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b : one who practices social equality

2 capitalized : a member of the Democratic party of the U.S.

a true democrat, he has always abhorred that nation's class system

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'democrat.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

1789, in the meaning defined at sense 1a

borrowed from French dmocrate, derivative from the base of dmocratie democracy or dmocratique democratic, probably after aristocrate aristocrat

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Democrat. Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democrat. Accessed 27 Feb. 2020.

More Definitions for democrat

1 : a person who believes in or practices democracy

2 capitalized : a member of the Democratic party of the United States

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Democrat | Definition of Democrat by Merriam-Webster

The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with its main rival, the Republican Party. Tracing its heritage back to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's Democratic-Republican Party, the modern-day Democratic Party was founded around 1828 by supporters of Andrew Jackson, making it the world's oldest active political party.[18]

In its early years, the Party supported limited government and state sovereignty while opposing banks and supporting slavery. Since Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal coalition in the 1930s, the Democratic Party has promoted a social liberal platform.[3][19] Well into the 20th century, the party had conservative pro-business and Southern conservative-populist wings; following the New Deal, however, the conservative wing of the party largely withered outside the South. The New Deal Coalition of 19321964 attracted strong support from voters of recent European extractionmany of whom were Catholics based in the cities.[20][21][22] After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the core bases of the two parties shifted, with the Southern states becoming more reliably Republican in presidential politics and the Northeastern states becoming more reliably Democratic. The once-powerful labor union element became smaller and less supportive after the 1970s. White evangelicals and Southerners have become heavily Republican at the state and local levels since the 1990s. People living in urban areas, women, college graduates, sexual minorities, millennials, and black, Latino, Jewish, Muslim, and Asian Americans tend to support the Democratic Party.[23][24][25]

The Democratic Party's philosophy of modern liberalism advocates social and economic equality, along with the welfare state.[26] It seeks to provide government regulation in the economy to promote the public interest.[27] Policies such as environmental protection, support for organized labor and labor unions, the introduction of social programs, affordable college tuition, universal health care, equal opportunity, and consumer protection form the core of the party's economic policy.[26][28] On social issues, it advocates campaign finance reform,[29] LGBT rights,[30] police and immigration reform,[31] stricter gun laws,[32] and the legalization of marijuana.[33]

15 Democrats have served as president of the United States. The first was Andrew Jackson, who was the seventh president and served from 1829 to 1837. The most recent was Barack Obama, who was the 44th and held office from 2009 to 2017. As of 2019, the Democrats hold a majority in the House of Representatives, 15 state government trifectas (governorship and both legislative chambers),[34] the mayoralty of most major American cities,[35] and 19 total state legislatures. Four of the nine sitting justices of the Supreme Court were appointed by Democratic presidents.

Democratic Party officials often trace its origins to the inspiration of the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and other influential opponents of the Federalists in 1792. That party also inspired the Whigs and modern Republicans. Organizationally, the modern Democratic Party truly arose in the 1830s with the election of Andrew Jackson. Since the nomination of William Jennings Bryan in 1896, the party has generally positioned itself to the left of the Republican Party on economic issues. They have been more liberal on civil rights issues since 1948. On foreign policy, both parties have changed position several times.[36]

The Democratic Party evolved from the Jeffersonian Republican or Democratic-Republican Party organized by Jefferson and Madison in opposition to the Federalist Party of Alexander Hamilton and John Adams. The Democratic-Republican Party favored republicanism; a weak federal government; states' rights; agrarian interests (especially Southern planters); and strict adherence to the Constitution; it opposed a national bank, close ties to Great Britain and business and banking interests. The Democratic-Republican Party came to power in the election of 1800.[37]

After the War of 1812, the Federalists virtually disappeared and the only national political party left was the Democratic-Republicans. The era of one-party rule in the United States, known as the Era of Good Feelings, lasted from 1816 until the early 1830s, when the Whig Party became a national political group to rival the Democratic-Republicans.

The Democratic-Republican Party split over the choice of a successor to President James Monroe. The faction that supported many of the old Jeffersonian principles, led by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, became the modern Democratic Party.[38] As Norton explains the transformation in 1828:

Jacksonians believed the people's will had finally prevailed. Through a lavishly financed coalition of state parties, political leaders, and newspaper editors, a popular movement had elected the president. The Democrats became the nation's first well-organized national party [...] and tight party organization became the hallmark of nineteenth-century American politics.[39]

Behind the platforms issued by state and national parties stood a widely shared political outlook that characterized the Democrats:

The Democrats represented a wide range of views but shared a fundamental commitment to the Jeffersonian concept of an agrarian society. They viewed the central government as the enemy of individual liberty. The 1824 "corrupt bargain" had strengthened their suspicion of Washington politics. [...] Jacksonians feared the concentration of economic and political power. They believed that government intervention in the economy benefited special-interest groups and created corporate monopolies that favored the rich. They sought to restore the independence of the individualthe artisan and the ordinary farmerby ending federal support of banks and corporations and restricting the use of paper currency, which they distrusted. Their definition of the proper role of government tended to be negative, and Jackson's political power was largely expressed in negative acts. He exercised the veto more than all previous presidents combined. Jackson and his supporters also opposed reform as a movement. Reformers eager to turn their programs into legislation called for a more active government. But Democrats tended to oppose programs like educational reform mid the establishment of a public education system. They believed, for instance, that public schools restricted individual liberty by interfering with parental responsibility and undermined freedom of religion by replacing church schools. Nor did Jackson share reformers' humanitarian concerns. He had no sympathy for American Indians, initiating the removal of the Cherokees along the Trail of Tears.[40]

Opposing factions led by Henry Clay helped form the Whig Party. The Democratic Party had a small yet decisive advantage over the Whigs until the 1850s, when the Whigs fell apart over the issue of slavery. In 1854, angry with the KansasNebraska Act, anti-slavery Democrats left the party and joined Northern Whigs to form the Republican Party.[41][42]

The Democrats split over the choice of a successor to President James Buchanan along Northern and Southern lines as factions of the party provided two separate candidacies for President in the election of 1860, in which the Republican Party gained ascendancy.[43] The radical pro-slavery Fire-Eaters led a walkout both at the April Democratic convention in Charleston's Institute Hall and at the June convention in Baltimore when the national party would not adopt a resolution supporting the extension of slavery into territories even if the voters of those territories did not want it. These Southern Democrats nominated the pro-slavery incumbent Vice President, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, for President and General Joseph Lane, former Governor of Oregon, for Vice President. The Northern Democrats nominated Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois for President and former Governor of Georgia Herschel V. Johnson for Vice President while some Southern Democrats joined the Constitutional Union Party, backing its nominees (who had both been prominent Whig leaders), John Bell of Tennessee for President and the politician, statesman and educator Edward Everett of Massachusetts for Vice President. This fracturing of the Democrats led to a Republican victory and Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16th President of the United States.[44]

As the American Civil War broke out, Northern Democrats were divided into War Democrats and Peace Democrats. The Confederate States of America, whose political leadership, mindful of the welter prevalent in antebellum American politics and with a pressing need for unity, largely viewed political parties as inimical to good governance and consequently the Confederacy had none or at least none with the wide organization inherent to other American parties. Most War Democrats rallied to Republican President Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans' National Union Party in the election of 1864, which featured Andrew Johnson on the Republican ticket even though he was a Democrat from the South. Johnson replaced Lincoln in 1865, but he stayed independent of both parties.[45]

The Democrats benefited from white Southerners' resentment of Reconstruction after the war and consequent hostility to the Republican Party. After Redeemers ended Reconstruction in the 1870s and following the often extremely violent disenfranchisement of African Americans led by such white supremacist Democratic politicians as Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina in the 1880s and 1890s, the South, voting Democratic, became known as the "Solid South". Although Republicans won all but two presidential elections, the Democrats remained competitive. The party was dominated by pro-business Bourbon Democrats led by Samuel J. Tilden and Grover Cleveland, who represented mercantile, banking, and railroad interests; opposed imperialism and overseas expansion; fought for the gold standard; opposed bimetallism; and crusaded against corruption, high taxes and tariffs. Cleveland was elected to non-consecutive presidential terms in 1884 and 1892.[46]

Agrarian Democrats demanding free silver overthrew the Bourbon Democrats in 1896 and nominated William Jennings Bryan for the presidency (a nomination repeated by Democrats in 1900 and 1908). Bryan waged a vigorous campaign attacking Eastern moneyed interests, but he lost to Republican William McKinley.[47]

The Democrats took control of the House in 1910 and elected Woodrow Wilson as President in 1912 (when the Republicans split) and 1916. Wilson effectively led Congress to put to rest the issues of tariffs, money and antitrust, which had dominated politics for 40 years, with new progressive laws. He failed to pass the Versailles Treaty (which involved joining the League of Nations).[48] The weak party was deeply divided by issues such as the KKK and prohibition in the 1920s. However, it did organize new ethnic voters in Northern cities.[49]

The Great Depression in 1929 that began under Republican President Herbert Hoover and the Republican Congress set the stage for a more liberal government as the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives nearly uninterrupted from 1930 until 1994 and won most presidential elections until 1968. Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected to the presidency in 1932, came forth with government programs called the New Deal. New Deal liberalism meant the regulation of business (especially finance and banking) and the promotion of labor unions as well as federal spending to aid the unemployed, help distressed farmers and undertake large-scale public works projects. It marked the start of the American welfare state.[50] The opponents, who stressed opposition to unions, support for business and low taxes, started calling themselves "conservatives".[51]

Until the 1980s, the Democratic Party was a coalition of two parties divided by the MasonDixon line: liberal Democrats in the North and culturally conservative voters in the South, who though benefitting from many of the New Deal public works projects opposed increasing civil rights initiatives advocated by Northeastern liberals. The polarization grew stronger after Roosevelt died. Southern Democrats formed a key part of the bipartisan conservative coalition in an alliance with most of the Midwestern Republicans. The economically activist philosophy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which has strongly influenced American liberalism, shaped much of the party's economic agenda after 1932.[52] From the 1930s to the mid-1960s, the liberal New Deal coalition usually controlled the presidency while the conservative coalition usually controlled Congress.[53]

Issues facing parties and the United States after World War II included the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement. Republicans attracted conservatives and white Southerners from the Democratic coalition with their use of the Southern strategy and resistance to New Deal and Great Society liberalism. African Americans had traditionally supported the Republican Party because of its anti-slavery civil rights policies. Following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Southern states became more reliably Republican in presidential politics, while Northeastern states became more reliably Democratic.[54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61] Studies show that Southern whites, which were a core constituency in the Democratic Party, shifted to the Republican Party due to racial conservatism.[60][62][63]

