Yellow dog Democrat

Yellow dog Democrat ( engl. , Dt. : Yellow Dog Democrat ) is an obsolete term from the American US policy and denotes a selector, allegedly under all circumstances candidates of the Democrats selected.

meaning

The term was mainly used in the first half of the 20th century to designate steadfast base voters of the Democratic Party in the southern states , who would therefore also vote a yellow dog for office as long as he is a candidate for the Democrats - or rather a yellow dog as a Republican candidate .

In German there is a comparable phrase that in certain strongholds parties could “put up a broomstick, it would be elected anyway”.

Origin of the term

A possible reference point for the term is a passage from a campaign speech by then Congressman and later President Abraham Lincoln . In 1848 he supported Zachary Taylor , the Whigs ' presidential candidate , against the Democrat Lewis Cass , saying that someone had once claimed that he had discovered how to make a new person out of an old man and a little yellow dog out of the remaining material . The same thing the Democrats would have done with the popularity of General Andrew Jackson . You would have made him president twice and there was then enough left over to bring several comparatively minor personalities into the presidency.

The term became popular in the 1928 presidential election campaign . In this, the Democrats put the Governor of New York , Al Smith , as a candidate. Smith was an avowed opponent of the alcohol prohibition popular in the southern states and also the first Catholic to apply for the highest office of the state for his party, which was dominated by the Protestant South at the time. Nevertheless, he won a majority against the Republican candidate Herbert Hoover in addition to Massachusetts and Rhode Island only in the southern states of South Carolina , Mississippi , Alabama , Louisiana , Georgia and Arkansas , which underlined the concept of Solid South .

Further development

When the conservative southern voters turned away from the Democrats in the direction of the Republicans in the 1960s, the term fell out of use.

The name of the Blue Dog Coalition of conservative and moderate Democratic Congressmen (" Blue Dog Democrats "), founded in 1994, refers to the expression Yellow dog Democrats .

Web links

Yellow Dog Democrat in the Urban Dictionary
Entry in the Political Dictionary of the World Association of International Studies

Individual evidence

↑ "A fellow once advertised that he had made a discovery by which he could make a new man out of an old one, and have enough of the stuff left to make a little yellow dog. Just such a discovery has Gen. Jackson's popularity been to you [Democrats]. You not only made President of him out of it twice, but you have had enough of the stuff left to make Presidents of several comparatively small men since; and it is your chief reliance now to make still another. " Lincoln Speeches, Abraham Lincoln, Penguin Civic Classics Series
↑ Spiegel : US Trade Unions October 7, 1959, accessed July 28, 2015

[1] "A fellow once advertised that he had made a discovery by which he could make a new man out of an old one, and have enough of the stuff left to make a little yellow dog. Just such a discovery has Gen. Jackson's popularity been to you [Democrats]. You not only made President of him out of it twice, but you have had enough of the stuff left to make Presidents of several comparatively small men since; and it is your chief reliance now to make still another. " Lincoln Speeches, Abraham Lincoln, Penguin Civic Classics Series

[2] Spiegel : US Trade Unions October 7, 1959, accessed July 28, 2015