief in the principle of popular government and their opposition to monarchism. The party adopted its present name in the 1830s, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. Democrats won nearly every presidential election in the years 1836–60, but the issue of slavery split the party. The Southern Democrats called for the protection of slavery in the new territories, whereas the Northern Democrats, led by Stephen A. Douglas, advocated allowing each territory to decide by popular sovereignty whether to accept slavery within its borders. As a result, in 1860 the new antislavery Republican Party won its first national victory under Abraham Lincoln. From 1861 to 1913 the only Democratic president was Grover Cleveland; in these years the party was basically conservative and agrarian-oriented, and its members were opposed to protective tariffs. It returned to power under Woodrow Wilson, instituting greater federal regulation of banking and industry, but the Republicans' frank embrace of big business drew voters amid the prosperity of the 1920s. Democrats became dominant again in 1932, electing Franklin D. Roosevelt. A coalition of urban workers, small farmers, liberals, and others sustained Democrats in office until 1953, and the party regained the presidency with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960. In the 1970s and '80s the Democrats held the presidency only during the single term of Jimmy Carter (1976–81) but retained majority control of the House of Representatives. They regained the presidency in 1992 with the election of Bill Clinton but lost control of both the House and the Senate in 1994. In the presidential election of 2000, Clinton's vice president, Al Gore, was defeated by Republican George W. Bush. In 2004 the party's presidential nominee, John Kerry, was defeated by Bush, and the Democrats lost seats in both houses of Congress. The modern Democratic Party generally supports a strong federal government with powers to regulate business and industry in the public interest; federally financed social services and benefits for the poor, the unemployed, the aged, and other groups; and the protection of civil rights.

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▪ political party, South Africa

      South African political party established in 1989 by the merger of the Progressive Federal Party with two smaller liberal parties, the National Democratic Movement and the Independent Party. The Democratic Party supported full voting and other civil rights for South Africa's black majority and constitutional changes toward that end.

      In the democratic elections of 1994—the country's first following the dismantling of the apartheid system—the Democratic Party won seven seats in the National Assembly. In 1999, however, it became the second largest party in the legislature, winning 38 seats. The DP subsequently proclaimed itself the party with the “guts to fight back,” and its leader, Tony Leon, cultivated a belligerent attitude toward the ruling African National Congress. The party also announced its opposition to affirmative action. In 2000 the Democratic Party joined with the New National Party (National Party) (NNP) and the Federal Alliance to form the Democratic Alliance, which became South Africa's official opposition party, though the NNP withdrew from the alliance the following year.

▪ political party, United States

Introduction

 in the United States, one of the two major political parties, the other being the Republican Party. Historically, the Democratic Party has supported organized labour, ethnic minorities, and progressive reform. It tends to favour greater government intervention in the economy and to oppose government intervention in the private, noneconomic affairs of citizens. The logo of the Democratic Party, the donkey, was popularized by cartoonist Thomas Nast (Nast, Thomas) in the 1870s; though widely used, it has never been officially adopted by the party.

History

      The Democratic Party is the oldest political party in the United States and among the oldest political parties in the world. It traces its roots to 1792, when followers of Thomas Jefferson (Jefferson, Thomas) adopted the name Republican to emphasize their antimonarchical views. The Republican Party, also known as the Jeffersonian Republicans, advocated a decentralized government with limited powers. Another faction to emerge in the early years of the republic, the Federalist Party, led by Alexander Hamilton (Hamilton, Alexander), favoured a strong central government. Jefferson's faction developed from the group of Anti-Federalists who had agitated in favour of the addition of a Bill of Rights (Rights, Bill of) to the Constitution of the United States (Constitution of the United States of America). The Federalists called Jefferson's faction the Democratic-Republican Party in an attempt to identify it with the disorder spawned by the “radical democrats” of the French Revolution of 1789. After the Federalist John Adams (Adams, John) was elected president in 1796, the Republican Party served as the country's first opposition party, and in 1798 the Republicans adopted the derisive Democratic-Republican label as their official name.

      In 1800 Adams was defeated by Jefferson, whose victory ushered in a period of prolonged Democratic-Republican dominance. Jefferson won reelection easily in 1804, and Democratic-Republicans James Madison (Madison, James) (1808 and 1812) and James Monroe (Monroe, James) (1816 and 1820) were also subsequently elected. By 1820 the Federalist Party had faded from national politics, leaving the Democratic-Republicans as the country's sole major party and allowing Monroe to run unopposed in that year's presidential election.