The election of President John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts in 1960 was a partial reflection of this shift. In the campaign, Kennedy attracted a new generation of younger voters. In his agenda dubbed the New Frontier, Kennedy introduced a host of social programs and public works projects, along with enhanced support of the space program, proposing a manned spacecraft trip to the moon by the end of the decade. He pushed for civil rights initiatives and proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but with his assassination in November 1963 was not able to see its passage.[64]

Kennedy's successor Lyndon B. Johnson was able to persuade the largely conservative Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and with a more progressive Congress in 1965 passed much of the Great Society, which consisted of an array of social programs designed to help the poor. Kennedy and Johnson's advocacy of civil rights further solidified black support for the Democrats, but had the effect of alienating Southern whites who would eventually gravitate towards the Republican party, particularly after the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980. The United States' involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s was another divisive issue that further fractured the fault lines of the Democrats' coalition. After the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, President Johnson committed a large contingency of combat troops to Vietnam, but the escalation failed to drive the Viet Cong from South Vietnam, resulting in an increasing quagmire, which by 1968 had become the subject of widespread anti-war protests in the United States and elsewhere. With increasing casualties and nightly news reports bringing home troubling images from Vietnam, the costly military engagement became increasingly unpopular, alienating many of the kinds of young voters that the Democrats had attracted the early 1960s. The protests that year along with assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Democratic presidential candidate Senator Robert F. Kennedy (younger brother of John F. Kennedy) climaxed in turbulence at the hotly-contested Democratic National Convention that summer in Chicago (which amongst the ensuing turmoil inside and outside of the convention hall nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey) in a series of events that proved to mark a significant turning point in the decline of the Democratic party's broad coalition.[65]

Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon was able to capitalize on the Democrat's confusion that year and won the 1968 election to become the 37th president and would win again in 1972 against Democratic nominee George McGovern, who like Robert F. Kennedy reached out to the younger anti-war and counterculture voters, but unlike Kennedy was not able to appeal to the party's more traditional white working-class constituencies. During Nixon's second term, his presidency was rocked by the Watergate scandal, which forced him to resign in 1974, being succeeded by vice president Gerald Ford, who served a brief tenure. Watergate offered the Democrats an opportunity to recoup and their nominee Jimmy Carter won the 1976 presidential election. With the initial support of evangelical Christian voters in the South, Carter was temporarily able to reunite the disparate factions within the party, but inflation and the Iran Hostage Crisis of 19791980 took their toll, resulting in a landslide victory for Republican presidential nominee Ronald Reagan in 1980, which shifted the tectonic plates of the political landscape in favor of the Republicans for years to come.

With the ascendancy of the Republicans under Ronald Reagan, the Democrats searched for ways to respond yet were unable to succeed by running traditional candidates, such as former Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale, who lost to Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. Many Democrats attached their hopes to the future star of Gary Hart, who had challenged Mondale in the 1984 primaries running on a theme of "New Ideas"; and in the subsequent 1988 primaries became the de facto front-runner and virtual "shoe-in" for the Democratic presidential nomination before his campaign was ended by a sex scandal. The party nevertheless began to seek out a younger generation of leaders, who like Hart had been inspired by the pragmatic idealism of John F. Kennedy.[66]

Arkansas governor Bill Clinton was one such figure, who was elected President in 1992 as the Democratic nominee. He labeled himself and governed as a "New Democrat". The party adopted a centrist economic yet socially progressive agenda, with the voter base after Reagan having shifted considerably to the right. In an effort to appeal both to liberals and to fiscal conservatives, Democrats began to advocate for a balanced budget and market economy tempered by government intervention (mixed economy), along with a continued emphasis on social justice and affirmative action. The economic policy adopted by the Democratic Party, including the former Clinton administration, has been referred to as "Third Way". The Democrats lost control of Congress in the election of 1994 to the Republican Party. Re-elected in 1996, Clinton was the first Democratic President since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be elected to two terms.[67]

In the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as well as the growing concern over global warming, some of the party's key issues in the early 21st century have included the methods of how to combat terrorism while preserving human rights, homeland security, expanding access to health care, labor rights, environmentalism and the preservation of liberal government programs. Following twelve years of Republican congressional rule, the Democrats regained majority control of both the House and the Senate in the 2006 elections. Barack Obama won the Democratic Party's nomination and was elected as the first African American president in 2008. The Democrats gained control of both chambers of Congress in the wake of the 2007 economic recession. The Democratic Party under the Obama presidency moved forward reforms including an economic stimulus package, the Dodd-Frank financial reform act, and the Affordable Care Act. In the 2010 elections, the Democratic Party lost control of the House and lost its majority in state legislatures and state governorships. In the 2012 elections, President Obama was re-elected, but the party kept its minority in the House of Representatives and in 2014 the party lost control of the Senate for the first time since 2006. After the 2016 election of Donald Trump, the Democratic Party transitioned into the role of an opposition party and currently hold neither the presidency nor the Senate but won back a majority in the House in the 2018 midterm elections.[68]

According to a Pew Research poll, the Democratic Party has become more socially liberal and secular compared to how it was in 1987.[69] Based on a poll conducted in 2014, Gallup found that 30% of Americans identified as Democrats, 23% as Republicans and 45% as independents.[70] In the same poll, a survey of registered voters stated that 47% identified as Democrats or leaned towards the partythe same poll found that 40% of registered voters identified as Republicans or leaned towards the Republican party.

In 2018, Democratic congressional candidate Tom Malinowski, who was later elected, described the party:

We're now the party of fiscal responsibility in America. We didn't just add $2 trillion to the national debt for that tax cut that Warren Buffett didn't want... We're the party of law enforcement in America; we don't vilify the Federal Bureau of Investigation every single day. We're the party of family values. We don't... take kids from their parents at the border. We're the party of patriotism in America that wants to defend this country against our foreign adversaries.

The donkey party logo remains a well-known symbol for the Democratic Party despite not being the official logo of the party.

The Democratic donkey party logo in a modernized "kicking donkey" form

The Democratic-Republican Party splintered in 1824 into the short-lived National Republican Party and the Jacksonian movement which in 1828 became the Democratic Party. Under the Jacksonian era, the term "The Democracy" was in use by the party, but the name "Democratic Party" was eventually settled upon[72] and became the official name in 1844.[73] Members of the party are called "Democrats" or "Dems".

The term "Democrat Party" has also been in local use, but has usually been used by opponents since 1952 as a disparaging term.

The most common mascot symbol for the party has been the donkey, or jackass.[74] Andrew Jackson's enemies twisted his name to "jackass" as a term of ridicule regarding a stupid and stubborn animal. However, the Democrats liked the common-man implications and picked it up too, therefore the image persisted and evolved.[75] Its most lasting impression came from the cartoons of Thomas Nast from 1870 in Harper's Weekly. Cartoonists followed Nast and used the donkey to represent the Democrats and the elephant to represent the Republicans.

In the early 20th century, the traditional symbol of the Democratic Party in Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Ohio was the rooster, as opposed to the Republican eagle. This symbol still appears on Oklahoma, Kentucky, Indiana, and West Virginia ballots.[76] The rooster was adopted as the official symbol of the national Democratic Party.[77] In New York, the Democratic ballot symbol is a five-pointed star.[78]

Although both major political parties (and many minor ones) use the traditional American colors of red, white and blue in their marketing and representations, since election night 2000 blue has become the identifying color for the Democratic Party while red has become the identifying color for the Republican Party. That night, for the first time all major broadcast television networks used the same color scheme for the electoral map: blue states for Al Gore (Democratic nominee) and red states for George W. Bush (Republican nominee). Since then, the color blue has been widely used by the media to represent the party. This is contrary to common practice outside of the United States where blue is the traditional color of the right and red the color of the left.[79] For example, in Canada red represents the Liberals while blue represents the Conservatives. In the United Kingdom, red denotes the Labour Party and blue symbolizes the Conservative Party. Blue has also been used both by party supporters for promotional effortsActBlue, BuyBlue and BlueFund as examplesand by the party itself in 2006 both for its "Red to Blue Program", created to support Democratic candidates running against Republican incumbents in the midterm elections that year and on its official website.

In September 2010, the Democratic Party unveiled its new logo, which featured a blue D inside a blue circle. It was the party's first official logo; the donkey logo had only been semi-official.

Jefferson-Jackson Day is the annual fundraising event (dinner) held by Democratic Party organizations across the United States.[80] 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 D. Roosevelt was nominated for president at the 1932 Democratic National Convention and remains a sentimental favorite for Democrats today. For example, Paul Shaffer played the theme on the Late Show with David Letterman after the Democrats won Congress in 2006. "Don't Stop" by Fleetwood Mac was adopted by Bill Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992 and has endured as a popular Democratic song. The emotionally similar song "Beautiful Day" by the band U2 has also become a favorite theme song for Democratic candidates. John Kerry used the song during his 2004 presidential campaign and several Democratic Congressional candidates used it as a celebratory tune in 2006.[81][82]

The 2016 campaign of Democratic Party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders used the hopeful Simon & Garfunkel song "America" for one of its campaign advertisements,[83] with the complete permission of the still-active duo of popular American musicians.[84] As a traditional anthem for its presidential nominating convention, Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" is traditionally performed at the beginning of the Democratic National Convention.

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. The national convention is subject to the charter of the party and 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 chaired by former Labor Secretary Tom Perez.[85]

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 composed 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 pay for full-time professional staffers.[86]

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) assists party candidates in House races and its current chairman (selected by the party caucus) is Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois. Similarly, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), headed by Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, raises funds for Senate races. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), chaired by Oregon legislator Tina Kotek, is a smaller organization with much less funding that focuses on state legislative races. The DNC sponsors the College Democrats of America (CDA), a student-outreach organization with the goal of training and engaging a new generation of Democratic activists. Democrats Abroad is the organization for Americans living outside the United States and they work to advance the goals of the party and encourage Americans living abroad to support the Democrats. The Young Democrats of America (YDA) is a youth-led organization that attempts to draw in and mobilize young people for Democratic candidates but operates outside of the DNC. The Democratic Governors Association (DGA), chaired by Governor Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island,[87] is an organization supporting the candidacies of Democratic gubernatorial nominees and incumbents. Likewise, the mayors of the largest cities and urban centers convene as the National Conference of Democratic Mayors.[citation needed]

Upon foundation, the Democratic Party supported agrarianism and the Jacksonian democracy movement of President Andrew Jackson, representing farmers and rural interests and traditional Jeffersonian democrats.[88] Since the 1890s, especially in northern states, the party began to favor more liberal positions (the term "liberal" in this sense describes modern liberalism, rather than classical liberalism or economic liberalism). In recent exit polls, the Democratic Party has had broad appeal across all socio-ethno-economic demographics.[89][90][91]

Historically, the party has represented farmers, laborers, labor unions and religious and ethnic minorities as 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 fiscally conservative, pro-business wing, typified by Grover Cleveland and Al Smith; and a Southern conservative wing that shrank after President Lyndon B. Johnson supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The major influences for liberalism were labor unions (which peaked in the 19361952 era) and the African American wing, which has steadily grown since the 1960s. Since the 1970s, environmentalism has been a major new component.

