Democratic Party (United States)

For the 1792–1834 party, see Democratic-Republican Party.

Democratic Party
ChairpersonJaime Harrison
Governing bodyDemocratic National Committee[1][2]
U.S. PresidentJoe Biden
U.S. Vice PresidentKamala Harris
Senate Majority LeaderChuck Schumer
House Minority LeaderHakeem Jeffries
Founders
FoundedJanuary 8, 1828; 196 years ago (1828-01-08)[3]
Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Preceded byDemocratic-Republican Party
Headquarters430 South Capitol St. SE,
Washington, D.C., U.S.
Student wing
Youth wingYoung Democrats of America
Women's wingNational Federation of Democratic Women
Overseas wingDemocrats Abroad
Ideology
Political positionCenter-left[b]
CaucusesProblem Solvers Caucus
Blue Dog Coalition
New Democrat Coalition
Congressional Progressive Caucus
Colors  Blue
Senate
47 / 100[c]
House of Representatives
213 / 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.org Edit this at Wikidata

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 partially (not all factions) 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 his and Joe Biden's presidency, the party has adopted an increasingly progressive economic agenda[33][34] and more left-wing views on cultural and social issues.[35]

In the 21st century, the party is strongest among urban voters,[36][37] union workers, college graduates,[38][13][39][40] women, African Americans, American Jews,[41][42][43][44] LGBT+ people,[45][46] and the unmarried. On social issues, it advocates for abortion rights,[47] voting rights,[48] LGBT rights,[49] action on climate change,[50] and the legalization of marijuana.[51] On economic issues, the party favors healthcare reform, universal child care, paid sick leave and supporting unions.[52][53][54][55] In foreign policy, the party supports liberal internationalism as well as tough stances against China and Russia.[56][57][58]

