this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
113 points (98.3% liked)
United States | News & Politics
7211 readers
533 users here now
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
wasnt the republican party the democratic party back in Lincolns day?
A bit of a tangential question, but one I know a little about. Mostly correct, but I'd phrase it differently: up until the civil war, the Republicans were generally left-leaning and Democrats were generally right-leaning.
In terms of what lead to the switch, after the civil war, there weren't a whole lot of politicians in the south from either party who supported abolition. A solid number of those politicians likely saw a need to work together if they wanted white supremacy to succeed in a nation that just rejected their racist bs so hard that they fought and won a war with them over it.
Initially, the Democratic party was to remain the bastion of right wing regressivism, but the lines weren't firmly established until democrats started voicing their support for civil rights. Most majorly, Truman voicing his support for civil rights began the redrawing of the lines, and LBJ passing the civil rights act cemented the switch. All remaining Democrats who opposed civil rights switched to the Republican party, where they would cultivate and appeal to voters who shared their opinion on civil rights by developing and implementing the southern strategy.
This is the foundation of the modern Republican party - they were the party formed to oppose and undermine civil rights, a role they've maintained to this day.
Growing up in the age of Clinton and Bush, my father used to always say, "I didn't leave the democrats, the Democrats left me."
My jaw hit the floor when I read that very same quote out of politican's mouth in writings from that era. Over the next few years it dawned on me that my father was 5 when the civil rights act, and his grandfather was a minor figure in the Texas Democrats back in the 30s.
That depends upon how you mean those terms, and would be aided by capitalisation.
Do you mean lower-case “d” “democratic” (likened to the concept of “democracy”) or upper-case “D” “Democratic” (of or related to the party that goes by that name? If the former, more or less yes, if the latter, no. The parties kinda swapped alignment middle of last century on a lot of issues though.
was the republican party's opponent called the democratic party back then? I thought they had other opposition, which was how they managed to be the left leaning party of the time.
It was the Democratic Party, but it also kinda wasn’t. Particularly around the Civil War politics were, not surprisingly, rather fractious.
In the 1860 election, the last before the outbreak of the war, four candidates won electoral votes. The Democratic Party splintered a bit, with two of the candidates coming from it(one who sought a form of compromise over slavery, and one who was a pro-slavery hardliner).
I’m not sure how useful in practice “left” or “right” leanings are for discussing the parties back then in relation to now… that’s something I’ll leave to people who study this stuff more intently.
But there have been other parties in the mix in the US, and there was one that scored electoral votes in that election. This was also just after the dissolution of the Whig Party(which had been the party of four or so presidents).