The American Democratic Party Part 2: A Brief History [INCOMPLETE]

[Lord Thesaurian]

The American Democratic Party Part 2: A History

As you may remember I posted a thread some time ago on the Democratic Party. This article is a semi-brief party history which will reveal the true nature of the Party according to itself and attempt to clear the confusion which apparently prevails in the forums about this Party. (Please do not reply until it's finished.)

--Regards, Legio_Italica

The Party and Its Origin

The Democratic Party traces its origins to Thomas Jefferson's "Republican Party," (which evolved from various factions) though further analysis reveals that the modern Democratic Party has little in common with its supposed predecessor.

Jefferson's supporters were often called "Democrats," "Republicans," or "Jeffersonians." The Party was originally founded by Jefferson and James Madison to oppose the fiscal policies of Alexander Hamilton. As the Federalist and Jeffersonian Parties were formed mainly to oppose each other's policies, little of their political structure survives, though the ideals of each set the stage for modern American politics. Because of some modern confusion about the Jeffersonian Party, I will list the basic beliefs of this, the Federalist Party, the modern Republican Party and the modern Democratic Party:

The Jeffersonian Party:

-- saw itself as the true champion of republicanism,

-- favored a strong central government which was subject to the rights of the states

-- strongly supported capitalism and individual rights

-- supported state's rights

-- favored a conservative interpretation of the Constitution

-- sought to decrease the power of the federal government

-- favored by the middle class and poor

The Federalist Party:

-- founded by Alexander Hamilton and John Adams

-- favored a liberal interpretation of the Constitution

-- supported the creation of a national debt and national bank in order to assume the state's debts acquired during the Revolutionary War

-- favored a strong central government which usurped the rights of the states

-- supported a powerful government which was superior to individual rights and could assume the ownership of private entities

-- favored by elitist groups, the wealthy, etc.

The Democratic Party:

-- traces its origins to the Jeffersonian Party

-- sees itself as the champion of the proletariat

-- supports a powerful government which is superior to individual rights and can assume the ownership of private entities

-- favors a liberal interpretation of the Constitution

The Republican Party or GOP:

-- traces its origins to the abolitionist groups of the 1840s and 50s

-- sees itself as the champion of capitalism and individual rights

-- supports a national government which is subject to the rights of the states

-- favors a conservative interpretation of the Constitution

Having reviewed the basic principles supported by each of the above parties, it becomes clear that the Democratic Party has obviously strayed from its alleged Jeffersonian predecessors. In fact, they apparently have more in common with their supposed arch enemies, the Federalists.

The 19th Century

After 1830, the Democratic Party became a coalition of farmers, city-dwelling laborers, and Irish Catholics. With the decline of the Federalists, the Whig Party became the Democrats' main opponent. Democrats were weakest in New England; nevertheless, they continued to win national elections thanks to strength in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia (by far, the most populous states at the time), and the frontier. Democrats opposed elites and aristocrats, supporting the Bank of the United States, and modernizing programs that would build up industry at the expense of the taxpayer. These policies fell under the umbrella term Jacksonian Democracy.

Upon the advent of the Civil War, the Party split with the rest of the nation. The Party had made a reputation with its pro-slavery policies and was extremely popular in the South. In the North, the Party split into two factions, the War Democrats, who supported the military policies of Republican President Abraham Lincoln, and the Copperheads, who strongly opposed them.

After the war, the Democratic Party was almost non-existent in the abolitionist, prospering North, while in the South (which was reeling under the brutal Reconstruction and bitter about the War) the Party found the perfect environment in which to promote its agenda of portraying itself as the solution to a broken society.

The Party lost consecutive elections from 1860-80 while flourishing in the "Solid South." However, the recession of 1873 gave the Party an opportunity to win the American proletariat as a whole, taking advantage of the uncertainty and unrest to gain majorities in both the house and Senate, though they would not win a presidential election until 1884.

The Progressive Era: 1900-32

The resurgence was, however, short-lived. The election year of 1896 marked a 36-year domination of American politics by the Republican Party. The Party enjoyed a respite from 1912-20 with the election of another Virginian Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, but the air of general prosperity following World War I left the Party with no axes to grind or enemies to blame, and Republican president Herbert Hoover served two terms spanning most of the 1920s.

But, just when all hope seemed lost, the stock market crash of 1928 presented a golden opportunity for the Party to regain control of American politics. The Great Depression, as it came to be called, had fallen upon America with a vengeance, as years of faulty economic practices based on credit came to bear.

The Great Depression and World War II:
The Democrats' "Golden Age"

The depression which started in America had devastating effects in virtually every country, rich or poor. International trade plunged by half to two-thirds, as did personal income, tax revenue, prices and profits. Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially those dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries. Farming and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by roughly 60 percent. Facing plummeting demand with few alternate sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as farming, mining and logging suffered the most. Unemployment hit 20% almost overnight as the whole nation went bankrupt. Thousands of banks across the country closed their doors, taking billions in private moneys down with them. The stage was set for the Party to once again present itself as the savior of the proletariat.

