Democratic Party (United States)

Democratic Party
Chairman	Howard Dean
Founded	1820s (modern) 1792 (historical)
Headquarters	430 South Capitol Street SE Washington, D.C. 20003
Ideology	Liberalism Progressivism Center-left
International affiliation	None
Colours	Blue (unofficial)
Website
www.democrats.org

The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, the other being the Republican Party.

Currently, during the 110th Congress, it is the majority party in the United States House of Representatives and the Democratic caucus constitutes a majority in the United States Senate. Democrats also hold a majority of governorships and a plurality of state legislatures.

Although the name "Democratic Party" was in common use by the party by the mid-1830s, Democrats trace their origins to the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1792, making it the oldest political party in the world today. Since William Jennings Bryan's takeover of the party in 1896, it has positioned itself to the left of the Republican Party in economic matters. The pro-working class, activist philosophy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, called "liberalism" in the U.S., has shaped much of the party's agenda since 1932. Roosevelt's New Deal coalition usually controlled the national government through 1964. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, championed by the party despite opposition at the time from its Southern wing, has continued to inspire the party's liberal principles. The Vietnam War in the 1960s opened a split on foreign military intervention that persists into the 21st century.

Since the 1990s and the shift towards third-way politics employed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, the Democratic Party has become less ideologically driven and more centrist in the American political spectrum as it attempts to expand its appeal to independent voters.

Current structure and composition

Further information: [[:Politics of the United States#Organization of American political parties|Politics of the United States § Organization of American political parties]]

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is responsible for promoting Democratic campaign activities. While the DNC is responsible for overseeing the process of writing the Democratic Platform, the DNC is more focused on campaign and organizational strategy than public policy. In presidential elections it supervises the Democratic National Convention and, during the primary season, raises funds, commissions polls, and coordinates campaign strategy. Following the selection of a party nominee, the public funding laws permit the national party to coordinate certain expenditures with the nominee, but additional funds are spent on general, party-building activities. The national convention is, subject to the charter of the party, the ultimate authority within the Democratic Party when it is in session, with the DNC running the party's organization at other times. The DNC is currently chaired by former Vermont Governor Howard Dean.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) assists party candidates in House races; its current chairman (selected by the party caucus) is Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. Similarly the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) raises large sums for Senate races. It is currently headed by Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), currently chaired by Joan Fitz-Gerald of Colorado, is a smaller organization with much less funding that focuses on state legislative races. The DNC sponsors two youth-oriented organizations: the Young Democrats of America (YDA) and the College Democrats. The Democratic Governors Association (DGA) is an organization supporting the candidacies of Democratic gubernatorial nominees and incumbents; it is currently chaired by Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas.

Each state also has a state committee, made up of elected committee members as well as ex-officio committee members (usually elected officials and representatives of major constituencies), which in turn elects a chair. County, town, city and ward committees generally are comprised of individuals elected at the local level. State and local committees often coordinate campaign activities within their jurisdiction, oversee local conventions and in some cases primaries or caucuses, and may have a role in nominating candidates for elected office under state law. Rarely do they have much funding, but in 2005 DNC Chairman Dean began a program (called the "50 State Strategy") of using DNC national funds to assist all state parties and paying for full time professional staffers.

Ideology and voter base

Since the 1890s, the Democratic Party has favored "liberal" positions. (The term "liberal" in this sense dates from the New Deal era.) The party has favored farmers, laborers, labor unions, and religious and ethnic minorities; it has opposed unregulated business and finance, and favored progressive income taxes. In foreign policy, internationalism (including interventionism) was a dominant theme from 1913 to the mid 1960s. In the 1930s, the party began advocating welfare spending programs targeted at the poor. The party had a pro-business wing, typified by Al Smith, that shrank in the 1930s. The Southern conservative wing shrank in the 1980s. The major influences for liberalism were the labor unions (which peaked in the 1936-1952 era), and the African American wing, which has steadily grown since the 1960s. Since the 1970s, environmentalism has been a major new component.

In recent decades, the party advocates civil liberties, social freedoms, equal rights, equal opportunity, fiscal responsibility, and a free enterprise system tempered by government intervention (what economists call a mixed-economy). The party believes that government should play a role in alleviating poverty and social injustice, even if that means a larger role for government and progressive taxation to pay for social services.

The Democratic Party, once dominant in the Southern states of the former Confederacy, is now strongest in the Northeast (Mid-Atlantic and New England), Upper Midwest and Great Lakes Region and along the Pacific Coast, including California and in Hawaii. The Democrats are also strongest in major cities, such as New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, San Francisco, Dallas and Washington D.C.. Recently, Democrats have been faring better in some southern states, such as Virginia, Arkansas and Florida, and in the Rocky Mountain states, especially Colorado and Montana.

Recent issue stances

Economic issues

Minimum wage

Democrats favor a higher minimum wage, and more regular increases, in order to assist the working poor. The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 is an early component of the Democrats' agenda during the 110th Congress. In 2006, the Democrats supported six state ballot initiatives to increase the minimum wage; all six initiatives passed.

Renewable energy and oil

Democrats have opposed tax cuts and incentives to oil companies, favoring a policy of developing domestic renewable energy. Democratic governors have led the way in this issue, such as Montana's state-supported wind farm and "clean coal" programs.

Fiscal responsibility

Democrats are trying to position their party as the party of fiscal responsibility. Democrats increasingly call for responsible tax policies and government spending that keeps the budget deficit under control. The Democratic-led House of Representatives reinstated the PAYGO (pay-as-you-go) budget rule at the start of the 110th Congress. DNC Chairman Howard Dean has cited Bill Clinton's presidency as a model for fiscal responsibility.

Health care and insurance coverage

Democrats call for "affordable and quality health care," and many advocate an expansion of government intervention in this area. Many Democrats favor a national health insurance system in a variety of forms to address the rising costs of modern health insurance. Some Democrats, such as Senator Edward Kennedy, have called for a program of "Medicare for All."

Some Democratic governors have supported purchasing Canadian drugs, citing lower costs and budget restrictions as a primary incentive. Recognizing that unpaid insurance bills increase costs to the service provider, who passes the cost on to health-care consumers, many Democrats advocate expansion of health insurance coverage.