  1. ^ "About the Democratic Party". Democrats. Archived from the original on April 6, 2022. Retrieved April 15, 2022. For 171 years, [the Democratic National Committee] has been responsible for governing the Democratic Party
  2. ^ Democratic Party (March 12, 2022). "The Charter & The Bylaws of the Democratic Party of the United States" (PDF). p. 3. Archived (PDF) from the original on March 27, 2022. Retrieved April 15, 2022. The Democratic National Committee shall have general responsibility for the affairs of the Democratic Party between National Conventions
  3. ^ Cole, Donald B. (1970). Jacksonian Democracy in New Hampshire, 1800–1851. Harvard University Press. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-67-428368-8.
  4. ^ a b Arnold, N. Scott (2009). Imposing values: an essay on liberalism and regulation. Oxford University Press. p. 3. ISBN 9780495501121. Archived from the original on October 2, 2020. Retrieved April 28, 2020. Modern liberalism occupies the left-of-center in the traditional political spectrum and is represented by the Democratic Party in the United States.
  5. ^ Bacon, Perry Jr. (March 11, 2019). "The Six Wings Of The Democratic Party". FiveThirtyEight. Archived from the original on August 15, 2021. Retrieved October 21, 2021.
  6. ^ Stein, Letita; Cornwell, Susan; Tanfani, Joseph (August 23, 2018). "Inside the progressive movement roiling the Democratic Party". Reuters. Archived from the original on June 13, 2022. Retrieved June 13, 2022.
  7. ^ Rae, Nicol C. (June 2007). "Be Careful What You Wish For: The Rise of Responsible Parties in American National Politics". Annual Review of Political Science. 10 (1). Annual Reviews: 169–191. doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.10.071105.100750. ISSN 1094-2939. 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.
  8. ^ Marantz, Andrew (May 24, 2021). "Are We Entering a New Political Era?". The New Yorker. New York, New York: Condé Nast. Archived from the original on April 19, 2024. Retrieved June 16, 2024. Moderation may be relative, but moderates still run the Democratic Party.
  9. ^ Coates, David, ed. (2012). "The Oxford Companion to American Politics". Liberalism, Center-left. The Oxford Companion to American Politics. Oxford University Press. pp. 68–69. doi:10.1093/acref/9780199764310.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-976431-0. Archived from the original on July 8, 2024. Retrieved June 24, 2024. Observes that the terms "progressive" and "liberal" are "often used interchangeably" in political discourse regarding "the center-left".
  10. ^ Cronin, James E.; Ross, George W.; Shoch, James (August 24, 2011). "Introduction: The New World of the Center-Left". What's Left of the Left: Democrats and Social Democrats in Challenging Times. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-5079-8. Archived from the original on August 20, 2024. Retrieved August 7, 2024. pp. 17, 22, 182: 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.
  11. ^ Bruner, Christopher M. (2018). "Center-Left Politics and Corporate Governance: What Is the 'Progressive' Agenda?". BYU Law Review. 2018 (2). Digital Commons: 267–334. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2917253. ISSN 2162-8572. SSRN 2917253. 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.
  12. ^ Hacker, Jacob S.; Malpas, Amelia; Pierson, Paul; Zacher, Sam (December 27, 2023). "Bridging the Blue Divide: The Democrats' New Metro Coalition and the Unexpected Prominence of Redistribution". Perspectives on Politics. 22 (3). Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association: 3. doi:10.1017/S1537592723002931. ISSN 1537-5927. 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.
  13. ^ a b Grossmann, Matt; Hopkins, David A. "Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics". Cambridge University Press. Retrieved May 23, 2024. 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.
  14. ^ M. Philip Lucas, "Martin Van Buren as Party Leader and at Andrew Jackson's Right Hand." in A Companion to the Antebellum Presidents 1837–1861 (2014): 107–129.
  15. ^ "The Democratic Party, founded in 1828, is the world's oldest political party" states Janda, Kenneth; Berry, Jeffrey M.; Goldman, Jerry (2010). The Challenge of Democracy: American Government in Global Politics. Cengage Learning. p. 276. ISBN 9780495906186.
  16. ^ Cite error: The named reference Kazin-2022 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  17. ^ Holt, Michael F. (1992). Political Parties and American Political Development: From the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln. Louisiana State University Press. pp. 27–28. ISBN 978-0807126097. Archived from the original on April 5, 2023. Retrieved March 19, 2023.
  18. ^ Bates, Christopher (2015). The Early Republic and Antebellum America: An Encyclopedia of Social, Political, Cultural, and Economic History. Taylor & Francis. p. 293. ISBN 9781317457404. 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.
  19. ^ a b c Staff. "Jacksonian Democracy: The Democratization of Politics". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on July 12, 2022. Retrieved October 6, 2022. 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.
  20. ^ Geer, John G. (1992). "New Deal Issues and the American Electorate, 1952–1988". Political Behavior. 14 (1): 45–65. doi:10.1007/BF00993508. hdl:1803/4054. ISSN 0190-9320. JSTOR 586295. S2CID 144817362. Archived from the original on December 29, 2021. Retrieved August 23, 2022.
  21. ^ Grigsby, Ellen (2008). Analyzing Politics: An Introduction to Political Science. Cengage Learning. pp. 106–107. ISBN 9780495501121. Archived from the original on October 2, 2020. Retrieved April 28, 2020. 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.
  22. ^ Prendergast, William B. (1999). The Catholic Voter in American Politics: The Passing of the Democratic Monolith. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University. ISBN 978-0-87840-724-8. Archived from the original on October 9, 2023. Retrieved July 25, 2018.
  23. ^ Marlin, George J. (2004). The American Catholic Voter: 200 Years of Political Impact. South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine. ISBN 978-1-58731-029-4. Retrieved April 28, 2020.
  24. ^ Michael Corbett et al. Politics and Religion in the United States (2nd ed. 2013).
  25. ^ Zeitz, Joshua (October 16, 2023). "The 'Unprecedented' House GOP Meltdown Isn't as Novel as You Think. And There Is a Way Out". Archived from the original on October 16, 2023. Retrieved October 16, 2023.
  26. ^ Zelizer, Julian E. (February 15, 2015). "How Medicare Was Made". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on March 4, 2015. Retrieved August 23, 2022.
  27. ^ "Women More Likely to Be Democrats, Regardless of Age". Gallup. June 12, 2009. Archived from the original on June 14, 2010. Retrieved June 17, 2010.
  28. ^ Kullgren, Ian (November 10, 2020). "Union Workers Weren't a Lock for Biden. Here's Why That Matters". Bloomberg Law. Archived from the original on November 3, 2022. Retrieved November 3, 2022.
  29. ^ Frank, Thomas (2016). Listen, liberal, or, What ever happened to the party of the people? (First ed.). New York: Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 978-1-62779-539-5. OCLC 908628802.
  30. ^ Cite error: The named reference Hale-1995 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  31. ^ Cite error: The named reference Wills-1997 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  32. ^ Edsall, Thomas B. (June 28, 1998). "Clinton and Blair envision a 'Third Way' international movement". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on November 27, 2020. Retrieved November 1, 2022.
  33. ^ Cite error: The named reference Hacker-2024 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  34. ^ Gerstle, Gary (2022). The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0197519646. Archived from the original on June 26, 2022. Retrieved August 1, 2024. 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.
  35. ^ Burn-Murdoch, John (November 15, 2024). "Trump broke the Democrats' thermostat". Financial Times. Retrieved November 15, 2024.
  36. ^ McGreal, Chris (November 11, 2018). "Can Democrats ever win back white, rural America?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on March 8, 2019. Retrieved March 7, 2019.
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  38. ^ Cite error: The named reference Polarization by education was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  39. ^ Levitz, Eric (October 19, 2022). "How the Diploma Divide Is Remaking American Politics". New York Intelligencer. Archived from the original on October 20, 2022. Retrieved April 24, 2023.
  40. ^ Sosnik, Doug (April 17, 2023). "The 'Diploma Divide' Is the New Fault Line in American Politics". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 24, 2023. Retrieved April 24, 2023.
  41. ^ Jackson, Brooks (April 18, 2008). "Blacks and the Democratic Party". FactCheck.org. Archived from the original on November 3, 2011. Retrieved October 30, 2011.
  42. ^ Bositis, David. "Blacks and the 2012 Democratic National Convention; page 9, table 1: black votes in presidential elections, 1936 - 2008" (PDF). Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 22, 2024. Retrieved March 23, 2024.
  43. ^ "Partisanship by race, ethnicity and education". Pew Research Center. April 9, 2024. Retrieved April 26, 2024.
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  45. ^ Miller, Gary; Schofield, Norman (2003). "Activists and Partisan Realignment in the United States". American Political Science Review. 97 (2): 245–260. doi:10.1017/S0003055403000650 (inactive November 7, 2024). ISSN 1537-5943. S2CID 12885628. 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)
  46. ^ Grossmann, Matt; Mahmood, Zuhaib; Isaac, William (October 1, 2021). "Political Parties, Interest Groups, and Unequal Class Influence in American Policy". The Journal of Politics. 83 (4): 1706–1720. doi:10.1086/711900. ISSN 0022-3816. S2CID 224851520. Archived from the original on October 29, 2021. Retrieved October 12, 2021.
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  54. ^ Levy, Jonah (2006). The State after Statism: New State Activities in the Age of Liberalization. Harvard University Press. p. 198. ISBN 9780495501121. 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.
  55. ^ U.S. Department of State. "A Mixed Economy: The Role of the Market". Thoughtco.com. Archived from the original on May 24, 2017.
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