In 1932 The Democratic National Convention elected a rising star from New York, Franklin Roosevelt, to be the Democratic candidate for the presidency. Roosevelt was an obvious choice. A seasoned, vigorous politician, Roosevelt was already a favorite in New
England and the South, having made a reputation with his progressive economic policies and charming charisma.

Roosevelt hit the campaign trail running. Still suffering from polio, he led one of the most vigorous campaigns in American history, visiting nearly every major city and even some smaller ones in an effort to rally the millions of American poor to the Democratic cause.

In the end Roosevelt's efforts paid off handsomely, winning him a landslide victory against Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover. In his inaugural speech, Roosevelt delivered a chilling promise, declaring that "Throughout the nation men and women, forgotten in the political philosophy of the Government, look to us here for guidance and for more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth... I pledge you, I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people... This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms. Roosevelt went even further, promising to mobilize the resources of the federal government to lift the American people out of the Depression (sound familiar?).

Roosevelt was not slow in making good on his promises. In the infamous first 100 days of his term he sent a record number of bills to the overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, all of which passed easily. The New Deal, as Roosevelt himself called it, was the final result of this series of legislation and totally reorganized American economic policies. The New Deal would pour over a trillion dollars of federal money into the private sector through government-run programs over the course of Roosevelt's first term alone, basically causing the feds to assume the vast majority of private debt. The Deal was extremely popular with the middle class and poor, who suddenly found themselves lining their pockets with freshly-printed money. The majority of businessmen and economists, however, were wary of the Dael's long-term effects.

All soon found that these fears were not unfounded. As is common with "pump priming (federal spending)", the economy improved drastically on paper in the first two years of the New Deal; but by 1934 the economy was already in recession as the massive amount of federal debt created by the Deal caught up with the national economy. Under Executive Order 6102, President Roosevelt confiscated all privately held gold assets and outlawed the private ownership of gold bullion in an attempt to stem the growing national debt and prevent the economy from crashing all over again (Gold bullion remained illegal for private ownership until President Ford repealed the order in 1974). This of course produced an outcry among investors and businessmen, who declared the order unconstitutional. Roosevelt attempted to silence the unrest by drastically cutting the federal budget, including a forty percent cut in military spending (which included veterans' pensions). Roosevelt also cut 500,000 disabled persons from his own Social Security program.

With the recession deepening, Roosevelt called for a "second New Deal" in 1935. In other words, he wanted more federal money to finance his failed economic programs. Not only was his request hotly protested by the few Republicans and moderate Democrats in Congress, but the Supreme Court challenged many of the fundamental elements of the existing New Deal as unconstitutional. Fearing that the New Deal would be abolished, Roosevelt responded simply by firing the majority of justices and appointing his own Democratic ones in their place. Not surprisingly, the second round of New Deal legislation now passed quietly through Congress.

After easily winning a second term on the wings of the proletariat and with his New Deal safe from the laws of the United States, Roosevelt now began to focus more on foreign policy. Events in Europe and the Pacific were threatening to explode into what could be a second world war. Roosevelt nonetheless maintained an isolationist policy and attempted simply to mediate the situation via the League of Nations.

After winning an unprecedented third term as president of the United States, Roosevelt faced not only a hurting economy but also a Europe erupting with chaos. The Nazi war machine had stormed into Poland on September 1, 1939, sparking World War II. Roosevelt, as well as public opinion, remained isolationist, though he made significant strides to strengthen ties with the Allies (major members being Britain, France, U.S., and now the U.S.S.R.), especially Britain. Roosevelt declared that America was an "arsenal for democracy" and must answer the call to aid the Allies by "all means short of war", passing the Lend-Lease Act on March 11th 1941.

The second New Deal had temporarily stemmed the recession of 1935 but had failed to heal the still-reeling economy. 1941 was the worst year since the beginning of the recession in economic terms and the American economy threatened to fall to Depression levels before the end of the year. Despite all the illustrious promises of peace and prosperity for all, despite the trillions in federal money spent on government programs, despite all the revolutionary legislation passed, at times in turmoil, through Congress, the New Deal had failed to accomplish its objective to repair the U.S. economy. To make matters worse (or perhaps, better), war was looming closer and closer for America. Even Roosevelt began to admit that the U.S. could not remain neutral for long.

In July of 1941, Roosevelt cut off all U.S. oil exports to Japan. This literally lost Japan 95% of its oil. Understandably, Japan was forced to either take aggressive action against the U.S. or watch its war machine starve to death. Roosevelt knew this, and promptly stepped up the rearmament that had began in 1938 at the insistence of influential Republican Congressmen, and which had heretofore been moving at a snail's pace.