The Democratic Party, once dominant in the Southeastern United States, is now strongest in the Northeast (Mid-Atlantic and New England), Great Lakes region and the West Coast (including Hawaii). The Democrats are also very strong in major cities (regardless of region).

Social scientists Theodore Caplow et al. argue that "the Democratic party, nationally, moved from left-center toward the center in the 1940s and 1950s, then moved further toward the right-center in the 1970s and 1980s".[92] According to historian Walter Scheidel, both major political parties shifted towards promoting free market capitalism in the 1970s, with Republicans moving further to the political right than Democrats to the political left. He contends Democrats played a significant role in the financial deregulation of the 1990s and have pushed social welfare issues to the periphery while increasingly focusing on issues pertaining to identity politics.[93]

Centrist Democrats, or New Democrats, are an ideologically centrist faction within the Democratic Party that emerged after the victory of Republican George H. W. Bush in the 1988 presidential election. They are an economically liberal and "Third Way" faction which dominated the party for around 20 years starting in the late 1980s after the United States populace turned much further to the political right. They are represented by organizations such as the New Democrat Network and the New Democrat Coalition.

The New Democrat Coalition is a pro-business, pro-growth and fiscally conservative congressional coalition.[94] Compared to other Democratic factions, they are mostly more supportive of the use of military force, including the war in Iraq, are more supportive of free trade and are more willing to reduce government welfare as indicated by their support for welfare reform and tax cuts.[citation needed]

One of the most influential centrist groups was the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a nonprofit organization that advocated centrist positions for the party. The DLC hailed President Bill Clinton as proof of the viability of "Third Way" politicians and a DLC success story. The DLC disbanded in 2011 and much of the former DLC is now represented in the think tank Third Way.[95]

While not representing a majority of the Democratic Party electorate, a decent amount of Democratic elected officials have self-declared as being centrists. Some of these Democrats are former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore, Senator Mark Warner, former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, former senator Jim Webb, Vice President Joe Biden, congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick and former congressman Dave McCurdy.[96][97]

The New Democrat Network supports socially moderate, fiscally conservative Democratic politicians and operates the congressional New Democrat Coalition in the House and Senate.[98] Congressman Ron Kind is the chairperson of the coalition[96] and former senator and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was a member while in Congress.[99] Before he became President, Senator Barack Obama was self-described as a New Democrat.[100]

A conservative Democrat is a member of the Democratic Party with conservative political views, or with views relatively conservative with respect to those of the national party. While such members of the Democratic Party can be found throughout the nation, actual elected officials are disproportionately found within the Southern states and to a lesser extent within rural regions of the United States generally, more commonly in the West. Historically, Southern Democrats were generally much more ideologically conservative than conservative Democrats are now.

Many conservative Southern Democrats defected to the Republican Party, beginning with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the general leftward shift of the party. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, Billy Tauzin of Louisiana, Kent Hance and Ralph Hall of Texas and Richard Shelby of Alabama are examples of this. The influx of conservative Democrats into the Republican Party is often cited as a reason for the Republican Party's shift further to the right during the late 20th century as well as the shift of its base from the Northeast and Midwest to the South.

Into the 1980s, the Democratic Party had a conservative element, mostly from the South and Border regions. Their numbers declined sharply as the Republican Party built up its Southern base. They were sometimes humorously called "Yellow dog Democrats", or "boll weevils" and "Dixiecrats". In the House, they form the Blue Dog Coalition, a caucus of fiscal conservatives and social conservatives and moderates, primarily Southerners, willing to broker compromises with the Republican leadership. They have acted as a unified voting bloc in the past, giving its members some ability to change legislation, depending on their numbers in Congress.

There was a split vote among many conservative Southern Democrats in the 1970s and 1980s. Some supported local and statewide conservative Democrats while simultaneously voting for Republican presidential candidates.[101]

Social liberals (modern liberals) and progressives constitute the majority of the Democratic voter base. Liberals thereby form the largest united demographic within the Democratic base. According to the 2012 exit poll results, liberals constituted 25% of the electorate, and 86% of American liberals favored the candidate of the Democratic Party.[102] White-collar college-educated professionals were mostly Republican until the 1950s, but they now compose a vital component of the Democratic Party.[103]

A large majority of liberals favor moving toward universal health care, with many supporting a single-payer system. A majority also favor diplomacy over military action, stem cell research, the legalization of same-sex marriage, stricter gun control and environmental protection laws as well as the preservation of abortion rights. Immigration and cultural diversity is deemed positive as liberals favor cultural pluralism, a system in which immigrants retain their native culture in addition to adopting their new culture. They tend to be divided on free trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and organizations, with some seeing them as more favorable to corporations than workers. Most liberals oppose increased military spending and the mixing of church and state.[104]

This ideological group differs from the traditional organized labor base. According to the Pew Research Center, a plurality of 41% resided in mass affluent households and 49% were college graduates, the highest figure of any typographical group. It was also the fastest growing typological group between the late 1990s and early 2000s.[104] Liberals include most of academia[105] and large portions of the professional class.[89][90][91]

Progressives are the most left-leaning, pro-labor union faction in the party who have long supported a strong regulation of business, social-welfare programs and workers' rights.[106][107] Many progressive Democrats are descendants of the New Left of Democratic presidential candidate Senator George McGovern of South Dakota whereas others were involved in the 2016 presidential candidacy of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

In 2014, progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren set out an "Eleven Commandments of Progressivism", being tougher regulation on corporations, affordable education, scientific investment and environmentalism, net neutrality, increased wages, equal pay, collective bargaining rights, defending social safety-net programs, marriage equality, immigration reform and unabridged access to reproductive healthcare.[108] Additionally, progressives strongly oppose political corruption and therefore seek to advance electoral reform including campaign finance reform and voting rights.[109] Today, many progressives have made a fight against economic inequality their top priority.[110] Progressives are generally considered to be synonymous with liberals, though the two groups differ on a variety of issues,[111] such as progressives' stronger support for universal healthcare, solutions for economic inequality, and stronger environmental regulations. Progressives tend to be seen as closer to the ideology of European social-democratic parties than mainstream or establishment liberals.[112]

The Congressional Progressive Caucus is a caucus of progressive Democrats and is the single largest Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives. Its current chairs are Mark Pocan of Wisconsin and Pramila Jayapal of Washington.[113] Its members have included Representatives Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, John Conyers of Michigan, Jim McDermott of Washington, John Lewis of Georgia, Barbara Lee of California and the late Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Ed Markey of Massachusetts were all members of the caucus when in the House of Representatives. Today, no Democratic Senators belong to the Progressive Caucus, but independent Senator Bernie Sanders is a member.

Equal economic opportunity, a base social safety net provided by the welfare state and strong labor unions have historically been at the heart of Democratic economic policy.[26] The welfare state supports a progressive tax system, higher minimum wages, social security, universal health care, public education and public housing.[26] They also support infrastructure development and government-sponsored employment programs in an effort to achieve economic development and job creation while stimulating private sector job creation.[133] Additionally, since the 1990s the party has at times supported centrist economic reforms, which cut the size of government and reduced market regulations.[134] The party has continuously rejected laissez-faire economics as well as market socialism, instead favoring Keynesian economics within a capitalist market-based system.[citation needed]

Democrats support a more progressive tax structure to provide more services and reduce economic inequality by making sure that the wealthiest Americans pay the highest amount in taxes.[135] Democrats support more government spending on social services while spending less on the military.[136][137] They oppose the cutting of social services, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and various other welfare programs,[138] believing it to be harmful to efficiency and social justice. Democrats believe the benefits of social services in monetary and non-monetary terms are a more productive labor force and cultured population and believe that the benefits of this are greater than any benefits that could be derived from lower taxes, especially on top earners, or cuts to social services. Furthermore, Democrats see social services as essential towards providing positive freedom, i.e. freedom derived from economic opportunity. The Democratic-led House of Representatives reinstated the PAYGO (pay-as-you-go) budget rule at the start of the 110th Congress.[139]

The Democratic Party favors raising the minimum wage. They call for a $10.10/hour national minimum wage and think the minimum wage should be adjusted regularly.[140] The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 was 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 and all six initiatives passed.[141] In May 2017, Senate Democrats introduced the Raise the Wage Act which would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2024 and marks a leftward turn in Democratic economic policies.[142]

Democrats call for "affordable and quality health care" and many advocate an expansion of government intervention in this area. Many Democrats favor national health insurance or universal health care in a variety of forms to address the rising costs of modern health insurance. Some Democrats, such as former Representatives John Conyers and John Dingell, have called for a single-payer program of Medicare for All. The Progressive Democrats of America, a group operating inside the Democratic Party, has made single-payer universal health care one of their primary policy goals.[143] The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010, has been one of the most significant pushes for universal health care to become a reality. By April 2014, more than 10 million Americans had enrolled in health care coverage since the launch of the Affordable Care Act.[144]

Democrats favor improving public education by raising school standards and reforming the head start program. They also support universal preschool and expanding access to primary education, including through charter schools. They call for slashes in student loan debt and support reforms to force down tuition fees.[145] Other proposed reforms have included nationwide universal preschool education, tuition-free college and reform of standardized testing. Democrats have the long-term aim of having low-cost, publicly funded college education with low tuition fees (like in much of Europe and Canada), which should be available to every eligible American student. Alternatively, they encourage expanding access to post-secondary education by increasing state funding for student financial aid such as Pell Grants and college tuition tax deductions.[146]

Democrats believe that the government should protect the environment and have a history of environmentalism. In more recent years, this stance has had as its emphasis alternative energy generation as the basis for an improved economy, greater national security and general environmental benefits.[147]

The Democratic Party also favors expansion of conservation lands and encourages open space and rail travel to relieve highway and airport congestion and improve air quality and economy as it "believe[s] that communities, environmental interests, and the government should work together to protect resources while ensuring the vitality of local economies. Once Americans were led to believe they had to make a choice between the economy and the environment. They now know this is a false choice".[148]

The most important environmental concern of the Democratic Party is climate change. Democrats, most notably former Vice President Al Gore, have pressed for stern regulation of greenhouse gases. On October 15, 2007, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to build greater knowledge about man-made climate change and laying the foundations for the measures needed to counteract these changes asserting that "the climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity".[149]

Democrats have supported increased domestic renewable energy development, including wind and solar power farms, in an effort to reduce carbon pollution. The party's platform calls for an "all of the above" energy policy including clean energy, natural gas and domestic oil, with the desire of becoming energy independent.[141] The party has supported higher taxes on oil companies and increased regulations on coal power plants, favoring a policy of reducing long-term reliance on fossil fuels.[150][151] Additionally, the party supports stricter fuel emissions standards to prevent air pollution.