      During the 1820s new states entered the union, voting laws were relaxed, and several states passed legislation that provided for the direct election of presidential electors by voters (electors had previously been appointed by state legislatures). These changes split the Democratic-Republicans into factions, each of which nominated its own candidate in the presidential election of 1824. The party's congressional caucus nominated William H. Crawford (Crawford, William H) of Georgia, but Andrew Jackson (Jackson, Andrew) and John Quincy Adams (Adams, John Quincy), the leaders of the party's two largest factions, also sought the presidency; Henry Clay (Clay, Henry), the speaker of the House of Representatives, was nominated by the Kentucky and Tennessee legislatures. Jackson won the most popular and electoral votes, but no candidate received the necessary majority in the electoral college. When the election went to the House of Representatives (as stipulated in the Constitution), Clay—who had finished fourth and was thus eliminated from consideration—threw his support to Adams, who won the House vote and subsequently appointed Clay secretary of state.

      Despite Adams's victory, differences between the Adams and the Jackson factions persisted. Adams's supporters, representing Eastern interests, called themselves the National Republicans (National Republican Party). Jackson, whose strength lay in the South and West, referred to his followers simply as Democrats (or as Jacksonian Democrats). Jackson defeated Adams in the 1828 presidential election. In 1832 in Baltimore, Maryland, at one of the country's first national political conventions (the first convention had been held the previous year by the Anti-Masonic Movement), the Democrats nominated Jackson for president, drafted a party platform, and established a rule that required party presidential and vice presidential nominees to receive the votes of at least two-thirds of the national convention delegates. This rule, which was not repealed until 1936, effectively ceded veto power in the selection process to minority factions, and it often required conventions to hold dozens of ballots to determine a presidential nominee. (The party's presidential candidate in 1924, John W. Davis (Davis, John W.), needed more than 100 ballots to secure the nomination.) Jackson easily won reelection in 1836, but his various opponents—who derisively referred to him as “King Andrew”—joined with former National Republicans to form the Whig Party, named for the English political faction that had opposed absolute monarchy in the 17th century (see Whig and Tory).

      From 1828 to 1856 the Democrats won all but two presidential elections (1840 and 1848). During the 1840s and '50s, however, the Democratic Party, as it officially named itself in 1844, suffered serious internal strains over the issue of extending slavery to the Western territories. Southern Democrats, led by Jefferson Davis (Davis, Jefferson), wanted to allow slavery in all the territories, while Northern Democrats, led by Stephen A. Douglas (Douglas, Stephen A), proposed that each territory should decide the question for itself through referendum. The issue split the Democrats at their 1860 presidential convention, where Southern Democrats nominated John C. Breckinridge (Breckinridge, John C) and Northern Democrats nominated Douglas. The 1860 election also included John Bell (Bell, John), the nominee of the Constitutional Union Party, and Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln, Abraham), the candidate of the newly established (1854) antislavery Republican Party (which was unrelated to Jefferson's Republican Party of decades earlier). With the Democrats hopelessly split, Lincoln was elected president with only about 40 percent of the national vote; in contrast, Douglas and Breckinridge won 29 percent and 18 percent of the vote, respectively.

      The election of 1860 is regarded by most political observers as the first of the country's three “critical” elections—contests that produced sharp yet enduring changes in party loyalties across the country. (Some scholars also identify the 1824 election as a critical election.) It established the Democratic and Republican parties as the major parties in what was ostensibly a two-party system. In federal elections from the 1870s to the 1890s, the parties were in rough balance—except in the South, where the Democrats dominated because most whites blamed the Republican Party for both the American Civil War (1861–65) and the Reconstruction (1865–77) that followed; the two parties controlled Congress for almost equal periods through the rest of the 19th century, though the Democratic Party held the presidency only during the two terms of Grover Cleveland (Cleveland, Grover) (1885–89 and 1893–97). Repressive legislation and physical intimidation designed to prevent newly enfranchised African Americans from voting—despite passage of the Fifteenth Amendment—ensured that the South would remain staunchly Democratic for nearly a century (see black code). During Cleveland's second term, however, the United States sank into an economic depression. The party at this time was basically conservative and agrarian-oriented, opposing the interests of big business (especially protective tariffs) and favouring cheap-money policies, which were aimed at maintaining low interest rates.