Environment

The Democratic Party generally sides with environmentalists and favors conservation of natural resources together with strong environmental laws against pollution. Democrats support preservation of endangered lands and species, clean land management and regulation on pollutants.

The most contentious and concerning environmental issue championed by the party is global warming. Democrats, most notably former Vice President Al Gore, have pressed for stern regulation of greenhouse gases.

College education

Most Democrats have the long term aim of having low-cost, publicly funded college education with low tuition fees (like in much of continental Europe) which should be available to every eligible American student, or alternatively, with increasing state funding for student financial aid such as the Pell grant or college tuition tax-deduction.

Trade agreements

The Democratic Party has a mixed record on international trade agreements that reflects a diversity of viewpoints in the party. Generally, more conservative and moderate Democrats favor free trade agreements while those further to the left, supporters of fair trade, populists, and unions often oppose them. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration and a number of prominent Democrats pushed through a number of agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Since then, the party's shift away from free trade became evident in the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) vote, with 15 House Democrats voting for the agreement and 187 voting against.

Social issues

Discrimination

Democrats support Equal Opportunity for all Americans regardless of sex, age, race, sexual orientation, religion, creed, or national origin.

The Democratic Party mostly supports affirmative action as a way to redress past discrimination and ensure equitable employment regardless of ethnicity or gender, but opposes the use of quotas in hiring. Democrats also strongly support the Americans with Disabilities Act to prohibit discrimination against people on the basis of physical or mental disability.

Same-sex marriage and LGBT rights

The Democratic Party is divided on the subject of same-sex marriage. Some members favor civil unions for same-sex couples, others favor legalized marriage, and others are opposed to same-sex marriage on religious grounds. The 2004 Democratic National Platform stated that marriage should be defined at the state level and it repudiated the Federal Marriage Amendment. Almost all agree, however, that discrimination against persons because of their sexual orientation is wrong.

Reproductive rights

The Democratic Party believes that all women should have access to birth control, and supports public funding of contraception for poor women. The Democratic Party, in its national platforms since 1992, has called for abortion to be "safe, legal and rare"—namely, keeping it legal by rejecting laws that allow governmental interference in abortion decisions, and reducing the number of abortions by promoting both knowledge of reproduction and contraception, and incentives for adoption.

The Democratic Party opposes attempts to reverse the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade which recognized abortion as a right. As a matter of the right to privacy and of gender equality, many Democrats believe all women should have the ability to choose without governmental interference. They believe that each woman, conferring with her conscience, has the right to choose for herself whether abortion is morally correct. Many Democrats also believe that poor women should have a right to publicly funded abortions.

Stem cell research

The Democratic Party has voiced overwhelming support for all stem cell research with federal funding. In his 2004 platform, John Kerry affirmed his support of federally funded stem-cell research "under the strictest ethical guidelines." He explained, "We will not walk away from the chance to save lives and reduce human suffering."

Foreign policy issues

Invasion of Afghanistan

Democrats in the House of Representatives and United States Senate near-unanimously voted for the authorization of military force against "those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States" in Afghanistan in 2001, supporting the NATO coalition invasion of the nation. Most elected Democrats continue in their support of the Afghanistan conflict, and some have voiced concerns that the Iraq War is shifting too many resources away from the occupation of Afghanistan.

Iraq War

In 2002, Democrats were divided as most in the Senate voted for the authorization of the use of force against Iraq while most Democrats in the House voted against it. Since then, many prominent Democrats have expressed regret about this decision, such as former Senator John Edwards, and have called it a mistake. Amongst lawmakers, Democrats constitute some of the most vocal critics of the Iraq War and the President's management of the war.

Unilateralism

Democrats mostly oppose the doctrine of unilateralism, which dictates that the United States should use military force without any assistance from other nations whenever it believes there is a threat to its security or welfare. They believe the United States should act in the international arena in concert with strong alliances and broad international support. This was a major foreign policy issue of John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, and unilateralism has been blamed for the failures in Iraq.

In a general sense, the modern Democratic Party is more closely aligned with the international relations theories of liberalism and neoliberalism than realism and neorealism, though realism has some influence on the party.

Legal issues

Torture

Democrats are opposed to use of torture against individuals apprehended and held prisoner by the military of the United States, and deny that categorizing military prisoners as unlawful combatants excludes them from the rights granted under the Geneva Conventions. Democrats contend that torture is inhumane, decreases the United States' moral standing in the world, and produces questionable results.

USA PATRIOT Act

All Democrats in the U.S. Senate except for Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold voted for the original USA PATRIOT Act legislation. After voicing concerns over the "invasion of privacy" and other civil liberty restrictions of the Act, the Democrats split on the renewal in 2006. Most Democratic Senators voted to renew it, while most Democratic Representatives voted against renewal. It should be noted renewal was only allowed after many of the most invasive clauses in the Act were removed or curbed.

Right to privacy

The Democratic Party believes that individuals should have a right to privacy, and generally supports laws which place restrictions on law-enforcement and intelligence agency monitoring of U.S. citizens. Some Democratic Party officeholders have championed consumer-protection laws that limit the sharing of consumer data between corporations.

Most Democrats believe that government should not regulate consensual non-commercial sexual conduct (among adults), as a matter of personal privacy.

Crime and gun control

Democrats often focus on methods of crime prevention, believing that preventive measures save taxpayers' money in prison, policing and medical costs, and prevent crime and murder. They emphasize improved community policing and more on-duty police officers in order to help accomplish this goal. The party's platform in 2000 and 2004 cited crackdowns on gangs and drug trafficking as preventive methods. The party's platforms have also addressed the issue of domestic violence, calling for strict penalties for offenders and protection for victims.

With a stated goal of reducing crime and homicide, the Democratic Party has introduced various gun control measures, most notably the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Brady Bill of 1993 and Crime Control Act of 1994. However, many Democrats, especially rural, Southern, and Western Democrats, favor fewer restrictions on firearm possession and warned the party was defeated in the 2000 presidential election in rural areas because of the issue. In the national platform for 2004, the only statement explicitly favoring gun control was a plan calling for renewal of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.

