Democratic Party

Older of the two main political parties of the USA, founded in 1792. It tends to be the party of the working person, as opposed to the Republicans, the party of big business, but the divisions between the two are not clear cut. Its stronghold since the Civil War has traditionally been industrial urban centres and the southern states, but conservative southern Democrats were largely supportive of Republican positions in the 1980s and helped elect President Reagan. Bill Clinton became the first Democrat president for 13 years in 1993. The party lost control of both chambers of Congress to the Republicans in November 1994, and increasing numbers of southern Democrat politicians later defected. However, in November 1996 Clinton became the first Democrat president since Franklin D Roosevelt to be elected for a second term, winning 31 states, chiefly in the northeast and west. Al Gore, who was vice president under Clinton, lost the 2000 presidential election to Republican George Bush, Jr.

Originally called Democratic Republicans, the party was founded by Thomas Jefferson to defend the rights of the individual states against the centralizing policy of the Federalists. Democrat government during 1828–60 straddled the demands of various conflicting factions, including states' rights, the issue of Westward expansion, and abolitionism. Slavery eventually emerged as the key issue, dividing the party. The Democrats controlled all the southern states that seceded from the Union in 1860–61. In the 20th century, under the presidencies of Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F Kennedy, Lyndon B Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, the party has adopted more liberal social-reform policies than the Republicans.

From the 1930s, the Democratic Party pursued a number of policies that captured the hearts and minds of the US public, as well as making a significant contribution to their lives. They included Roosevelt's New Deal and Kennedy's New Frontier which was implemented by Lyndon Johnson. The New Deal aimed at pulling the country out of the 1930s depression and putting it back to work, whereas the Great Society programme – encompassing the Economic Opportunity Act, the Civil Rights Act (1964), the Medicare and Voting Rights Act (1965), and the Housing, Higher Education, and Equal Opportunities acts – sought to make the USA a better place for the ordinary, often disadvantaged, citizen.

The Democratic Party has never been a homogenous unit and in the early 1990s it comprised at least five significant factions: the southern conservative rump, the Conservative Democratic Forum (CDF); the northern liberals, moderate on military matters but interventionist on economic and social issues; the radical liberals of the Midwest agricultural states; the Trumanite ‘Defense Democrats’, liberal on economic and social matters but military hawks; and the non-Congressional fringe, led by Jesse Jackson and seeking a ‘rainbow’ coalition of African Americans, Hispanics, feminists, students, peace campaigners, and southern liberals.

Bill Clinton led a reformist ‘New Democrat’ wing of the party, centred around the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which is fiscally conservative, but liberal on social issues.