      In the country's second critical election, in 1896, the Democrats split disastrously over the free-silver (Free Silver Movement) and Populist (Populist Movement) program of their presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan (Bryan, William Jennings). Bryan lost by a wide margin to Republican William McKinley (McKinley, William), a conservative who supported high tariffs and money based only on gold. From 1896 to 1932 the Democrats held the presidency only during the two terms of Woodrow Wilson (Wilson, Woodrow) (1913–21), and even Wilson's presidency was considered somewhat of a fluke. Wilson won in 1912 because the Republican vote was divided between President William Howard Taft (Taft, William Howard) (the official party nominee) and former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt (Roosevelt, Theodore), the candidate of the new Bull Moose Party. Wilson championed various progressive economic reforms, including the breaking up of business monopolies and broader federal regulation of banking and industry. Although he led the United States into World War I to make the world “safe for democracy,” Wilson's brand of idealism and internationalism proved less attractive to voters during the spectacular prosperity of the 1920s than the Republicans' frank embrace of big business. The Democrats lost decisively the presidential elections of 1920, 1924, and 1928.

  The country's third critical election, in 1932, took place in the wake of the stock market crash of 1929 and in the midst of the Great Depression. Led by Franklin D. Roosevelt (Roosevelt, Franklin D.), the Democrats not only regained the presidency but also replaced the Republicans as the majority party throughout the country—in the North as well as the South. Through his political skills and his sweeping New Deal social programs, such as social security and the statutory minimum wage, Roosevelt forged a broad coalition—including small farmers, Northern city dwellers, organized labour, European immigrants, liberals, intellectuals, and reformers—that enabled the Democratic Party to retain the presidency until 1952 and to control both houses of Congress for most of the period from the 1930s to the mid-1990s. Roosevelt was reelected in 1936, 1940, and 1944; he was the only president to be elected to more than two terms. Upon his death in 1945 he was succeeded by his vice president, Harry S. Truman (Truman, Harry S.), who was narrowly elected in 1948.

  Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower (Eisenhower, Dwight D.), the supreme Allied commander during World War II, won overwhelming victories against Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson (Stevenson, Adlai E) in the presidential elections of 1952 and 1956. The Democrats regained the White House in the election of 1960, when John F. Kennedy (Kennedy, John F.) narrowly defeated Eisenhower's vice president, Richard M. Nixon (Nixon, Richard M.). The Democrats' championing of civil rights and racial desegregation under Truman, Kennedy, and especially Lyndon B. Johnson (Johnson, Lyndon B.)—who secured passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—cost the party the traditional allegiance of many of its Southern supporters. Although Johnson defeated Republican Barry M. Goldwater (Goldwater, Barry) by a landslide in 1964, his national support waned because of bitter opposition to the Vietnam War, and he chose not to run for reelection. Following the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (Kennedy, Robert F.) in 1968, the party nominated Johnson's vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey (Humphrey, Hubert H), at a fractious convention in Chicago that was marred by violence outside the hall between police and protesters. Meanwhile, many Southern Democrats supported the candidacy of Alabama Governor George C. Wallace (Wallace, George C.), an opponent of federally mandated racial integration. In the 1968 election Humphrey was soundly defeated by Nixon in the electoral college (among Southern states Humphrey carried only Texas), though he lost the popular vote by only a narrow margin.

 From 1972 to 1988 the Democrats lost four of five presidential elections. In 1972 the party nominated antiwar candidate George S. McGovern (McGovern, George S), who lost to Nixon in one of the biggest landslides in U.S. electoral history. Two years later the Watergate Scandal forced Nixon's resignation, enabling Jimmy Carter (Carter, Jimmy), then the Democratic governor of Georgia, to defeat Gerald R. Ford (Ford, Gerald R.), Nixon's successor, in 1976. Although Carter orchestrated the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, his presidency was plagued by a sluggish economy and by the crisis over the kidnapping and prolonged captivity of U.S. diplomats in Iran following the Islamic revolution there in 1979. Carter was defeated in 1980 by conservative Republican Ronald W. Reagan (Reagan, Ronald W.), who was easily reelected in 1984 against Carter's vice president, Walter F. Mondale (Mondale, Walter). Mondale's running mate, Geraldine A. Ferraro (Ferraro, Geraldine A.), was the first female candidate on a major-party ticket. Reagan's vice president, George Bush (Bush, George), defeated Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis (Dukakis, Michael S.) in 1988. Despite its losses in the presidential elections of the 1970s and '80s, the Democratic Party continued to control both houses of Congress for most of the period (although the Republicans controlled the Senate from 1981 to 1987).