Many Democrats support fair trade policies when it comes to the issue of international trade agreements and some in the party have started supporting free trade in recent decades.[152] 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.[153][154]

The modern Democratic party emphasizes egalitarianism and social equality through liberalism. They support voting rights and minority rights, including LGBT rights, multiculturalism and religious secularism. A longstanding social policy is upholding civil rights, which affect ethnic and racial minorities and includes voting rights, equal opportunity and racial equality. The party championed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which for the first time outlawed segregation. Democrats made civil rights and anti-racism a core party philosophy. Carmines and Stimson say that "the Democratic Party appropriated racial liberalism and assumed federal responsibility for ending racial discrimination".[155][156][157]

Ideological social elements in the party include cultural liberalism, civil libertarianism and feminism. Other Democratic social policies are internationalism, open immigration, electoral reform and women's reproductive rights.

The Democratic Party supports equal opportunity for all Americans regardless of sex, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, creed, or national origin. Many Democrats support affirmative action programs to further this goal. Democrats also strongly support the Americans with Disabilities Act to prohibit discrimination against people based on physical or mental disability. As such, the Democrats pushed as well the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, a legal expansion that became law.[158]

The party is very supportive of improving voting rights as well as election accuracy and accessibility.[159] They support ending voter ID laws and increasing voting time, including making election day a holiday. They support reforming the electoral system to eliminate gerrymandering as well as passing comprehensive campaign finance reform.[29] They supported the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and as a party have often been pioneers for democracy in the United States.[130]

The Democratic Party believe that all women should have access to birth control and support public funding of contraception for poor women. In its national platforms from 1992 to 2004, the Democratic Party 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 wording changed in the 2008 platform. When Congress voted on the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in 2003, Congressional Democrats were split, with a minority (including former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid) supporting the ban and the majority of Democrats opposing the legislation.[160]

The Democratic Party opposes attempts to reverse the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which declared abortion covered by the constitutionally protected individual right to privacy under the Ninth Amendment; and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which lays out the legal framework in which government action alleged to violate that right is assessed by courts. As a matter of the right to privacy and of gender equality, many Democrats believe all women should have the ability to choose to abort without governmental interference. They believe that each woman, conferring with her conscience, has the right to choose for herself whether abortion is morally correct.

Former Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid identified himself as "pro-life", Former President Jimmy Carter has expressed his view of abortion and his wish to see the Democratic Party becoming more pro-life:[161] while President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi self-identify as "pro-choice". Groups such as Democrats for Life of America represent the pro-life faction of the party while groups such as EMILY's List represent the pro-choice faction. A Newsweek poll from October 2006 found that 25% of Democrats were pro-life while a 69% majority was pro-choice.[162]

The 2016 Democratic Party platform expresses support for "'a woman's right to safe and legal abortion' and enumerates no limits on that right."[163] It further calls for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal tax dollars for elective abortions.[164]

Many Democratic politicians have called for systematic reform of the immigration system such that residents that have come into the United States illegally have a pathway to legal citizenship. President Obama remarked in November 2013 that he felt it was "long past time to fix our broken immigration system", particularly to allow "incredibly bright young people" that came over as students to become full citizens. The Public Religion Research Institute found in a late 2013 study that 73% of Democrats supported the pathway concept, compared to 63% of Americans as a whole.[165]

In 2013, Democrats in the Senate passed S.744, which would reform immigration policy to allow citizenship for illegal immigrants in the United States and improve the lives of all immigrants currently living in the United States.[166]

The Democratic Party is supportive of LGBT rights. Most support for same-sex marriage in the United States has come from Democrats, although some favor civil unions instead or oppose same-sex marriage. Support for same-sex marriage has increased in the past decade according to ABC News. An April 2009 ABC News/Washington Post public opinion poll put support among Democrats at 62%[167] whereas a June 2008 Newsweek poll found that 42% of Democrats support same-sex marriage while 23% support civil unions or domestic partnership laws and 28% oppose any legal recognition at all.[168] A broad majority of Democrats have supported other LGBT-related laws such as extending hate crime statutes, legally preventing discrimination against LGBT people in the workforce and repealing Don't ask, don't tell. A 2006 Pew Research Center poll of Democrats found that 55% supported gays adopting children with 40% opposed while 70% support gays in the military, with only 23% opposed.[169] Gallup polling from May 2009 stated that 82% of Democrats support open enlistment.[170]

The 2004 Democratic National Platform stated that marriage should be defined at the state level and it repudiated the Federal Marriage Amendment.[171] While not stating support of same-sex marriage, the 2008 platform called for repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, which banned federal recognition of same-sex marriage and removed the need for interstate recognition, supported antidiscrimination laws and the extension of hate crime laws to LGBT people and opposed the Don't ask, don't tell military policy.[172] The 2012 platform included support for same-sex marriage and for the repeal of DOMA.[30]

On May 9, 2012, Barack Obama became the first sitting President to say he supports same-sex marriage.[173][174] Previously, he had opposed restrictions on same-sex marriage such as the Defense of Marriage Act, which he promised to repeal,[175] California's Prop 8,[176] and a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage (which he opposed saying that "decisions about marriage should be left to the states as they always have been"),[177] but also stated that he personally believed marriage to be between a man and a woman and that he favored civil unions that would "give same-sex couples equal legal rights and privileges as married couples".[175] Earlier, when running for the Illinois Senate in 1996 he said that he "unequivocally support(ed) gay marriage" and "favor(ed) legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages".[178] Senator John Kerry, Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, did not support same-sex marriage. Former presidents Bill Clinton[179] and Jimmy Carter[180] and former Vice Presidents Joe Biden, Al Gore[181] and Walter Mondale[182] also support gay marriage.

The 2016 Democratic Party platform declares: "We are committed to addressing the extraordinary challenges faced by our fellow citizens in Puerto Rico. Many stem from the fundamental question of Puerto Rico's political status. Democrats believe that the people of Puerto Rico should determine their ultimate political status from permanent options that do not conflict with the Constitution, laws, and policies of the United States. Democrats are committed to promoting economic opportunity and good-paying jobs for the hardworking people of Puerto Rico. We also believe that Puerto Ricans must be treated equally by Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs that benefit families. Puerto Ricans should be able to vote for the people who make their laws, just as they should be treated equally. All American citizens, no matter where they reside, should have the right to vote for the President of the United States. Finally, we believe that federal officials must respect Puerto Rico's local self-government as laws are implemented and Puerto Rico's budget and debt are restructured so that it can get on a path towards stability and prosperity".[183]

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, some 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.[184] In the national platform for 2008, the only statement explicitly favoring gun control was a plan calling for renewal of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.[185]

The Democratic Party supports the death penalty far less than the Republican Party. Although most Democrats in Congress have never seriously moved to overturn the rarely used federal death penalty, both Russ Feingold and Dennis Kucinich have introduced such bills with little success. Democrats have led efforts to overturn state death penalty laws, particularly in New Jersey and in New Mexico. They have also sought to prevent the reinstatement of the death penalty in those states which prohibit it, including Massachusetts and New York. During the Clinton administration, Democrats led the expansion of the federal death penalty. These efforts resulted in the passage of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, signed into law by President Clinton, which heavily limited appeals in death penalty cases.

In 1992, 1993 and 1995, Democratic Texas Congressman Henry Gonzlez unsuccessfully introduced the Death Penalty Abolition Amendment which prohibited the use of capital punishment in the United States. Democratic Missouri Congressman William Lacy Clay, Sr. cosponsored the amendment in 1993.

During his Illinois Senate career, former President Barack Obama successfully introduced legislation intended to reduce the likelihood of wrongful convictions in capital cases, requiring videotaping of confessions. When campaigning for the presidency, Obama stated that he supports the limited use of the death penalty, including for people who have been convicted of raping a minor under the age of 12, having opposed the Supreme Court's ruling in Kennedy v. Louisiana that the death penalty was unconstitutional in child rape cases.[186] Obama has stated that he thinks the "death penalty does little to deter crime" and that it is used too frequently and too inconsistently.[187]

In June 2016, the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee unanimously adopted an amendment to abolish the death penalty, marking the first time the party had done so in its history.[188]

Many Democrats are opposed to the use of torture against individuals apprehended and held prisoner by the United States military and hold that categorizing such prisoners as unlawful combatants does not release the United States from its obligations under the Geneva Conventions. Democrats contend that torture is inhumane, decreases the United States' moral standing in the world and produces questionable results. Democrats largely spoke out against waterboarding.[citation needed]

Torture became a very divisive issue in the party after Barack Obama was elected President. Many centrist Democrats and members of the party's leadership supported the use of torture while the liberal wings continued to be steadfastly opposed to it.[189]

Many Democrats are opposed to the Patriot Act, but when the law was passed most Democrats were supportive of it and all but two Democrats in the Senate voted for the original Patriot Act legislation in 2001. The lone nay vote was from Russ Feingold of Wisconsin as Mary Landrieu of Louisiana did not vote.[190] In the House, the Democrats voted for the Act by 145 yea and 62 nay. Democrats split on the renewal in 2006. In the Senate, Democrats voted 34 for the 2006 renewal and nine against. In the House, Democrats voted 66 voted for the renewal, and 124 against.[citation needed]

The Democratic Party believes that individuals should have a right to privacy. For example, many Democrats have opposed the NSA warrantless surveillance of American citizens.