Current factions

Main article: Factions in the Democratic Party (United States)

In the House of Representatives, the Blue Dog Democrats, a caucus of fiscal and social conservatives and moderates, primarily southerners, forms part of the Democratic Party's current faction of Conservative Democrats. They have acted as a unified voting bloc in the past, giving its forty plus members some ability to change legislation and broker compromises with the Republican leadership. Pro-life Democrats are sometimes classified as conservatives.

Though centrist Democrats differ on a variety of issues, they typically foster a mix of political views and ideas. Compared to other Democratic factions, they are mostly more supportive of the use of military force, including the war in Iraq, and are more willing to reduce government welfare, as indicated by their support for welfare reform and tax cuts. One of the most influential factions is the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a non-profit organization that advocates centrist positions for the party. The DLC hails President Bill Clinton as proof of the viability of third way politicians and a DLC success story. Former Representative Harold Ford, Jr. of Tennessee is its current chairman.

Liberal Democrats are to the left of centrist Democrats. The liberal faction was dominant in the party for several decades, although they have been hurt by the rise of centrist forces such as President Bill Clinton. Compared to conservatives and moderates, liberal Democrats generally have advocated fair trade and other less conservative economic policies, and a less militaristic foreign policy, and have a reputation of being more forceful in pushing for civil liberties. Liberals are increasingly identified as being part of the larger progressive wing of the party.

Many Progressive Democrats are descendants of the New Left of Democratic Presidential candidate/Senator George McGovern of South Dakota; others were involved in the presidential candidacies of Vermont Governor Howard Dean and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio; and still others are disaffected former members of the Green Party. Unifying issues among progressive Democrats have been opposition to the War in Iraq, opposition to economic and social conservatism, opposition to heavy corporate influence in government, support for universal health care, revitalization of the national infrastructure and steering the Democratic Party in the direction of being a more forceful opposition party. Compared to other factions of the party, they've been most critical of the Republican Party, and most supportive of social and economic equality. The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) is the single largest Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives.

Since the 1930s, a critical element in the Democratic Party coalition are labor unions. Unions supply a great deal of the money, grass roots political organization, and voting base of support for the party. The overall percentage of employed wage and salary workers that are union members has fallen to 12 percent in 2006, and the union membership rate for government workers is substantially higher than for the private sector. The most important unions in the 21st century represent government employees, such as teachers, policemen, nurses, and prison guards, as well as service-sector workers, such as hotel workers and janitors. The old industrial unions are more protectionist and are concerned with preservation of pensions, collective bargaining, and access to health insurance. Important union organizations in the Democratic coalition include SEIU, UNITE HERE, AFSCME, UAW, and the Change to Win and AFL-CIO Labor Federations.

Civil libertarians also often support the Democratic Party because its positions on such issues as civil rights and separation of church and state are more closely aligned to their own than the positions of the Republican Party, and because the Democrats' economic agenda may be more appealing to them than that of the Libertarian Party. They oppose gun control, the "War on Drugs," protectionism, corporate welfare, governmental borrowing, and an interventionist foreign policy. The Democratic Freedom Caucus is an organized group of this faction.

History

Main article: History of the United States Democratic Party

Origins: 1792-1828

The Democrats trace their roots to the Democratic-Republican Party, established by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the 1790s. This party arose from opposition to the policies of the ruling Federalist Party, dominated by Alexander Hamilton, that advocated a strong central government, a loose interpretation of the Constitution, and a republic governed by well-educated elites. The Jeffersonians (before 1801) favored France in the wars between Britain and France, and opposed the Jay Treaty (it restored peace with Britain) because, they believed, it might help monarchist elements inside the United States. Democratic-Republicans idealized the independent ("yeoman") farmer as the exemplar of virtue, and distrusted cities, banks, and other monied interests. Jefferson and his close collaborator Madison made states' rights a keystone of the party in 1798. The party was strongest in the south and west, and weakest in New England.

The party won control of the Presidency and Congress in 1800, and later elected Henry Clay as the powerful Speaker of the House in the 1810s. The Federalists collapsed as serious rivals to the Democratic-Republicans by the end of the War of 1812. After the war and the decline of the Federalists, little held Democratic-Republicans together and the party split into factions. War hero General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee emerged as the leader of the faction that, after he was elected president in 1828, became the Democratic Party.

Jacksonian democracy: 1828-1854

File:Andrew Jackson Sully.jpg

President Andrew Jackson (1829-1837)

With the decline of the Federalists, the Democrats main opponent became the Whig Party. The Democrats continued winning national election by building a nationwide coalition that was strongest in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the frontier; it was weakest in New England. Like the Democratic-Republican Party from which it developed, the Democrats voiced strong anti-elite opposition to "aristocracy" and banks, and put their faith in "the people." By the 1820s universal suffrage, with no property restrictions, was the norm for all white American men nearly everywhere.

The Democratic Party was a complex coalition that included farmers in all parts of the country and workingmen's groups in the cities. The key issues in the 1830s were use of patronage to build a strong party machine, opposition to state and national banks, and opposition to modernizing programs that would build up industry at the expense of the taxpayer. The Democrats strongly favored expansion to new farm lands, as typified by their expulsion of eastern American Indians and acquisition of vast new lands in the West after 1846.

Martin Van Buren won the presidency in 1836, but the economic depression of 1837 caused his defeat for reelection. James K. Polk won in the 1844 election, directed the Mexican-American War, lowered the tariff, set up a subtreasury system, acquired modern-day Washington, Oregon and the Southwest, and then retired. In the 1848 election, the new Free Soil Party, which opposed slavery expansion, split the Democratic Party. The Democrats in Congress passed the Compromise of 1850. As the Whigs splintered over slavery and nativism, the Democrats easily elected Franklin Pierce in 1852 and James Buchanan in 1856.

Civil War and Reconstruction: 1854-1877

The main Democratic leader in the Senate, Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, pushed through the pro-slavery Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 despite strong protest. Driven by the increasingly contentious issue of slavery, a major realignment took place among voters and politicians, with new issues, new parties, and new rules. The Whig Party entirely dissolved. While the Democrats survived, many northern Democrats (especially Free Soilers from 1848) joined the newly established Republican Party. Buchanan split the party on the issue of slavery in Kansas; most Democrats in the North rallied to Stephen Douglas.