 In 1992 Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton (Clinton, Bill) recaptured the White House for the Democrats by defeating Bush and third-party candidate Ross Perot (Perot, Ross). Clinton's support of international trade agreements (e.g., the North American Free Trade Agreement) and his willingness to cut spending on social programs to reduce budget deficits alienated the left wing of his party and many traditional supporters in organized labour. In 1994 the Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress, in part because of public disenchantment with Clinton's health-care plan. During Clinton's second term the country experienced a period of prosperity not seen since the 1920s, but a scandal involving Clinton's relationship with a White House intern led to his impeachment by the House of Representatives in 1998; he was acquitted by the Senate in 1999. Al Gore (Gore, Al), Clinton's vice president, easily won the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000. In the general election, Gore won 500,000 more popular votes than Republican George W. Bush (Bush, George W.) but narrowly lost in the electoral college after the Supreme Court of the United States ordered a halt to the manual recounting of disputed ballots in Florida. The party's nominee in 2004, John Kerry (Kerry, John), was narrowly defeated by Bush in the popular and electoral vote. Aided by the growing opposition to the Iraq War (2003– ), the Democrats regained control of the Senate and the House following the 2006 midterm elections. This marked the first time in some 12 years that the Democrats held a majority in both houses of Congress. In the general election of 2008 the party's presidential nominee, Barack Obama (Obama, Barack), defeated Republican John McCain (McCain, John), thereby becoming the first African American to be elected president of the United States. The Democrats also increased their majority in the Senate and the House.

Policy and structure

      Despite tracing its roots to Thomas Jefferson—who advocated a less-powerful, more-decentralized federal government—the modern Democratic Party generally supports a strong federal government with powers to regulate business and industry in the public interest; federally financed social services and benefits for the poor, the unemployed, the aged, and other groups; and the protection of civil rights. Most Democrats also endorse a strong separation of church and state, and they generally oppose government regulation of the private, noneconomic lives of citizens. Regarding foreign policy, Democrats tend to prefer internationalism and multilateralism—i.e., the execution of foreign policy through international institutions such as the United Nations—over isolationism and unilateralism. However, because the party is highly decentralized (as is the Republican Party), it encompasses a wide variety of opinion on certain issues. Although most Democrats favour affirmative action and gun control, for example, some moderate and conservative Democrats oppose these policies or give them only qualified support.

      Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party formulate their platforms quadrennially at national conventions, which are held to nominate the parties' presidential candidates. The conventions take place in the summer of each presidential election year; by tradition, the incumbent party holds its convention second. The Democratic National Convention is typically attended by some 4,000 delegates, most of whom are selected during the preceding winter and spring. So-called “superdelegates,” which include members of the Democratic National Committee (the party's formal governing body) as well as Democratic governors and members of Congress, also participate.

      Until the 1970s, few nationwide rules governed the selection of delegates to the Democratic National Convention. After the 1968 convention, during which Humphrey was able to secure the Democratic nomination without having won a single primary election or caucus, the party imposed strict rules requiring that states select delegates through primaries or caucuses and that delegates vote on the first ballot for the candidate to whom they are pledged, thus eliminating the direct election of candidates by the conventions. More than 40 states now select delegates to the Democratic convention through primary elections (primary election). Virtually all Democratic primaries allocate delegates on a proportional basis, so that the proportion of delegates awarded to a candidate in a state is roughly the same as the proportion of the vote he receives in that state (provided that he receives at least 15 percent). In contrast, almost all Republican presidential primaries award all delegates to the candidate who receives the most votes. Thus, candidates running for the Democratic nomination tend to win at least some delegates in each primary, resulting generally in closer and longer nominating contests. Nevertheless, one candidate usually captures a majority of delegates before the summer nominating convention, leaving the convention simply to ratify the winner.

      In addition to confirming the party nominee and adopting the party platform, the national convention formally chooses a national committee to organize the next convention and to govern the party until the next convention is held. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) consists of about 400 party leaders representing all U.S. states and territories. Its chairman is typically named by the party's presidential nominee and then formally elected by the committee. The DNC has little power, because it lacks direct authority over party members in Congress and even in the states. Democratic members of the House (Representatives, House of) and the Senate organize themselves into party conferences that elect the party leaders of each chamber. In keeping with the decentralized nature of the party, each chamber also creates separate committees to raise and disburse funds for House and Senate election campaigns.

Additional Reading

The origins and history of the Democratic Party are traced in Robert Allen Rutland, The Democrats: From Jefferson to Clinton (1995). The party's values and ideology are examined in John Gerring, Party Ideologies in America, 1828–1996 (1998, reissued 2001); and William G. Mayer, The Divided Democrats: Ideological Unity, Party Reform, and Presidential Elections (1996). William J. Crotty, Decision for the Democrats: Reforming the Party Structure (1978), analyzes the events leading to the disruption of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the subsequent reforms of the process for nominating presidential candidates. Marjorie Randon Hershey and Paul Allen Back, Party Politics in America, 10th ed. (2003), provides a comprehensive survey of the Democratic Party, including its organization, campaign activities, role in national and state government, and electoral performance.

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