As usually happens with military production, the economy began improving with the rate of production. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 and the U.S. war machine was thrown into full gear, the economy improved tremendously, lifting the U.S. out of the recession and depression danger permanently. This trend continued throughout the war years and into the fifties, and the U.S. emerged from WWII as the world's foremost superpower. Hence the grave illusion that the FDR's horrendous economic policies were the best thing that ever happened to America, instead of the truth, ie that FDRs policies nearly killed the U.S. economy all over again, and had it not been for FDR's unconstitutional seizure of all privately-held U.S. gold assets, the economy would have crashed again by 1936. The economy was conveniently saved not by FDR, but by the world's oldest stimulus package: war; massive, complete, unreserved, total war.

Pax Americana: The post-WWII Era to Vietnam

The years after WWII in America were similar to those following WWI. America had emerged from the war as the richest and most powerful nation in the world. Within the party, the rifts that FDR had successfully covered over during his presidency now reemerged under his successor, Missouri Democrat Harry Truman. Truman successfully closed WWII for America, but quickly became unpopular due what was seen by many to be his botched handling of the Korean conflict, as well as his conservatism and anti-Soviet policies (which initiated the Cold War). His unpopularity and a succession of petty scandals culminated in a landslide victory in the 1952 and 56 presidential elections by Republican celebrity Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The party maintained control of Congress throughout the fifties and into the sixties thanks to the efforts of American labor unions. Senate Majority leader Lyndon B. Johnson held the Party together during these turbulent years, often by compromising with Eisenhower and other powerful Republicans. Johnson became the head of the Conservative Coalition, which had been the mainstay of the conservative Democratic minority since the FDR years.

The Party enjoyed a badly-needed rebirth in the election of young

Massachusetts Democrat John F. Kennedy to the presidency, whose youth, vigor and liberalism provided just what the Party needed to become a force in American politics again, along with the advent of the extremely liberal and revolutionary "Hippie" counter-culture movement. Though Kennedy only held office for 1,000 days before being assassinated, his impact on America changed its history forever. Along with initiating the Space Race with the USSR and making strides to stop the expansion of Communism, Kennedy also pushed for civil rights for minorties and racial integration. After his death the party almost became wholly merged with the counter-culture movements, becoming a neo-liberal party that was and still is truly unique.

Democratic Senator Lyndon Johnson had made a reputation as a cornerstone of the conservative Democrats. Elected to the presidency in 1963, Johnson lead in the final stage of the Party's dramatic and controversial reversal on civil rights, which had for years been a hotbed for division and debate within the party and across the nation. When Johnson finally signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Party officially began to lose the "Solid South," which had voted entirely Democratic since the Party's beginnings. This would manifest itself in the South's voting Regan to two crushing victories in 1980 and 84. Johnson resigned under threats of impeachment in 1969 and amid scandals and controversy.

Meanwhile, the war in Vietnam and the counter-culture movement had revolutionized the face of American society. As he Vietnam quagmire deepened, so did the cries of protest. Taking advantage of this scrumptious opportunity to harness the energy of the proletariat like never before, the Party merged itself with the counter-culture, becoming uniquely neo-liberal, and by some definitions even un-American. The Party remains much the same today.

The Regan Era: The Democrat's Worst Nightmare

After the turbulence of the sixties and seventies had, at least temporarily, subsided, California Republican Ronald Regan defeated Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter in a landslide victory to win the presidential election of 1980. Regan was a former governor of California and had made a reputation as a hard-line conservative Republican. His fundamental policies of lower taxes, less government, states' rights, and a strong national defense which won him the presidency are perhaps the epitome of Republicanism and the opposite of his Democratic opponents.

Regan carried these policies into both of his terms, topping off a truly admirable presidency in 1988 in which he played chicken with the eastern colossus USSR and won (the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991), rejuvenated a hurting U.S. economy with large tax cuts, and successfully dealt with unrest in the Middle East and Africa. Regan was succeeded by his vice-president George H. W. Bush.

A Historical Analysis

After studying the history of the Party it becomes rather obvious that the Party thrives in an environment in which the state, controlled by the Party, is all-powerful and the individual is a servile infant which lives only to pay his taxes and keep his head down. As is common with such scenarios (see the Soviet Union or any other communist nation for that matter), little is of any decent quality because little is privately owned. It is human nature. When you are not accountable for anything and are waited on hand and foot, you have no responsibility and therefore no motivation to do anything but float around like a vegetable.