In 1860, Douglas was unable to gain the two-thirds vote needed for the party's nomination. The party nominated Douglas in the North, and John C. Breckinridge in the South. During the Civil War, no party politics were allowed in the Confederacy, but partisanship flourished in the North. After the attack on Ft. Sumter, Douglas rallied northern Democrats behind the Union. But Douglas died and the party lacked an outstanding national figure. There was a deep split between the anti-war Copperheads and the War Democrats. The party did well in the 1862 congressional elections, but in 1864 it nominated General George McClellan, a War Democrat, on a peace platform, and lost badly as many War Democrats bolted to support National Union candidate Abraham Lincoln. In the 1866 elections, the Radical Republicans won two-thirds majorities in Congress and took control of national affairs. Ulysses S. Grant led the Republicans to landslides in 1868 and 1872.

The nationwide depression of 1873 allowed the Democrats to retake control of the House in the 1874 Democratic landslide. The Democrats benefited from white Southerners' resentment of Reconstruction and consequent hostility to the Republican Party. After Redeemers ended Reconstruction, and the disenfranchisement of African Americans took place in the 1890s, the South, voting Democratic, became known as the "Solid South." In most of the South, there was effectively only one party, and victory in the Democratic primary was tantamount to election.

President Grover Cleveland (1885-1889 and 1893-1897), the only Democrat elected president between 1860 and 1912

The Gilded Age: 1877-1896

Further information: [[:Gilded Age]]

The national vote was very evenly balanced in the 1880s. Though Republicans continued to control the White House until 1884, the Democrats remained competitive. Dominated by conservative pro-business Bourbon Democrats led by Samuel J. Tilden and Grover Cleveland, they had a solid base in the South and great strength in the rural lower Midwestern United States, and in ethnic German American and Irish American enclaves in large cities, mill towns and mining camps. They controlled the House of Representatives for most of that period. In the election of 1884, Grover Cleveland, the reforming Democratic Governor of New York, won the Presidency. He was defeated in the election of 1888 but was re-elected in 1892. Cleveland was the leader of the conservative Bourbon Democrats who represented mercantile, banking and railroad interests, opposed imperialism and overseas expansion, fought for the gold standard, opposed bimetallism, and crusaded against corruption and high taxes and tariffs. The Bourbon Democrats were overthrown by William Jennings Bryan in 1896.

Bryan, Wilson, and the Progressive Era: 1896-1932

In the presidential election of 1896, widely regarded as a political realignment, agrarian Democrats demanding free silver defeated the Bourbons and nominated William Jennings Bryan (the Populist Party then followed suit). Bryan, having gained the nomination after his stirring "Cross of Gold" speech delivered at the 1896 convention, waged a vigorous campaign attacking Eastern moneyed interests, but he lost to Republican William McKinley in an election which was to prove decisive, and marks the beginning of the Fourth Party System.

The Republicans controlled the presidency for 28 of the following 36 years, dominating most of the Northeast, the Midwest, and half of the West. Bryan, with a base in the South and the Great Plains, was strong enough to get the nomination in the elections of 1900, again losing to McKinley, and 1908, losing to William Howard Taft. Bourbon conservatives controlled the convention in 1904, but they faced a Theodore Roosevelt landslide. By 1908, Bryan had dropped his free silver and anti-imperialism rhetoric and supported mainstream progressive issues, especially "anti-trust" or opposition to the big trusts.

File:Wwilson.gif

President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921), the only Democrat elected president between 1896 and 1932

Taking advantage of a deep split in the GOP, the Democrats took control of the House in 1910 and elected intellectual reformer Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and 1916. Wilson successfully led Congress to a series of progressive laws, including the Underwood Tariff that reduced tariffs; the Clayton Antitrust Act that systematized the antitrust system; the income tax on individuals; new programs for farmers; and the 8-hour day for railroad workers. His most important innovation was the Federal Reserve System that created a strong central bank. A law to outlaw child labor was reversed by the Supreme Court. Wilson ordered the segregation of the federal Civil Service. The Eighteenth Amendment establishing Prohibition and the Nineteenth Amendment establishing Women's suffrage were passed in Wilson's second term, but they were bipartisan efforts. In effect, Wilson laid to rest the issues of tariffs, money and antitrust that had dominated politics for 40 years.

Wilson led the U.S. to victory in World War I and helped write the Versailles Treaty, which included his goal of a League of Nations. But in 1919 Wilson's political skills faltered, as did his health; suddenly everything turned sour. The Senate rejected the Versailles Treaty and the League, and a nationwide wave of strikes and violence caused unrest. Prohibition opened a bitter split in the party between the Catholic and ethnic Northern "wets" and the Southern "dries." The deeply divided party was hit by Republican landslides in the presidential elections of 1920, 1924, and 1928. However, Al Smith helped build a strong Catholic base in the big Eastern cities in 1928, and Franklin D. Roosevelt's election as governor of New York that year brought a new leader to center stage.

The New Deal and World War II: 1933-1945

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945), the only person elected four times to the presidency.

The Great Depression set the stage for a more liberal government, and Franklin D. Roosevelt won a landslide victory in the presidential election of 1932, campaigning on a vague platform that promised repeal of Prohibition and criticizing Herbert Hoover's presidential failures. Within 100 days of taking office on March 4, 1933, Roosevelt came forth with a massive array of programs, the New Deal. These focused on Relief, Recovery, and Reform; that is, relief of unemployment and rural distress, recovery of the economy back to normal, and long-term structural reforms to prevent a repetition of the Depression.

The 1932 election brought Democrats large majorities in both houses of Congress, and among state governors; the 1934 election increased those margins. The 1933 programs, called "the First New Deal" by historians, represented a broad consensus; Roosevelt tried to reach out to business and labor, farmers and consumers, cities and countryside. By 1934, however, he was moving toward a more confrontational policy. Roosevelt sought to move the party away from its business base toward a new base of farmers and workers. The New Deal was a program of economic regulation and insurance against hardship. Two old words took new meanings. "Liberal" now meant a supporter of the New Deal; "conservative" meant an opponent. Conservative Democrats were outraged; led by Al Smith, they formed the American Liberty League in 1934 and counterattacked, but were ineffective.

File:SamRayburn55.jpg

Sam Rayburn of Texas was the longest-serving (non-consecutive) Speaker of the House (1940-1947, 1949-1953, 1955-1961).