Some Democratic officeholders have championed consumer protection laws that limit the sharing of consumer data between corporations. Most Democrats oppose sodomy laws and believe that government should not regulate consensual noncommercial sexual conduct among adults as a matter of personal privacy.[191]

The foreign policy of the voters of the two major parties has largely overlapped since the 1990s. A Gallup poll in early 2013 showed broad agreement on the top issues, albeit with some divergence regarding human rights and international cooperation through agencies such as the United Nations.[192]

In June 2014, the Quinnipiac Poll asked Americans which foreign policy they preferred:

A) The United States is doing too much in other countries around the world, and it is time to do less around the world and focus more on our own problems here at home.

B) The United States must continue to push forward to promote democracy and freedom in other countries around the world because these efforts make our own country more secure.

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Democratic Party (United States) - Wikipedia

History

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

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

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

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

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

The election of 1860 is regarded by most political observers as the first of the countrys three critical electionscontests that produced sharp yet enduring changes in party loyalties across the country. (Some scholars also identify the 1824 election as a critical election.) It established the Democratic and Republican parties as the major parties in what was ostensibly a two-party system. In federal elections from the 1870s to the 1890s, the parties were in rough balanceexcept in the South, where the Democrats dominated because most whites blamed the Republican Party for both the American Civil War (186165) and the Reconstruction (186577) that followed; the two parties controlled Congress for almost equal periods through the rest of the 19th century, though the Democratic Party held the presidency only during the two terms of Grover Cleveland (188589 and 189397). Repressive legislation and physical intimidation designed to prevent newly enfranchised African Americans from votingdespite passage of the Fifteenth Amendmentensured that the South would remain staunchly Democratic for nearly a century (see black code). During Clevelands second term, however, the United States sank into an economic depression. The party at this time was basically conservative and agrarian-oriented, opposing the interests of big business (especially protective tariffs) and favouring cheap-money policies, which were aimed at maintaining low interest rates.

In the countrys second critical election, in 1896, the Democrats split disastrously over the free-silver and Populist program of their presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan. Bryan lost by a wide margin to Republican William McKinley, a conservative who supported high tariffs and money based only on gold. From 1896 to 1932 the Democrats held the presidency only during the two terms of Woodrow Wilson (191321), and even Wilsons presidency was considered somewhat of a fluke. Wilson won in 1912 because the Republican vote was divided between President William Howard Taft (the official party nominee) and former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, the candidate of the new Bull Moose Party. Wilson championed various progressive economic reforms, including the breaking up of business monopolies and broader federal regulation of banking and industry. Although he led the United States into World War I to make the world safe for democracy, Wilsons brand of idealism and internationalism proved less attractive to voters during the spectacular prosperity of the 1920s than the Republicans frank embrace of big business. The Democrats lost decisively the presidential elections of 1920, 1924, and 1928.

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

Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander during World War II, won overwhelming victories against Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson in the presidential elections of 1952 and 1956. The Democrats regained the White House in the election of 1960, when John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Eisenhowers vice president, Richard M. Nixon. The Democrats championing of civil rights and racial desegregation under Truman, Kennedy, and especially Lyndon B. Johnsonwho secured passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965cost the party the traditional allegiance of many of its Southern supporters. Moreover, the pursuit of civil rights legislation dramatically split the partys legislators along regional lines in the 1950s and 60s, with Southern senators famously conducting a protracted filibuster in an ultimately futile attempt to block passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although Johnson defeated Republican Barry M. Goldwater by a landslide in 1964, his national support waned because of bitter opposition to the Vietnam War, and he chose not to run for reelection. Following the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, the party nominated Johnsons vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey, at a fractious convention in Chicago that was marred by violence outside the hall between police and protesters. Meanwhile, many Southern Democrats supported the candidacy of Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, an opponent of federally mandated racial integration. In the 1968 election Humphrey was soundly defeated by Nixon in the electoral college (among Southern states Humphrey carried only Texas), though he lost the popular vote by only a narrow margin.

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

In 1992 Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton recaptured the White House for the Democrats by defeating Bush and third-party candidate Ross Perot. Clintons support of international trade agreements (e.g., the North American Free Trade Agreement) and his willingness to cut spending on social programs to reduce budget deficits alienated the left wing of his party and many traditional supporters in organized labour. In 1994 the Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress, in part because of public disenchantment with Clintons health care plan. During Clintons second term the country experienced a period of prosperity not seen since the 1920s, but a scandal involving Clintons relationship with a White House intern led to his impeachment by the House of Representatives in 1998; he was acquitted by the Senate in 1999. Al Gore, Clintons vice president, easily won the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000. In the general election, Gore won 500,000 more popular votes than Republican George W. Bush but narrowly lost in the electoral college after the Supreme Court of the United States ordered a halt to the manual recounting of disputed ballots in Florida. The partys nominee in 2004, John Kerry, was narrowly defeated by Bush in the popular and electoral vote.

Aided by the growing opposition to the Iraq War (200311), the Democrats regained control of the Senate and the House following the 2006 midterm elections. This marked the first time in some 12 years that the Democrats held a majority in both houses of Congress. In the general election of 2008 the partys presidential nominee, Barack Obama, defeated Republican John McCain, thereby becoming the first African American to be elected president of the United States. The Democrats also increased their majority in the Senate and the House. The party scored another victory in mid-2009, when an eight-month legal battle over one of Minnesotas Senate seats concluded with the election of Al Franken, a member of the states Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. With Franken in office, Democrats in the Senate (supported by the chambers two independents) would be able to exercise a filibuster-proof 6040 majority. In January 2010 the Democrats lost this filibuster-proof majority when the Democratic candidate lost the special election to fill the unexpired term of Ted Kennedy following his death.

The Democrats dominance of Congress proved short-lived, as a swing of some 60 seats (the largest since 1948) returned control of the House to the Republicans in the 2010 midterm election. The Democrats held on to their majority in the Senate, though that majority also was dramatically reduced. Many of the Democrats who had come into office in the 2006 and 2010 elections were defeated, but so too were a number of longtime officeholders; incumbents felt the sting of an electorate that was anxious about the struggling economy and high unemployment. The election also was widely seen as a referendum on the policies of the Obama administration, which were vehemently opposed by a populist upsurge in and around the Republican Party known as the Tea Party movement.

The Democratic Party fared better in the 2012 general election, with Obama defeating his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney. The 2012 election did not significantly change the distribution of power between the two main parties in Congress. While the Democrats retained their majority in the Senate, they were unable to retake the House of Representatives. The Republicans retook the Senate during the 2014 midterm elections.

In the 2016 presidential race, Democrats selected Hillary Clinton as their nominee, the first time a major party in the United States had a woman at the top of its presidential ticket. Despite winning the popular vote by almost three million ballots, Clinton failed to take enough states in the electoral college, and the presidency was won by Republican Donald J. Trump in one of the largest upsets in U.S. electoral history. Moreover, the Republican Party maintained control of both chambers of Congress in the 2016 election. In the midterms two years later, however, Democrats retook the House in what some described as a blue wave.

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Democratic Party | History, Definition, & Beliefs | Britannica

History of the Democratic and Republican parties

The Democratic Party traces its origins to the anti-federalist factions around the time of Americas independence from British rule. These factions were organized into the Democrat Republican party by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other influential opponents of the Federalists in 1792.

The Republican party is the younger of the two parties. Founded in 1854 by anti-slavery expansion activists and modernizers, the Republican Party rose to prominence with the election of Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president. The party presided over the American Civil War and Reconstruction and was harried by internal factions and scandals towards the end of the 19th century.

Since the division of the Republican Party in the election of 1912, the Democratic party has consistently positioned itself to the left of the Republican Party in economic as well as social matters. The economically left-leaning activist philosophy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which has strongly influenced American liberalism, has shaped much of the party's economic agenda since 1932. Roosevelt's New Deal coalition usually controlled the national government until 1964.

The Republican Party today supports a pro-business platform, with foundations in economic libertarianism, and fiscal and social conservatism.

Republican philosophy leans more towards individual freedoms, rights and responsibilities. In contrast, Democrats attach greater importance to equality and social/community responsibility.

While there may be several differences in opinion between individual Democrats and Republicans on certain issues, what follows is a generalization of their stand on several of these issues.

One of the fundamental differences between Democratic and Republican party ideals is around the role of government. Democrats tend to favor a more active role for government in society and believe that such involvement can improve the quality of peoples lives and help achieve the larger goals of opportunity and equality. On the other hand, Republicans tend to favor a small government both in terms of the number of people employed by the government and in terms of the roles and responsibilities of government in society. They see "big government" as wasteful and an obstacle to getting things done. Their approach is Darwinian capitalism in that strong businesses should survive in a free market rather than the government influencingthrough regulationwho wins or loses in business.

For example, Democrats tend to favor environmental regulations and anti-discrimination laws for employment. Republicans tend to consider such regulations harmful to business and job growth because most laws have unintended consequences. Indeed, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is a government agency that many Republican presidential candidates love to deride as an example of "useless" government agencies that they would shut down.

Another example is the food stamps program. Republicans in Congress were demanding cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP), while Democrats wanted to expand this program. Democrats argued that with the unemployment rate high, many families needed the assistance provided by the program. Republicans argued that there was a lot of fraud in the program, which is wasting taxpayer dollars. Republicans also favor more individual responsibility, so they would like to institute rules that force beneficiaries of welfare programs to take more personal responsibility through measures like mandatory drug testing, and looking for a job.[1]

The Democrats and Republicans have varying ideas on many hot button issues, some of which are listed below. These are broadly generalized opinions; it must be noted that there are many politicians in each party who have different and more nuanced positions on these issues.

Republicans: Prefer increasing military spending and have a more hard line stance against countries like Iran, with a higher tendency to deploy the military option.

Democrats: Prefer lower increases in military spending and are comparatively more reluctant to using military force against countries like Iran, Syria and Libya.

Democrats favor more gun control laws e.g. oppose the right to carry concealed weapons in public places. Republicans oppose gun control laws and are strong supporters of the Second Amendment (the right to bear arms) as well as the right to carry concealed weapons.

Democrats support abortion rights and keeping elective abortions legal. Republicans believe abortions should not be legal and that Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Some Republicans go so far as to oppose the contraception mandate i.e. requiring employer-paid health insurance plans to cover contraception.

A related point of divergence is embryonic stem cell research - Democrats support it while Republicans do not.

Democrats tend to favor equal rights for gay and lesbian couples e.g. the right to get married and adopt children. Republicans believe that marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman so they do not support gay marriage, nor allowing gay couples to adopt children.