It is very clear. In times of prosperity and/or public contentedness, the Party was unpopular and had little impact on politics. But in times of uncertainty, fear, and/or poverty, the Party thrives. This was most notable in the Great Depression, but was apparent in the post-civil war south, the late-19th century recession, and the Vietnam years. The Party gains control by exploiting the fear, uncertainty, and poverty of the proletariat and presenting itself as the way out; the solution, and rules through fear and secrecy. When the latter is non-existent, so is the Party. Like any political group of its kind, the Party needs a scapegoat, a Goldstein on which it can hang all the nation's problems, marketing itself as the ultimate savior. Despite its image as the party of "change," the Democratic Party governs and is governed by the oldest and most basic rules of totalitarian tactics and strategy.

The Modern Democratic Party

After the end of the Regan era, the Party enjoyed another decade-long dynasty under Bill Clinton, which nonetheless ended in scandal and shame when Clinton was nearly impeached over the Lewinsky scandal in December of 1998.

Clinton is known as the most liberal president prior to Barrack Obama. Shortly after taking office, Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, which required large employers to allow employees to take unpaid leave for pregnancy or a serious medical condition. While this action was popular, Clinton's attempt to fulfill another campaign promise of allowing openly homosexual men and women to serve in the armed forces garnered criticism from the left (for being too tentative in promoting gay rights) and from the right (who opposed any effort to allow homosexuals to serve). Clinton signed the Brady Bill into law on November 30, 1993, which imposed a five-day waiting period on handgun purchases. He also expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit, a subsidy for low income workers. He signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, which passed through Congress without a single Republican vote and basically was meant to redistribute U.S. wealth. These and many other liberal legislations greatly changed the social and economic face of the U.S.

Apart from the sex scandal which finally caused Clinton to be impeached, the Clinton administration has been made infamous for the series of botched military ventures from Operation Desert Fox to the Somalia fiasco to the attempted capture of Osama bin Laden, as well as many other private scandals overshadowed by the Lewinsky scandal including Travelgate, Troopergate and Whitewater. These various offenses culminated in Clinton's near-impeachment in December of 1998, being barely acquitted by a Senate vote of 50-50 in February of 1999. Despite such a tarnished record, Clinton left office in December of 2001 with the highest approval ratings since Eisenhower, thanks mostly to a rare projected federal budget surplus with which he was credited.

George W. Bush: The Man the Democrats Loved to Hate

The presidency of George W. Bush is one of the most turbulent and controversial in American history. This began early when Bush nearly lost the presidential election of 2000 to Tenessee Democrat Al Gore in one of the closest presidential races in American history.

After the heartbreaking disaster on September 11, 2001 (also known as "9/11"), Bush undertook what was to immortalize his presidency: the "War on Terror." Initially designed to be a quick, decisive operation in Afghanistan, the war quickly became a quagmire spanning both Afghanistan and Iraq, largely due to poor planning and underestimation of the various terror cells in the region, the most formiddable of these being the Taliban and Al Queda.

As the situation in the Middle East worsened, the Party wasted no time in their efforts to immortalize the war as the ultimate image of an America run by the Republican Party. Having a solid dominance in the American media, they quickly mobilized their resources and influential members to mount an anti-war movement not seen since the Vietnam conflict.

The Party, Vietnam, and the War on Terror

When public opinion turned against the war in Vietnam, the Party siezed an invaluable opportunity to remake itself as the champion of the green movement and pacifism, thus endearing them to the proletariat. After all, the Party had lost the Solid South as a result of its support of the Civil Rights Movement, and was sorely in need of a new powerbase. But did the Party really just change their social landscape, or did it choose to become a neo-extremist party, one which was destined to be utterly foreign, even treasonous? Let's take a look...

Quotes by Influential Democrats, Then and now:

-- The Vietnam Era

Jane Fonda

"If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become communist." - Address to a University of Michigan audience of over 2,000 students, Nov. 21, 1970

"I, a socialist, think that we should strive toward a socialist society, all the way to communism." - Washington Times July 7, 2000

"To make the revolution in the United States is a slow day by day job that requires patience and discipline. It is the only way to make it. . . . All I know is that despite the fact that I am one of the people who benefit from a capitalist society, I find that any system which exploits other people cannot and should not exist." - July 18, 1970, the People's World, the West Coast's Communist Party publication

"We've got to establish a Socialist economic structure that will limit private profit-oriented businesses. Whether the transition is peaceful depends on the way our present governmental leaders react. We must commit our lives to this transition ...... We should be very proud of our new breed of soldier. It's not organized but it's mutiny, and they have every right." Karen Elliott Dallas Morning News December 11, 1971

"I am not a do-gooder, I am a revolutionary. A revolutionary woman." 1972

Fonda next to an anti-aircraft battery in North Vietnam

Fonda was called a "hero," an "activist for human rights," a "champion of the American people" by prominent Party politicians and members alike, becoming a symbol of the Party's impassioned opposition to the war in Vietnam. But she was not alone...