After making gains in Congress in 1934 Roosevelt embarked on an ambitious legislative program that came to be called "The Second New Deal." It was characterized by building up labor unions, nationalizing welfare by the Works Progress Administration, setting up Social Security, imposing more regulations on business (especially transportation and communications), and raising taxes on business profits. He built a new, diverse majority coalition called the New Deal Coalition, which included labor unions, minorities (most significantly, Catholics, Jews, southern whites, and for the first time, Blacks). The New Deal coalition won all but two presidential elections (1952 and 1956) until it came apart in 1968.

After a triumphant landslide reelection in 1936, Roosevelt announced plans to enlarge the Supreme Court, which tended to oppose his New Deal. A firestorm of opposition erupted, led by his own vice president, John Nance Garner. Roosevelt was defeated by an alliance of Republicans and conservative Democrats, who formed a new Conservative coalition that managed to block nearly all liberal legislation and dominate Congress for the remainder of FDR's presidency. Threatened by the conservative wing of his party, Roosevelt made an attempt to purge it; in 1938, he actively campaigned against five conservative Democratic senators. They denounced national interference in state affairs, and all five senators won re-election.

New Deal liberalism meant the promotion of social welfare, labor unions, civil rights, and regulation of business. The opponents, who stressed long-term growth and support for entrepreneurship and low taxes, now started calling themselves "conservatives."

Truman to Kennedy: 1945-1963

President Harry S. Truman (1945-1953)

Roosevelt died in office on April 12, 1945, and Harry S. Truman took over. The rifts inside the party that FDR had papered over began to emerge. Former Vice President Henry A. Wallace denounced Truman as a war-monger for his anti-Soviet programs, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and NATO. However the Wallace supporters and far left were pushed out of the party and the CIO in 1946-48 by young anti-Communists like Hubert Humphrey, Walter Reuther, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr.. On the right the Republicans blasted Truman’s domestic policies. "Had Enough?" and "To err is Truman" were winning slogans for Republicans, who recaptured Congress in 1946 for the first time since 1928.

Many party leaders were ready to dump Truman, but they lacked an alternative. Truman counterattacked, pushing out Strom Thurmond and his Dixiecrats and, as an audacious and inspired strategic move, calling the GOP-controlled Congress into special session in July, sending them legislation he knew was anathema to the congressional Republicans, and then, upon the end of the predictably deadlocked and unproductive session, blasting them as the "Do-Nothing" 80th Congress in a relentless whistle-stopping campaign across the country. In perhaps the most stunning presidential election result of the 20th century, Truman won re-election over Thomas Dewey in 1948, and the Democrats regained control of Congress. However, Truman’s Fair Deal proposals, such as universal health care, were defeated by the conservative coalition in Congress.

In 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower recaptured the White House for the Republicans, defeating Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson. Four years later, Eisenhower repeated his success against Stevenson. In Congress the powerful Texas duo of House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson held the party together in the shadow of the war hero, often by compromising with Eisenhower. In 1958, thanks largely to organized labor, the party made dramatic gains in the off-year congressional elections.

President John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)

Senator John F. Kennedy won the presidential election of 1960, defeating then-Vice President Richard Nixon. Though Kennedy's term in office lasted only about a thousand days, he tried to hold back Communist gains after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba and the construction of the Berlin Wall, and sent 16,000 soldiers to Vietnam to advise the hard-pressed South Vietnamese army. He challenged America in the Space Race to land an American man on the moon by 1969. After the Cuban Missile Crisis he moved to de-escalate tensions with the Soviet Union. Kennedy also pushed for civil rights and racial integration, one example being Kennedy assigning federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders in the south. President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. Soon after then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the new president. Johnson, heir to the New Deal broke the Conservative Coalition in Congress and passed a remarkable number of liberal laws, known as the Great Society. Johnson succeeded in passing major civil rights laws that started the racial integration in the south. At the same time, Johnson escalated the Vietnam War, leading to an inner conflict inside the Democratic Party that shattered the party in the elections of 1968.

The Civil Rights Movement: 1963-1968

President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

African-Americans, who had traditionally given strong support to the Republican Party since the American Civil War, shifted to the Democratic Party in the 1930s, largely due to New Deal relief programs, patronage offers, and the advocacy of civil rights by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. In many cities, such as Chicago, entire ward-based Republican apparatuses in black neighborhoods switched parties virtually overnight. However, in the late 1960s, the New Deal Coalition began to fracture, as more Democratic leaders voiced support for civil rights, upsetting the party's traditional base of conservative Southern Democrats and ethnic Catholics in Northern cities. After Harry Truman's platform showed support for civil rights and desegregation laws during the 1948 Democratic National Convention, some Southern Democrats, called "Dixiecrats," temporarily abandoned the national party and voted for South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond. They voted for his electors on the regular state Democratic ticket. Although Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower carried half the South in 1952 and 1956, and Senator Barry Goldwater also carried five Southern states in 1964, Democrat Jimmy Carter carried all of the South except Virginia, and there was no long-term realignment until Ronald Reagan's sweeping victories in the South in 1980 and 1984.

The national party's dramatic reversal on civil rights issues culminated when Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. On doing so he commented, "We [the Democrats] have lost the South for a generation." Meanwhile, the Republicans, led again by Richard Nixon, were beginning to implement their Southern strategy, which aimed to resist federal encroachment on the states, while appealing to conservative and moderate white Southerners in the rapidly growing cities and suburbs of the South.

The year 1968 was a trying one for the party as well as the United States. In January, even though it was a military defeat for the Viet Cong, the Tet Offensive began to turn American public opinion against the Vietnam War. Senator Eugene McCarthy rallied anti-war forces on college campuses and won the New Hampshire primary. In a stunning move, Johnson withdrew from the election on March 31, and shortly afterward, Senator Robert Kennedy, brother of the former president, entered the race. He won the California primary on June 4 and seemed well on his way to capturing the nomination, but he was assassinated in Los Angeles. During the 1968 Democratic National Convention, while Chicago police violently confronted anti-war protesters outside the convention hall, the Democrats nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a stalwart New Dealer from Minnesota. Meanwhile Alabama's Democratic governor George C. Wallace launched a third-party campaign and at one point was running second to the Republican candidate Richard M. Nixon. Nixon barely won, with the Democrats retaining control of Congress.