Democrats are also more supportive of rights for transgender people; for example, within about a month of taking office, Republican President Donald Trump rescinded protections for transgender students that had allowed them to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity.

Now that gay marriage is legal nationwide, the battleground has shifted to related issues like transgender rights and anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBTQ people. For example, Democrats favor laws barring businesses from refusing to serve gay customers.

The majority opinion in America about the death penalty is that it should be legal. However, many Democrats are opposed to it and the 2016 Democratic Party platform called for abolishing the death penalty.[2]

Democrats support progressive taxes. A progressive tax system is one where high-income individuals pay taxes at a higher rate. This is the how federal income tax brackets are currently set up. For example, the first $10,000 in income is taxed at 10% but marginal income over $420,000 is taxed at 39.6%.

Republicans support tax cuts for everyone (rich and poor alike). They believe that a smaller government would need less revenue from taxes to sustain itself. Some Republicans are proponents of a "flat tax" where all people pay the same percentage of their income in taxes regardless of income level. They consider higher tax rates on the rich a form of class warfare.

Related: A comparison of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton's Tax Plans

Democrats favor increase in the minimum wage to help workers. Republicans oppose raising the minimum wage because it hurts businesses.

U.S. foreign policy has traditionally been relatively consistent between Democratic and Republican administrations. Key allies have always been other Western powers like the UK, France. Allies in the middle east wereand continue to remaincountries like Israel, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

Nevertheless, some differences can be seen based on the Obama administration's handling of relations with certain countries. For example, Israel and the U.S. have always been strong allies. But relations between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been tense. A major contributor to this tension has been the Obama administration's Iran policy. The U.S. tightened sanctions on Iran in Obama's first term, but negotiated a deal in the second term that allowed international inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities. The U.S. and Iran also found common ground against the threat from ISIS. This rapprochement has irked Iran's traditional rival Israel, even though for all practical purposes Israel and the U.S. remain staunch allies. Republicans in Congress opposed the Iran deal and the easing of sanctions against Iran. They also invited Netanyahu to deliver a speech against the deal.

Another country where the Democratic Obama administration reversed decades of U.S. policy is Cuba. Republican Rand Paul supported the unfreezing of relations with Cuba but his opinion is not shared by a majority of Republicans.[3]. Republicans like presidential contenders Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have publicly opposed the normalization of relations with Cuba. [4][5]

Politicians from both parties are often heard saying that "The immigration system in this country is broken." However, the political divide has been too wide to let any bipartisan legislation pass to "fix" the system with "comprehensive immigration reform."

In general the Democratic Party is considered more sympathetic to the immigrant cause. There is widespread support among Democrats for the DREAM Act which grants conditional residency (and permanent residency upon meeting further qualifications) to undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. when they were minors. The bill never passed but the (Democratic) Obama administration did issue some protections for certain qualified undocumented immigrants.

Both Democratic and Republican administrations have used and favored deportations. More undocumented immigrants were deported under President Obama than any president before him. Deportations have continued, if not accelerated, under President Trump.

Republicans favor legal immigration to be "merit-based" or "point-based". Such systems are used by countries like Canada and Australia to allow lawful entry visas to individuals with in-demand skills who can contribute to the economy. The flip side of such a system is that not enough visas may be available for family-based immigration. A merit-based system is also the opposite of the "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore." philosophy.

Abraham Lincoln belonged to the Republican Party, so the roots of the party lie in individual freedom and the abolition of slavery. Indeed, 82% of the Republicans in the U.S. Senate voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 while only 69% of Democrats did. The Southern wing of the Democratic party was vehemently opposed to civil rights legislation.

However, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, there was a sort of role reversal. Todd Purdum, author of An Idea Whose Time Has Come, a book about the legislative maneuvering behind the passage of the Civil Rights Act, says this in an interview with NPR:

Republicans believe that Purdum's point of view is misleading because Goldwater supported previous attempts at passing a Civil Rights act, and desegregation, but did not like the 1964 Act because he felt it infringed on states' rights.

In any case, the present dynamic is that minorities like Hispanics and African Americans and are much more likely to vote Democratic than Republican. However, there are prominent African American Republicans like Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Herman Cain, Clarence Thomas, Michael Steele and Alan West, as well as Hispanics like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Alberto Gonzales and Brian Sandoval.

Civil liberties groups like the ACLU criticize the GOP for pushing for voter ID laws Republicans believe these laws are necessary to prevent voter fraud while Democrats claim that voter fraud is virtually non-existent and that these laws disenfranchise black and Hispanic voters who tend to be poorer and unable to obtain ID cards.

The Black Lives Matter movement is a mostly Democratic priority while Republicans have expressed more concern about the shootings of police officers. The 2016 Republican convention featured people killed at the hands of undocumented immigrants, as well as a sheriff proclaiming "blue lives matter." The Democratic convention, on the other hand, provided a forum for testimonials from the mothers of black men and women killed in confrontations with police.[6]

Due to the TV coverage during some of the presidential elections in the past, the color Red has become associated with the Republicans (as in Red states the states where the Republican presidential nominee wins) and Blue is associated with the Democrats.

The Democratic Party, once dominant in the Southeastern United States, is now strongest in the Northeast (Mid-Atlantic and New England), Great Lakes Region, as well as along the Pacific Coast (especially Coastal California), including Hawaii. The Democrats are also strongest in major cities. Recently, Democratic candidates have been faring better in some southern states, such as Virginia, Arkansas, and Florida, and in the Rocky Mountain states, especially Colorado, Montana, Nevada, and New Mexico.

Since 1980, geographically the Republican "base" ("red states") is strongest in the South and West, and weakest in the Northeast and the Pacific Coast. The Republican Party's strongest focus of political influence lies in the Great Plains states, particularly Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska, and in the western states of Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah.

In February 2016, Gallup reported that for the first time since Gallup started tracking, red states now outnumber blue states.

In 2008, 35 states leaned Democratic and this number is down to only 14 now. In the same time, the number of Republican leaning states rose from 5 to 20. Gallup determined 16 states to be competitive, i.e., they leaned toward neither party. Wyoming, Idaho and Utah were the most Republican states, while states that leaned the most Democratic were Vermont, Hawaii and Rhode Island.

Republicans have controlled the White House for 28 of the last 43 years since Richard Nixon became president. Famous Democrat Presidents have been Franklin Roosevelt, who pioneered the New Deal in America and stood for 4 terms, John F. Kennedy, who presided over the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis, and was assassinated in Office; Bill Clinton, who was impeached by the House of Representatives; and Nobel Peace Prize winners Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter.

Famous Republican Presidents include Abraham Lincoln, who abolished slavery; Teddy Roosevelt, known for the Panama Canal; Ronald Reagan, credited for ending the Cold War with Gorbachev; and the two Bush family Presidents of recent times. Republican President Richard Nixon was forced to resign over the Watergate scandal.

To compare the two parties' presidential candidates in the 2016 elections, see Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton.

This graphic shows which party controlled the White House since 1901. You can find the list of Presidents on Wikipedia.

Interesting data about how support for each party broke down by race, geography and the urban-rural divide during the 2018 mid-term elections are presented in charts here.

The Pew Research Group, among others, regularly surveys American citizens to determine party affiliation or support for various demographic groups. Some of their latest results are below.

In general, support for the Democratic party is stronger among younger voters. As the demographic gets older, support for the Republican party rises.

In general, women lean Democratic while support among men is roughly evenly split between the two parties.

Support for parties can also vary significantly by ethnicity and race, with African-Americans and Hispanics. For example, in the 2012 presidential election, Republican Mitt Romney garnered only 6% of the black vote; and in 2008 John McCain got only 4%.[7]

Support for the two parties also varies by level of education; support for the Democratic party is stronger among college graduates and also among people who have a high school diploma or less.

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Democrat vs Republican - Difference and Comparison | Diffen

Black neighborhoods in key swing states hold enormous power to reshape politics in November and beyond. But in order to maximize this potential, progressives need to imagine and invest on an unprecedented scale.

Black voters have consistently supported Democratic candidates over Republicans by stunning margins: about 90 percent to 10 percent. No other major demographic comes close to this level of support for either party. For every 10 new black voters, 9 will likely vote for a Democrat and one for a Republican, yielding eight net Democratic votes. In contrast, 10 new Latino voters (who voted 70 percent Democratic and 30 percent Republican in 2018) would produce four net Democratic votes. For white, college-educated women, the figure is two.

Said another way, one new black voter has the same net effect as two new Latino voters or four new white, college-educated female voters. While it is true that there are more eligible but nonvoting people of other important demographics, there are more net Democratic votes available from new black voters because of the huge differential in Democratic support.

What is a new black voter? In the 2016 presidential election, an estimated 3.3 million black people in six key swing states were unregistered, or registered but had never voted, or didnt vote in 2016, despite previously doing so. In those six states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina and Georgia) the number of eligible but nonvoting black people was at least 2.8 times Hillary Clintons margin of loss. Five of these states also had Senate elections; Democrats lost all five.

In Pennsylvania, for example, Mrs. Clinton lost by about 44,000 votes, while Katie McGinty, the Democratic Senate candidate, lost by about 87,000 votes. But an estimated 350,000 eligible black people didnt vote statewide. Combine this with the fact that half of Pennsylvanias black population lives in Philadelphia, and it becomes clear where there is concentrated, untapped political power. This type of geographic concentration is not unique. Just 14 cities account for over half of the black population in these six crucial states. (There are also large concentrations of black nonvoters in Jacksonville, Tampa and Orlando, Fla.; and in Fayetteville and Winston-Salem, N.C.)

And within these 14 cities, majority-black census blocks (areas usually much smaller than election precincts) account for a vastly disproportionate percentage of the black population. For example, majority-black census blocks account for 80 percent of Milwaukee countys black population, which itself accounts for 70 percent of Wisconsins black population. The upshot is clear: Nonvoting black residents in key places have the potential to swing elections, from the presidency on down, in 2020 and beyond. Republicans have understood these dynamics for years; they long ago decided that they were better off trying to suppress black voters than to compete for their votes.

The argument here is not that Donald Trumps election in 2016 is the fault of black voters. Nobody but the 63 million Americans who voted for him bears responsibility for that. In fact, turnout patterns of black voters are largely similar to whites. Yes, it is true that black voters were slightly underrepresented in 2016 and slightly overrepresented in 2012. And in elections like the 2016 race with razor-thin margins, a small change in turnout can matter.

