Democratic Party | |
---|---|
Chairperson | Jaime Harrison |
Governing body | Democratic National Committee[1][2] |
U.S. President | Joe Biden |
U.S. Vice President | Kamala Harris |
Senate Majority Leader | Chuck Schumer |
House Minority Leader | Hakeem Jeffries |
Founders | |
Founded | January 8, 1828[3] Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
Preceded by | Democratic-Republican Party |
Headquarters | 430 South Capitol St. SE, Washington, D.C., U.S. |
Student wing | |
Youth wing | Young Democrats of America |
Women's wing | National Federation of Democratic Women |
Overseas wing | Democrats Abroad |
Ideology | |
Political position | Center-left[b] |
Caucuses | Problem Solvers Caucus Blue Dog Coalition New Democrat Coalition Congressional Progressive Caucus |
Colors | Blue |
Senate | 47 / 100[c] |
House of Representatives | 212 / 435 |
State Governors | 23 / 50 |
State upper chambers | 857 / 1,973 |
State lower chambers | 2,425 / 5,413 |
Territorial Governors | 4 / 5 |
Seats in Territorial upper chambers | 31 / 97 |
Seats in Territorial lower chambers | 9 / 91 |
Election symbol | |
Website | |
democrats | |
The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. Since the late 1850s, its main political rival has been the Republican Party; the two parties have since dominated American politics.
The Democratic Party was founded in 1828. Martin Van Buren of New York played the central role in building the coalition of state organizations that formed a new party as a vehicle to elect Andrew Jackson of Tennessee. The Democratic Party is the world's oldest active political party.[14][15][16] It initially supported expansive presidential power,[17] the interests of slave states,[18] agrarianism,[19] and geographical expansionism,[19] while opposing a national bank and high tariffs.[19] It split in 1860 over slavery and won the presidency only twice[d] between 1860 and 1912, although it won the popular vote two more times in that period. In the late 19th century, it continued to oppose high tariffs and had fierce internal debates on the gold standard. In the early 20th century, it supported progressive reforms and opposed imperialism, with Woodrow Wilson winning the White House in 1912 and 1916.
Since Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, the Democratic Party has promoted a liberal platform that includes support for Social Security and unemployment insurance.[4][20][21] The New Deal attracted strong support for the party from recent European immigrants but diminished the party's pro-business wing.[22][23][24] From late in Roosevelt's administration through the 1950s, a minority in the party's Southern wing joined with conservative Republicans to slow and stop progressive domestic reforms.[25] Following the Great Society era of progressive legislation under Lyndon B. Johnson, who was often able to overcome the conservative coalition in the 1960s, the core bases of the parties shifted, with the Southern states becoming more reliably Republican and the Northeastern states becoming more reliably Democratic.[26][27] The party's labor union element has become smaller since the 1970s,[28][29] and as the American electorate shifted in a more conservative direction following the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the election of Bill Clinton marked a move for the party toward the Third Way, moving the party's economic stance towards market-based economic policy.[30][31][32] Barack Obama oversaw the party's passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. During Joe Biden's presidency, the party has adopted an increasingly progressive economic agenda.[33][34]
In the 21st century, the party is strongest among urban voters,[35][36] union workers, college graduates,[37][13][38][39] women, African Americans, American Jews,[40][41][42] LGBT+ people,[43][44] and the unmarried. On social issues, it advocates for abortion rights,[45] voting rights,[46] LGBT rights,[47] action on climate change,[48] and the legalization of marijuana.[49] On economic issues, the party favors healthcare reform, universal child care, paid sick leave and supporting unions.[50][51][52][53] In foreign policy, the party supports liberal internationalism as well as tough stances against China and Russia.[54][55][56]
For 171 years, [the Democratic National Committee] has been responsible for governing the Democratic Party
The Democratic National Committee shall have general responsibility for the affairs of the Democratic Party between National Conventions
Modern liberalism occupies the left-of-center in the traditional political spectrum and is represented by the Democratic Party in the United States.
What are we to make of American parties at the dawn of the twenty-first century? ... The impact of the 1960s civil rights revolution has been to create two more ideologically coherent parties: a generally liberal or center-left party and a conservative party.
Moderation may be relative, but moderates still run the Democratic Party.
Observes that the terms "progressive" and "liberal" are "often used interchangeably" in political discourse regarding "the center-left".
Including the American Democratic Party in a comparative analysis of center-left parties is unorthodox, since unlike Europe, America has not produced a socialist movement tied to a strong union movement. Yet the Democrats may have become center-left before anyone else, obliged by their different historical trajectory to build complex alliances with social groups other than the working class and to deal with unusually powerful capitalists ... Taken together, the three chapters devoted to the United States show that the center-left in America faces much the same set of problems as elsewhere and, especially in light of the election results from 2008, that the Democratic Party's potential to win elections, despite its current slide in approval, may be at least equal to that of any center-left party in Europe ... Despite the setback in the 2010 midterms, together the foregoing trends have put the Democrats in a position to eventually build a dominant center-left majority in the United States.
This article has argued that a widespread and fundamental reorientation of the Democratic Party toward decidedly centrist national politics over recent decades fundamentally altered the role of corporate governance, and related issues, in the project of assembling a competitive electoral coalition.
We conclude by considering why Democrats have taken this course, why they are not perceived as having done so, and why, at this fraught juncture for American democratic capitalism, political scientists could learn much from closer examination of the rich world's largest center-left party.
Democrats have become the home of highly-educated citizens with progressive social views who prefer credentialed experts to make policy decisions, while Republicans have become the populist champions of white voters without college degrees who increasingly distrust teachers, scientists, journalists, universities, non-profit organizations, and even corporations.
Kazin-2022
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).The expansion engineered by Polk rendered the Democratic Party increasingly beholden to Southern slave interests, which dominated the party from 1848 to the Civil War.
By the 1840s, Whig and Democratic congressmen voted as rival blocs. Whigs supported and Democrats opposed a weak executive, a new Bank of the United States, a high tariff, distribution of land revenues to the states, relief legislation to mitigate the effects of the depression, and federal reapportionment of House seats. Whigs voted against and Democrats approved an independent treasury, an aggressive foreign policy, and expansionism. These were important issues, capable of dividing the electorate just as they divided the major parties in Congress.
In the United States, the Democratic Party represents itself as the liberal alternative to the Republicans, but its liberalism is for the most part the later version of liberalism—modern liberalism.
Hale-1995
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Wills-1997
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Hacker-2024
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).The most sweeping account of how neoliberalism came to dominate American politics for nearly a half century before crashing against the forces of Trumpism on the right and a new progressivism on the left.
Polarization by education
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).By 2000, however, the New Deal party alignment no longer captured patterns of partisan voting. In the intervening 40 years, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts had triggered an increasingly race-driven distinction between the parties. ... Goldwater won the electoral votes of five states of the Deep South in 1964, four of them states that had voted Democratic for 84 years (Califano 1991, 55). He forged a new identification of the Republican party with racial conservatism, reversing a century-long association of the GOP with racial liberalism. This in turn opened the door for Nixon's "Southern strategy" and the Reagan victories of the eighties.
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)
In the corporate governance area, the center-left repositioned itself to press for reform. The Democratic Party in the United States used the postbubble scandals and the collapse of share prices to attack the Republican Party ... Corporate governance reform fit surprisingly well within the contours of the center-left ideology. The Democratic Party and the SPD have both been committed to the development of the regulatory state as a counterweight to managerial authority, corporate power, and market failure.
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