The degree to which white and black Southerners had reversed their historic parties became evident in the 1968 election, when every Southern state except Texas deserted Humphrey and voted for either Republican Nixon or former Democrat Wallace. The party's main electoral base thus shifted to the Northeast, marking a dramatic reversal from tradition.

Transformation years: 1969-1992

President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981)

In the presidential election of 1972, the Democrats nominated South Dakota Senator George McGovern with his anti-war slogan "Come Home, America!" McGovern's platform advocated immediate withdrawal from Vietnam and a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans. McGovern tried to crusade against the policies of Nixon, but when news surfaced that his running-mate Thomas Eagleton had undergone electroshock therapy, the focus of the campaign swung to McGovern. Eagleton stepped down, and Sargent Shriver, an ally of Daley's, accepted the vice presidential candidacy. The general election was a landslide for Nixon, as McGovern carried only Massachusetts. However, Democrats retained their large majorities in Congress and most state houses.

The sordid Watergate scandal soon destroyed the Nixon presidency, giving the Democrats a flicker of hope. With Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon soon after his resignation in 1974, the Democrats used the "corruption" issue to make major gains in the off-year elections. In the 1976 election, the surprise winner was Georgia governor Jimmy Carter, a little-known outsider who promised honesty in Washington.

Some of President Carter's major accomplishments consisted of the creation of a national energy policy and the consolidation of governmental agencies, resulting in two new cabinet departments, the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. Carter led the bipartisan effort to deregulate the trucking, airline, rail, finance, communications, and oil industries, thus eliminating the New Deal approach to regulation of the economy. He bolstered the Social Security system, and appointed record numbers of women and minorities to significant government and judicial posts. He helped enact strong legislation on environmental protection, through the expansion of the National Park Service in Alaska, creating 103 million new acres of federally administered land. In foreign affairs, Carter's accomplishments consisted of the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties, the creation of full diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, and the negotiation of the SALT II Treaty with the Soviet Union. In addition, he championed human rights throughout the world and used human rights as the center of his administration's foreign policy.

File:T O'Neill.jpg

Thomas "Tip" O'Neill of Massachusetts was the longest-serving (consecutive) Speaker of the House (1977-1987).

Despite all of these successes, Carter failed to implement a national health plan or to reform the tax system, as he had promised in his campaign. Inflation was also on the rise. Abroad, the Iran hostage crisis (November 4, 1979 - January 20, 1981) involved 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days, and Carter's diplomatic and military rescue attempts failed. The Soviet war in Afghanistan starting in December 1979 helped weaken the perception Americans had of Carter. In the presidential election of 1980, Carter defeated Ted Kennedy to regain the party's nomination, but lost to Ronald Reagan in November. The Democrats lost 12 Senate seats, and, for the first time since 1954, the Republicans controlled the Senate. The House, however, remained in Democratic hands.

Instrumental in the election of Republican President Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election were Democrats who supported many conservative policies. These "Reagan Democrats" were Democrats before and after the Reagan years. They were mostly white ethnics in the Northeast and Midwest who were attracted to Reagan's social conservatism and his hawkish foreign policy. Reagan carried 49 states against former Vice President Walter Mondale, a New Deal stalwart, in the 1984 election. Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, running not as a New Dealer but as an efficiency expert in public administration, lost by a landslide in the 1988 election to Vice President George H. W. Bush.

The Democrats remained in control of Congress, although conservative "Blue Dog Democrats" often voted with Reagan and the GOP controlled the Senate 1980-86. The Democrats clashed frequently with Reagan on numerous issues. In foreign policy, they disagreed with the president on the nuclear freeze and the Boland Amendment, which tried to restrict funding of the Contras who were challenging the left-wing government of Nicaragua. Democrats failed to block Reagan's income tax cuts. They supported his increases in military spending, but they did keep funding for social programs that he tried to cut or eliminate, but did not veto. Congress voted for most of the spending increases and tax cuts that Reagan proposed, but not his spending cuts. Annual federal budget deficits, and the national debt, rose to record heights under Reagan.

In response to two landslide defeats in a row in 1980 and 1984, the Democratic Leadership Council was created to move the party to the ideological center. With the party retaining left-of-center supporters as well as supporters holding moderate or conservative views on some issues, the Democrats, more so than ever, became a big tent party with widespread appeal to most opponents of the Republicans.

The New Democrats: 1992-2004

It was during Bill Clinton's presidency (1993-2001) that the Democratic Party's campaigning ideology moved toward the center.

In 1992, for the first time in 16 years, the United States elected a Democrat to the White House. President Bill Clinton balanced the federal budget for the first time since the Kennedy presidency and presided over a robust American economy that saw incomes grow across the board. In 1994, the economy had the lowest combination of unemployment and inflation in 25 years. President Clinton signed into law the Brady Bill, which imposed a five-day waiting period on handgun purchases; he also signed into legislation a ban on many types of semi-automatic firearms (which expired in 2004). His Family and Medical Leave Act, covering some 40 million Americans, offered workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-guaranteed leave for childbirth or a personal or family illness. He helped temporarily restore democracy to Haiti, took a strong (if ultimately unsuccessful) hand in Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations, brokered a historic cease-fire in Northern Ireland, and negotiated the Dayton accords, which helped bring an end to nearly four years of terror and killing in the former Yugoslavia. In 1996, Clinton became the first Democratic president to be reelected since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944.

However, the Democrats lost their majority in both houses of Congress in 1994. Clinton vetoed two Republican-backed welfare reform bills before signing the third, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. The tort reform Private Securities Litigation Reform Act passed over his veto. Labor unions, which had been steadily losing membership since the 1960s, found they had also lost political clout inside the Democratic Party; Clinton enacted the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico over their strong objections. In 1998, the Republican-led House of Representatives impeached Clinton on two charges; he was subsequently acquitted by the United States Senate in 1999. Under Clinton's leadership, the United States participated in NATO's Operation Allied Force against Yugoslavia that year.