But by fixating on the small turnout differential from 2012 to 2016, progressives miss the far larger prize: the more than 30 percent of all voters who consistently dont vote in presidential elections. In midterm and municipal elections, that figure is even higher. This is a result of progressives failure to execute a plan ambitious enough to change the status quo.

How can we seize this opportunity? The political scientists Donald Green and Alan Gerber conducted an analysis of hundreds of voter turnout experiments that tested methods like yard signs, mailers, text messages and TV ads. No simple, inexpensive tactic improved turnout more than three percentage points on average in high-turnout elections. Weve been answering the question: Can we get a little by investing a little per targeted voter in the final three weeks before an election? But weve never asked: Can we get a lot by investing a lot far in advance of election season?

Research shows that the most effective voter-turnout technique is person-to-person contact from a trusted source like a family member, friend or neighbor; this is far more successful than impersonal paid communication like TV, digital or radio ads. But most nonvoters or infrequent voters dont get this kind of outreach because campaigns and independent political groups generally ignore people with low turnout scores. And since these scores are developed based on voting history, nonvoters become less and less likely to be contacted. Even worse, people who have recently moved or are unregistered may not even show up in campaign databases. This problem is acute in areas with high transience, like urban, majority-black neighborhoods.

But the opportunity lies precisely with these people. To realize this potential, we must shed cynical assumptions about what is and isnt possible. Here is a proposal to develop a robust organizing infrastructure that can build real relationships with black nonvoters and maximize turnout.

In all the 14 cities, two residents in every micro-geography would be recruited, trained and given a stipend to form a block team. The block teams first step would be to connect with a member of every household on the block going back to every door as many times as necessary to make contact. This introductory interaction would be an unhurried conversation about the block team and its goals of building power and turnout, and it would gather the names of all voting-eligible people living at the residence. This data would then be reconciled with the voter file to categorize every eligible black resident by registration status and voting history. Lets say the block team has 100 black households with 200 eligible voters. Once the team gets good data, it can focus on deep canvassing having meaningful conversations at the doorstep with only the nonvoters or infrequent voters, maybe 80 people in all. In this conversation or future ones, block teams can help them register and make plans to vote, perhaps with a user-friendly tool like Map the Vote.

This is not the only model or necessarily the best one, but it does typify the big thinking required to match the size of the opportunity. There are many questions that need to be answered: How many block teams can a full-time organizer train and support? How large an area can a block team effectively cover? How often should block teams meet? Should they focus on hyperlocal, nonpartisan issues or national partisan issues? We cant definitively answer these questions this year (maybe block teams should focus on 75 black households, instead of 100). But every year, there are two chances to continue refining the infrastructure. The 2021 municipal primary and general elections allow block teams to build on this years lessons. When the 2022 elections for senators and governors are in full swing, block teams will have been able to refine their strategies even further.

The neighborhood team model is not new: Barack Obamas presidential campaigns empowered tens of thousands of ordinary people to achieve extraordinary levels of voter contact in their own neighborhoods. But even the best-resourced political campaigns are hampered by a lack of time. They exist only for a few fleeting months every four years, often building infrastructure from scratch and leaving little behind for the next campaign.

So who should build this permanent organizing infrastructure? Ideally, both state Democratic parties and independent political groups. State parties have a tremendous amount to gain: They could more effectively mobilize voters for priority issues cycle after cycle and have a vastly improved way to listen to marginalized voters and incorporate their ideas and frustrations into the partys platform. Independent groups can build community power apart from a political party, which could more easily hold elected officials accountable.

Some groups are already doing this. Black Leaders Organizing for Communities in Milwaukee, for example, trains community ambassadors to turn their neighborhoods resources into collective power that can be wielded to win. And Color of Change aims to do this on a national scale. But such groups need an order of magnitude more funding, well before election season and on a regular basis, to seize this huge opportunity. Both the breadth and depth of their work are limited by insufficient and unpredictable investment. Genuine community organizing takes months and years, not days and weeks, a truth that is often lost on the donor community.

To be sure, big money on the Democratic side does exist its just not being spent effectively. A majority of the $1 billion that went toward Mrs. Clintons candidacy was spent on paid communication like TV and digital ads not on groups that could best facilitate neighbor-to-neighbor contact.

Enormous investment in organizing can build real power in traditionally marginalized neighborhoods and elect accountable politicians, now and for years to come. Done the right way, this will develop leaders and political power which can be used to achieve whatever people want thats the true essence of democracy. We know black neighborhoods in six key states can get us there. Now we need to make it happen.

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Democrats Are Ignoring the Voters Who Could Decide This Election - The New York Times

I was fortunate enough in 2016 to play a small role in the unprecedented political juggernaut that was the Trump campaign. Against a crowded field of senators, governors and names that Americans had known for decades, then-candidate Donald Trump emerged as a force outside the GOP establishment that none of the Washington types the Republicans political geniuses could have ever seen coming.

Primary after primary, caucus after caucus, Trump just kept winning. Before the Republican National Convention in July, he exceed the number of delegates needed to clinch the partys nomination by more than 200.

Becoming the nominee was inevitable even as some in the party didnt want to accept it.

Professional losers at the convention, more concerned with tone than taxpayers, worked the few remaining country club Republicans to try to force a floor fight. If you dont remember this, thats OK: It lasted all of an hour and went basically nowhere.

The Republican base voted for Donald Trump to be the nominee. The party understood this, and that was final. It is, after all, the will of the people that matters in a democracy, right?

Ask the Democrats.

It was a very simple question that NBCs Meet the Press host Chuck ToddCharles (Chuck) David ToddTrailing Democrats tout strength with black voters ahead of South Carolina Clyburn says Democrats spent 'too much time on Bloomberg' in Nevada debate The Democratic nominee won't be democratically chosen MORE posed to the candidates in Wednesdays debate in Las Vegas: Should the candidate with the most delegates at the end of the primary season be the nominee, even if they are short of a majority? Simple. Fair. Topical.

For the first time in many years, we are very likely heading toward a brokered convention for the Democrats. So in a world where theres no clear winner according to the rules of the game, would it be fair to award the nomination to the person who came closest to victory?

In essence, should the winner of the popular vote be the nominee?

Listen to what they said.

Former New York City Mayor Michael BloombergMichael Rubens BloombergWinners andlosers from the South Carolina debate Sanders most searched, most tweeted about candidate during Democratic debate Democrats duke it out in most negative debate so far MORE: Whatever the rules of the Democratic Party are, they should be followed. Chuck Todd clarifies, So you want the convention to work its will? and Bloomberg replies, Yes.

Sen. Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth Ann WarrenWinners andlosers from the South Carolina debate Five takeaways from the Democratic debate Sanders most searched, most tweeted about candidate during Democratic debate MORE (D-Mass.): The convention working its will means people have the delegates that are pledged to them and they keep those delegates until you come to the convention, all of the people.

Former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenWinners andlosers from the South Carolina debate Five takeaways from the Democratic debate Sanders most searched, most tweeted about candidate during Democratic debate MORE: No, let the process work its way out.

Former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete ButtigiegPeter (Pete) Paul ButtigiegWinners andlosers from the South Carolina debate Five takeaways from the Democratic debate Sanders most searched, most tweeted about candidate during Democratic debate MORE: Not necessarily, not till theres a majority.

Sen. Amy KlobucharAmy Jean KlobucharWinners andlosers from the South Carolina debate Sanders most searched, most tweeted about candidate during Democratic debate Democrats duke it out in most negative debate so far MORE (D-Minn.): Let the process work.

And finally, Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersWinners andlosers from the South Carolina debate Five takeaways from the Democratic debate Sanders most searched, most tweeted about candidate during Democratic debate MORE (I-Vt.): Well, the process includes 500 superdelegates on the second ballot. So I think that the will of the people should prevail. Yes, the person who has the most votes should be the nominee.

This was actually astounding. Mayor Pete, whose platform includes a proposal to eliminate the Electoral College and replace it with a nationwide popular vote, stood onstage, stared down on the American people and argued that the Democratic nominee should not necessarily be chosen by a popular vote.

Warren, in her very lawyerly way of hiding behind allusions to intricacies of convention rules and delegate counts, avoided the simple form of her answer: No, the will of the Democratic voters is irrelevant unless it ends up in a delegate majority.

Bernie, whose 2016 campaign actually inspired the changes to the nominating process that have given the Democratic Party this new, perilous-looking system, was the only one to show any consistency between whats in his platform and what he believes.

And the thing about Bernie is, even if he werent the new front-runner of the race, a fair characterization to make given his lead in delegate counts and enthusiasm to match, I believe he still would have answered the same way. And thats precisely why the Democratic National Committee (DNC) cant stand him.

Make no mistake in a world where Sanders falls short of the majority of delegates, he will have the nomination stolen from him again. And each of the candidates who advocates for the dissolution of the Electoral College will just sit back and say, Sorry, thats how the nominating process works.

Principle doesnt matter here. If it did, every party figure would have been outraged by the candidates insistence that the will of the people expressed by a popular vote is meaningful only if it puts them over the delegate threshold.

This is about winning about letting the DNC establishment chooseits ideal candidate to face off against President TrumpDonald John TrumpWinners andlosers from the South Carolina debate Five takeaways from the Democratic debate Democrats duke it out in most negative debate so far MORE.It knows its going to be a fight;it knows its going to be tough to win. And for some reason, all these facts add up to the conclusion among party leaders the Democrats geniuses that they cant afford to trust the will of their own voters.

Maybe theyre right, for the sake of the general election, as far as they see it. Maybe not. But what I do know is that the desperate rallying cry among Democrats to vote blue no matter who implies that, at the end of the day, you are responsible to your voters.

If I were the DNC, Id treat them with respect. Thinking theyre incompetent usually isnt a good look.

But hey, trust the geniuses, right?

Corey R. Lewandowski is President Trumps former campaign manager and a senior adviser to the Trump-Pence 2020 campaign. He is a senior adviser to the Great America Committee, Vice PresidentMike PenceMichael (Mike) Richard PenceTrump trails Democratic challengers among Catholic voters: poll Sunday shows preview: 2020 candidates look to South Carolina The Democratic nominee won't be democratically chosen MORE's political action committee. He is co-author with David Bossie of the new book, Trumps Enemies, and of Let Trump Be Trump: The Inside Story of His Rise to the Presidency. Follow him on Twitter@CLewandowski_.