During the presidential election of 2000, the Democrats chose Vice President Al Gore to be the party's candidate for the presidency. Gore and George W. Bush, the Republican candidate and son of former President George H.W. Bush, disagreed on a number of issues, including abortion, gun politics, environmentalism, gay rights, tax cuts, foreign policy, public education, global warming, judicial appointments, and affirmative action. Gore won a popular vote plurality over Bush, but lost the election in the Electoral College. The United States Senate during the 107th Congress was tied between the two major parties (with a Republican Vice President breaking a tie) until Republican Jim Jeffords became independent and caucused with the Democrats, giving them majority control over the Senate for the first time since it changed hands in 1995.

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the nation's focus was changed to issues of national security. All but one Democrat voted with their Republican counterparts to authorize President Bush's 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. House and Senate Democratic leaders pushed Democrats to vote for the USA PATRIOT Act and the invasion of Iraq. The Democrats were split over entering Iraq in 2003 and increasingly expressed concerns about both the justification and progress of the War on Terrorism, as well as the domestic effects, including threats to civil rights and civil liberties, from the USA PATRIOT Act.

In the wake of the financial fraud scandal of the Enron Corporation and other corporations, Congressional Democrats pushed for a legal overhaul of business accounting with the intention of preventing further accounting fraud. This led to the bipartisan Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. The Democrats generally campaigned on the issue of economic recovery for the 2002 midterm elections. The Democrats lost control over the Senate to the Republicans in the election.

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts was the Democratic Party's 2004 nominee for the presidency.

The 2004 campaign started as early as December 2002, when Gore announced he would not seek the party's nomination for president. Howard Dean, an opponent of the war and a critic of the Democratic establishment, was the early front-runner leading into the 2004 Democratic primaries. Massachusetts Senator John Kerry was nominated because he was seen as more "electable" than Dean.

As layoffs of American workers occurred in various industries due to outsourcing, some Democrats such as Howard Dean and Erskine Bowles began to refine their positions on free trade. By 2004, the failure of George W. Bush's administration to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, mounting combat casualties and fatalities in that country, and the lack of any end point for the War on Terror were frequently debated issues in the election. That year, Democrats generally campaigned on surmounting the jobless recovery, solving the Iraq crisis, and fighting terrorism more efficiently.

In the 2004 election, Kerry lost both the popular vote by 3 million votes and the Electoral College. Republicans also gained four seats in the Senate (leaving the Democrats with only 44 seats, their fewest since the 1920s) and three seats in the House of Representatives. For the first time since 1952, the Democratic leader of the Senate lost re-election. Democrats gained governorships in Louisiana, New Hampshire, and Montana while losing the governorship of Missouri and a legislative majority in Georgia—which had long been a Democratic stronghold.

After the election most analysts concluded that Kerry was a poor campaigner. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, ballot initiatives banning same-sex marriage, Kerry's inability to reconcile his vote to authorize the war in Iraq with his opposition to it, all played various parts in his defeat. Other factors included a healthy job market, a rising stock market, strong home sales, and low unemployment.

The party today

After the 2004 election, prominent Democrats began to rethink the party's direction, and a variety of strategies for moving forward were voiced. Some Democrats proposed moving towards the right to regain seats in the House and Senate and possibly win the presidency in the election of 2008; others demanded that the party move more to the left and become a stronger opposition party. These debates were reflected in the 2005 campaign for Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, which Howard Dean won over the objections of many party insiders. Dean sought to move the Democratic strategy away from the establishment, and bolster support for the party's state organizations, including those in red states.

When the 109th Congress convened, Harry Reid, the new Senate Minority Leader, tried to convince the Democratic Senators to vote more as a bloc on important issues; he forced the Republicans to abandon their push for privatization of Social Security. In 2005, the Democrats retained their governorships in Virginia and New Jersey, electing Tim Kaine and Jon Corzine, respectively. However, the party lost the mayoral race in New York City, a Democratic stronghold, for the fourth straight time.

With scandals involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff, as well as Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay, Mark Foley, and Bob Taft, the Democrats used the slogan "Culture of corruption" against the Republicans during the 2006 campaign. Negative public opinion on the war in Iraq, along with widespread dissatisfaction among conservatives over government spending, dragged President Bush's job approval ratings down to the lowest levels of his presidency.

Nancy Pelosi of California is the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives.

As a result of the 2006 midterm elections, the Democratic Party became the majority party in the House of Representatives and its caucus in the United States Senate constituted a majority when the 110th Congress convened in 2007. The Democrats had spent twelve successive years as the minority party in the House before the watershed 2006 mid-term elections. The Democrats also went from controlling a minority of governorships to a majority. The number of seats held by party members likewise increased in various state legislatures, giving the Democrats control of a plurality of them nationwide. No Democratic incumbent was defeated, and no Democratic-held open seat was lost, in either the U.S. Senate, U.S. House, or with regards to any governorship.

The Democratic Party's electoral success has been attributed to running conservative-leaning Democrats against at-risk Republican incumbents. However, the victory has also been attributed to key progressive policies and tactics opposed by the conservative wing of the party, including the 50-state strategy and the use of the internet to raise funds from small donors. The twelve years the Democrats spent as a minority party in Congress were characterized by the dominance of the conservative wing of the party and the 2006 victory only came in the wake of the liberal wing reasserting itself (most obviously in Howard Dean's election as DNC chair, the first chair since 1994 not to be a member of the DLC).

In the 2006 Democratic caucus leadership elections, Democrats chose Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland for House Majority Leader and nominated Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California for Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Senate Democrats chose Harry Reid of Nevada for United States Senate Majority Leader. Pelosi was elected as the first female House Speaker at the commencement of the 110th Congress. The House of Representatives soon passed the measures that comprised the Democrats' 100-Hour Plan.

2008 outlook

Main articles: Official and potential 2008 United States presidential election Democratic candidates and United States presidential election, 2008

File:Obama vs. Hillary.jpg

Newsweek magazine cover story, "Is America Ready?," which profiled both front-runners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

2004 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee John Edwards, former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, Delaware Senator Joe Biden, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio have declared their candidacies for the Democratic presidential nomination. New York Senator Hillary Clinton has declared being in the race, and has formed a presidential exploratory committee. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has also formed an exploratory committee. Other possible candidates include 2000 Democratic Presidential nominee Al Gore as well as retired General Wesley Clark. 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry, former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, and Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, once considered possible candidates, have announced that they will not be seeking the party's presidential nomination in 2008.

Senator Clinton has taken an early lead in national opinion polls for the 2008 Democratic nomination. Many early polls have put Senator Obama, and former Senator Edwards closely behind Clinton.

Presidential tickets

^[1] Resigned from office.
^[2] Died in office.
^[3] Died before the electoral votes were cast.
^[4] Thomas Eagleton was the original vice presidential nominee, but was forced to withdraw his nomination.

Symbols and name

"A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion" by Thomas Nast. Harper's Weekly, January 19, 1870.

In the 1790s, the Federalists deliberately used the terms "Democrat" and "Democratic Party" as insults against Jeffersonians. For example, in 1798, George Washington wrote that "you could as soon scrub the blackamore white, as to change the principles of a profest Democrat; and that he will leave nothing unattempted to overturn the Government of this Country." By the 1830s, however, the term that had once been considered an insult became the party's name. In the late 19th century, the term "The Democracy" was in common use for the party.

The most common symbol for the party is the donkey, although the party itself never officially adopted this symbol. The origins of this symbol are unknown, but several theories have been proposed. According to one theory, in its original form, the jackass was born in the intense mudslinging that occurred during the presidential race of 1828 in which Andrew Jackson was sometimes called a jackass by his opponents. A political cartoon depicting Jackson riding and directing a donkey (representing the Democratic Party) was published in 1837. A political cartoon by Thomas Nast in an 1870 edition of Harper's Weekly revived the donkey as a symbol for the Democratic Party. Cartoonists followed Nast and used the donkey to represent the Democrats, and the elephant to represent the Republicans.

Although both major political parties (and many minor ones) use the traditional American red, white, and blue colors in their marketing and representations, since election night 2000 the color blue has become the identified color of the Democratic Party, while the color red has become the identified color of the opposition Republican Party. That night, for the first time, all major broadcast television networks used the same color scheme for the electoral map: red for Republicans and blue for Democrats. Since then, the color blue has been widely used by the media to represent the party. It has also been used by party supporters for promotional efforts (e.g BuyBlue, BlueFund) and by the party itself, which in 2006 unveiled the "Red to Blue Program" to support Democratic candidates running against Republican incumbents in the 2006 midterm election.

Jefferson-Jackson Day is the most common name given to the annual fundraising celebration held by local chapters of the Democratic Party. It is named after Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, whom the party regards as its distinguished early leaders.

The song "Happy Days Are Here Again" is the unofficial song of the Democratic Party. It was used prominently when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was nominated for president at the 1932 Democratic National Convention and remains a sentimental favorite for Democrats today.

See also

• Democrat In Name Only
• Democratic organizations
• List of notable Democrats
• List of state Democratic Parties in the U.S.
• Red state vs. blue state divide

Bibliography

Surveys

• Finkelman, Paul and Peter Wallenstein, eds. Encyclopedia of American Political History (2001)
• Jensen, Richard. Grass Roots Politics: Parties, Issues, and Voters, 1854-1983 (1983)
• Kleppner, Paul et al. The Evolution of American Electoral Systems (1983), advanced scholarly essays.
• Rutland, Robert Allen. The Democrats: From Jefferson to Clinton (1995). short popular history
• Schlesinger, Arthur Meier, Jr. ed. History of American Presidential Elections, 1789-2000 (various multivolume editions, latest is 2001). For each election includes good scholarly history and selection of primary document. Essays on the most important election are reprinted in Schlesinger, The Coming to Power: Critical Presidential Elections in American History (1972)
• Schlisinger, Galbraith. Of the People: The 200 Year History of the Democratic Party (1992) popular essays by scholars.
• Taylor, Jeff. Where Did the Party Go?: William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian Legacy (2006), for history and ideology of the party.
• Witcover, Jules. Party of the People: A History of the Democrats (2003), 900 page popular history

Since 1992

• Barone, Michael, and Grant Ujifusa, The Almanac of American Politics 2006: The Senators, the Representatives and the Governors: Their Records and Election Results, Their States and Districts (2005) covers all the live politicians with amazing detail.
• Dark, Taylor, The Unions and the Democrats: An Enduring Alliance (2001)
• Judis, John B. and Ruy Teixeira. The Emerging Democratic Majority (2004) demography is destiny
• Patterson, James T. Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush vs. Gore (2005) well balanced scholarly synthesis.
• Sabato, Larry J. Divided States of America: The Slash and Burn Politics of the 2004 Presidential Election (2005), scholarly study.
• Sabato, Larry J. and Bruce Larson. The Party's Just Begun: Shaping Political Parties for America's Future (2001) scholarly textbook.

Before 1992

• Blum, John Morton. The Progressive Presidents: Roosevelt, Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson (1980)
• Fraser, Steve and Gary Gerstle, eds. The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980 (1990)
• Kleppner, Paul. The Third Electoral System 1853-1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures (1979), major study of voting patterns in every state
• Ladd Jr., Everett Carll with Charles D. Hadley. Transformations of the American Party System: Political Coalitions from the New Deal to the 1970s 2nd ed. (1978).
• Lawrence, David G. The Collapse of the Democratic Presidential Majority: Realignment, Dealignment, and Electoral Change from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton (1996)
• Milkis, Sidney M. and Jerome M. Mileur, eds. The New Deal and the Triumph of Liberalism (2002)
• Milkis, Sidney M. The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System Since the New Deal (1993)
• Nichols, Roy Franklin. The Democratic Machine, 1850-1854 (1923)
• Patterson, James T. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (1997) well balanced scholarly synthesis.
• Rae, Nicol C. Southern Democrats Oxford University Press. 1994. focus on 1964 to 1992.
• Remini, Robert V. Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party (1959)
• Silbey, Joel H. The American Political Nation, 1838-1893 (1991)
• Sundquist, James L. Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States (1983)

External links

• Democratic National Committee
• Democratic Senate Caucus
• Democratic House Caucus
• Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
• Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
• Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee
• Democratic Governors Association
• Democratic Attorneys General Association
• College Democrats of America
• Young Democrats of America
• Democrats Abroad
• 2004 National Platform (PDF), HTML version
• Charter & Bylaws (PDF)