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The Democratic nominee won't be democratically chosen | TheHill - The Hill

Of the remaining contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, Mike Bloomberg is the only one who openly favors statehood for Puerto Rico. Bernie SandersBernie SandersWinners andlosers from the South Carolina debate Five takeaways from the Democratic debate Sanders most searched, most tweeted about candidate during Democratic debate MORE, Joe BidenJoe BidenWinners andlosers from the South Carolina debate Five takeaways from the Democratic debate Sanders most searched, most tweeted about candidate during Democratic debate MORE, Pete ButtigiegPeter (Pete) Paul ButtigiegWinners andlosers from the South Carolina debate Five takeaways from the Democratic debate Sanders most searched, most tweeted about candidate during Democratic debate MORE, Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth Ann WarrenWinners andlosers from the South Carolina debate Five takeaways from the Democratic debate Sanders most searched, most tweeted about candidate during Democratic debate MORE, Amy KlobucharAmy Jean KlobucharWinners andlosers from the South Carolina debate Sanders most searched, most tweeted about candidate during Democratic debate Democrats duke it out in most negative debate so far MORE and Tom SteyerTom Fahr SteyerWinners andlosers from the South Carolina debate Five takeaways from the Democratic debate Sanders most searched, most tweeted about candidate during Democratic debate MORE[1] have all hedged their position, claiming instead that the people of Puerto Rico should decide their political status.

Underlining the position held by the majority of the candidates is a calculated strategy, which aims to straddle the political factions that drive insular politics while avoiding any specific commitment concerning its status. It should be noted that of these candidates, Sanders, Biden, Warren and Klobuchar are, or have been, senators in Congress for many years and have studiously ignored Puerto Ricos status issues throughout their respective tenures.

It is well to remind these senators that it is Congress not the presidency that has plenary powers over the territories under Article IV, Section 3, of the Constitution. Any politician that claims to favor whatever the people of Puerto Rico decide, while failing to take specific actions to address the issue, is just kicking the can down the road.

Even though Puerto Ricans are American citizens, they do not vote in presidential or congressional elections. This is the major constitutional consequence of being an unincorporated territory. We do participate, however, in the national partys respective primaries. This limited participation in the democratic process has led to the inclusion in their respective platforms of language regarding the political future of Puerto Rico, which traditionally has been honored in the breach. Puerto Rico has 58 delegates to the Democratic convention, and 23 delegates to the Republican convention.

With regards to President TrumpDonald John TrumpWinners andlosers from the South Carolina debate Five takeaways from the Democratic debate Democrats duke it out in most negative debate so far MORE and the Republican Party, nothing should be expected on the status issue. In its 2016 platform the GOP declared that it supported the right of the United States citizens of Puerto Rico to be admitted to the Union as a fully sovereign state. Contrary to this statement, the last four years under Trump and Republican congressional leadership has been, if anything, duplicitous and in opposition to statehood. It remains to been seen what language the Republican Party will include in its platform concerning Puerto Rico.

Given the growing importance of the Hispanic vote and the identity politics that drives much of the current national debate, the Puerto Rican vote has a role to play. The past 2018 midterm election of Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) with the support of the Puerto Rican vote is an indication of its importance in the national stage. It is not accidental that Scott favors statehood for Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans who have settled in Florida in recent years need to take notice of their political weight, particularly in light of the importance of the Electoral College in the presidential election.

The Democratic Party, on the other hand, included in its 2016 platform the bromide that it believes that the people of Puerto Rico should determine their ultimate political status from permanent options that do not conflict with the Constitution, laws, and policies of the United States. Since the Democratic Party regained the House in 2018, the majority under the leadership of Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiOcasio-Cortez: Trump would 'never' say to her face some of the shots he takes at her on Twitter Oversight Committee room to be dedicated to late Rep. Elijah Cummings Lawmakers raise alarms over Trump coronavirus response MORE has deliberately stalled Resident Commissioner Jenniffer Gonzlezs efforts to move a statehood admission bill that would settle the status issue.

It is well known that the political factions in Puerto Rico are driven by the issue of status. Notwithstanding the imploded administration of then Gov. Ricardo Rossell, the Legislative Assembly is still controlled by the New Progressive Party (PNP), which favors statehood. Current Gov. Wanda Vzquez Garcd is identified with the Republican Party, and though claims to favor statehood, does not appear to be too interested in promoting it. Former Resident Commissioner Pedro PierluisiPedro Rafael PierluisiTrump reignites Puerto Rico feud amid Hurricane Dorian The Hill's Morning Report - Trump vows federal response to Ohio, Texas shootings Wanda Vzquez sworn in as new Puerto Rico governor MORE, a member of the Democratic Party who is now a PNP candidate for governor, endorses Mike Bloomberg for president.

Puerto Ricos Legislative Assembly recently submitted legislation for holding a Statehood: yes or no plebiscite. Given the low electoral turnout in the June 2017 plebiscite which statehood opponents in Washington have used as an argument to delegitimize its overwhelming results in favor of statehood it is politically sound to schedule it on the same day as the general election. Although it is unlikely that the Department of Justice will endorse this plebiscite, as provided by Public Law 113-76, statehood leadership should submit the ballot for its approval. No stone should be left unturned.

Given that Mike Bloomberg is the only candidate that favors statehood for Puerto Rico, it behooves pro-statehood Puerto Rican Democrats to vote in favor of his nomination.

Andrs L. Crdova is a law professor at Interamerican University of Puerto Rico, where he teaches contracts and property courses. He is also an occasional columnist on legal and political issues at the Spanish daily El Vocero de Puerto Rico.

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There's only one candidate for Democrats in Puerto Rico | TheHill - The Hill

Senate Democrats blocked two abortion-related bills on Tuesday as Republicans look to weaponize the issue ahead of the 2020 elections.

Democrats blocked two measures one from Sen. Lindsey GrahamLindsey Olin GrahamDemocrats duke it out in most negative debate so far Republicans give Barr vote of confidence Overnight Health Care Presented by American Health Care Association Lawmakers raise alarms over Trump coronavirus response | Top official warns virus appears inevitable in US | Democrats block two Senate abortion bills MORE (R-S.C.) and the other from Sen. Ben SasseBenjamin (Ben) Eric SasseOvernight Health Care Presented by American Health Care Association Lawmakers raise alarms over Trump coronavirus response | Top official warns virus appears inevitable in US | Democrats block two Senate abortion bills Democrats block two Senate abortion bills This week: House to vote on legislation to make lynching a federal hate crime MORE (R-Neb.) from getting the 60 votes needed to overcome an initial procedural hurdle.

The legislation from Graham would ban abortions after 20 weeks with exceptions for the life of the mother and victimsof rape or incest. Doctors who violate the bill could face up to five years in prison.

The second bill, from Sasse, would penalize doctors who fail to "exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion."

Graham's bill failed in a 53-44 vote, with Democratic Sens. Bob CaseyRobert (Bob) Patrick CaseyOvernight Health Care Presented by American Health Care Association Lawmakers raise alarms over Trump coronavirus response | Top official warns virus appears inevitable in US | Democrats block two Senate abortion bills Democrats block two Senate abortion bills Pennsylvania Democrat says US Attorney's Office should prioritize opioids rather than 'Russian propaganda' from Giuliani MORE (Pa.) and Joe ManchinJoseph (Joe) ManchinOvernight Health Care Presented by American Health Care Association Lawmakers raise alarms over Trump coronavirus response | Top official warns virus appears inevitable in US | Democrats block two Senate abortion bills Democrats block two Senate abortion bills Where do we go from here? Conservation can show the way MORE (W.Va.) voting for it and GOP Sens. Susan CollinsSusan Margaret CollinsOvernight Health Care Presented by American Health Care Association Lawmakers raise alarms over Trump coronavirus response | Top official warns virus appears inevitable in US | Democrats block two Senate abortion bills Democrats block two Senate abortion bills Trump creates new headaches for GOP with top intelligence pick MORE (Maine) and Lisa MurkowskiLisa Ann MurkowskiOvernight Health Care Presented by American Health Care Association Lawmakers raise alarms over Trump coronavirus response | Top official warns virus appears inevitable in US | Democrats block two Senate abortion bills Overnight Energy: Critics pile on Trump plan to roll back major environmental law | Pick for Interior No. 2 official confirmed | JPMorgan Chase to stop loans for fossil fuel drilling in the Arctic MacGregor confirmed as Interior deputy chief MORE (Alaska) voting against it.

Sasse's bill failed 56-41, with Casey, Manchin and Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) voting for it.

Neither bill was expected to pass despite Republican control of the Senate. But the decision to force the vote allows Republicans to try to put Jones on the record ahead of his tough reelection battle in November, and highlight tensions among Democrats, who are divided on if the party should include anti-abortion members.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellAddison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellRepublicans give Barr vote of confidence Democrats block two Senate abortion bills VA could lead way for nation on lower drug pricing MORE (R-Ky.) blasted Democrats for opposing the bills, arguing it demonstrates the party moving to the left.

"If my Democratic colleagues block the Senate from even proceeding to debate this legislation later today, the message they send will be chilling and clear: The radical demands of the far left will drown out common sense and the views of most Americans," he said ahead of the vote.

McConnell's staff also blasted out a round up of abortion-related comments from Democrats, including Minority Leader Charles SchumerCharles (Chuck) Ellis SchumerOvernight Health Care Presented by American Health Care Association Lawmakers raise alarms over Trump coronavirus response | Top official warns virus appears inevitable in US | Democrats block two Senate abortion bills Lawmakers raise alarms over Trump coronavirus response Democrats block two Senate abortion bills MORE (D-N.Y.) and Sens. Bernie SandersBernie SandersWinners andlosers from the South Carolina debate Five takeaways from the Democratic debate Sanders most searched, most tweeted about candidate during Democratic debate MORE (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth Ann WarrenWinners andlosers from the South Carolina debate Five takeaways from the Democratic debate Sanders most searched, most tweeted about candidate during Democratic debate MORE (D-Mass.), who are both running for the party's presidential nomination.

The votes come days before GOP activists are expected to descend onthe D.C. region for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.

Democrats argue the two bills would curb women's reproductiverights. They blocked similar legislation from Graham in 2018, and Sasse's bill last year.

Schumer called the proposals "divisive anti-choice, anti-women [and] anti-family" measures.

"Republicans have chosen once again to play politics on the Senate floor. Leader McConnell should stop wasting the few votes he does schedule with these shameless political stunts, and instead bring legislation to the floor that would actually improve the health care of the American people, and of American women in particular," he said.

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Democrats block two Senate abortion bills | TheHill - The Hill