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Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
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You can see on this map there are a number of undecided states of the Democrats in
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Pennsylvania. A little concerned about Sarah Palin's...-
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When were talking about political parties, we tend to talk a lot about election night.
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Right?
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Right.
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And there's this moment that I think is the most exciting.
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And it's where they've got this giant map in the studio, and there's an empty silhouette
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of a state, and then it flickers and it snaps either red or blue.
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Yeah. That's when you as a political person, your heart either rises or sinks.
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Right? When you see a state go for one candidate or another.
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Do you know when that started?
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Red states? Blue states?
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Have we not had that for like forever?
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For decades and decades?
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Right, here let me play you something. This is from election night, 1980-.
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-Electoral votes. And so we will put on our map in blue, for those of you who are
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watching in color, we'll make Florida our projected winner for Reagan.
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Blue for Reagan!
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This is 1980?
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Yeah, hold on check this out.
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- We'll color those in now.
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Red across the western rim, the Pacific Rim of the United States, for Bill Clinton.
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And just a few blue spots on that map for George Bush.
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362-
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That was NBC coverage of the 1992 election.
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Democrats used to be red.
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And then they sort of switched.
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One station switched it to red for Republicans because they said "we're coloring it red
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for Reagan".
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In the 1996 election, Clinton v.
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Dole, that was the first year that all three major networks had red for the GOP and blue
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for Democrats. But the terms "red state" "blue state" they did not enter our common
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parlance until-.
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It appears that there will be a recount in the state of Florida.
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They still need to wait for- what is it?-
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overseas ballots.
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Bush v. Gore?
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Yeah, because of the closeness of that race, the ensuing recount, America had been
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staring at a red and blue map for days.
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I saw VOX video about this, actually, and it said that David Letterman was one of the
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first. He made a joke about blue states and red states.
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And the term just stuck it too soon.
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Here's how it's gonna go,George W.
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Bush will be president for the red states.
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{laughing} Al W.Gore
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will be president for the blue states.
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And that's-
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And now Democrats embrace their blue.
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They put it in their campaign logos.
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We have terms like "blue wave" versus a "red tide".
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And that division, that color polarity, is really new.
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It's hard for me to wrap my mind around this idea that a party can rebrand itself that
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quickly based on this arbitrary choice made by a news network.
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You think that strange Hannah hold on your little purple hat.I'm
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Nick Capodice.
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I'm Hannah McCarthy.
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And this is Civics 101. And today we're talking about the Democratic Party, capital D.
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What it is. What it was.
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What it will be.
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And if we're gonna talk about how the party has evolved over the years we have to say
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what they're all about today.
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So let's go with their own words in their 2016 Democratic platform the planks of which
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included, "addressing economic inequality, college debt, climate change, and access to
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health care." It is also today the party of inclusivity when it comes to issues like same
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sex marriage, women's rights, and immigration.
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So let's go back now, the genesis of the Democratic Party.
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How did it start?
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The Democratic Party, to make things really clear, began actually as the Republican
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Party.
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Oh come on!
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I know. I'm sorry.
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I know. This is Heather Wagner, by the way.
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She wrote the book, The History of the Democratic Party.
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So the Democratic Party was founded by Thomas Jefferson, and other men like him, who were
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dissatisfied with the direction the country was going under George Washington and John
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Adams. And they felt George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton were believers in
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a very strong central government.
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And Jefferson wants a smaller federal government with more power given to the states.
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And he is our first Democratic president even though he was called, sorry again, a
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Republican. But pretty quickly, the name gets changed by his opponents, funnily enough.
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His critics said that he and his supporters were too much like the radical French.
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Who had sparked the French Revolution and led to bloodshed and violence in France.
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And as a critique they would call this group of Republicans The "Democratic Republicans."
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It was meant to be a dis.
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Jefferson and his supporters decided to adopt this points of honor and called themselves
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the "Democratic Republicans".
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And this was the founding of what we know today as the Democratic Party.
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And how are their beliefs related to what we think of now when we think of Democrats?
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Okay, here is Keneshia Grant.
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She is a professor of political science at Howard University.
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So when we think about the Democratic Party at that time, we don't think of anything like
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the Democratic Party at this time.
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The Democratic Party at that time is "liberal with a lower case L", as scholars say.
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And that means that they don't want to see the government being very active.
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The government should not be involved in your life telling you what to do.
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The government should just kind of be around to make sure that things don't fall apart.
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Which is different from the party as we think about it today.
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We think about a Democratic Party today as one who is willing to step in to try to
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correct some of the perceived wrongs, they they might say, in the economy.
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Or some of the perceived wrongs in the way that we treat humans and these other kinds of
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things.
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How does it change?
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Because that to me is like 180 degrees.
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All right, we'll get there. And that is Keneshia's particular bailiwick.
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But first, there is a big shift and it starts with Andrew Jackson in 1829.
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By the time Andrew Jackson is president he has dropped the Republicans from his
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affiliation. So he identifies himself as a Democratic candidate.
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Andrew Jackson was the Southerner.
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He was a slave owner.
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He was a war hero.
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He champions- even though he was a wealthy landowner- he championed the idea of sort of
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the "ordinary man" "common man" around...
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his presidency was when white men, I should say, were given the right to vote based on
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age. As opposed to if you had property or paid a certain amount in...
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in landowning taxes.
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So it was the evolution of voting rights towards white men over the age of 21 as opposed
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to landowners.
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Quick side note, opponents of Jackson, during the 1828 election, called him a word that
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means donkey... but it was an epithet that Jackson embraced.
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He even put images of donkeys on his campaign posters- and that is when that all started.
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And the party that went up against Jackson was the National Republican Party.
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But they were just as often known as the anti-Jacksonians.
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They did not like what Jackson had done to the role of president.
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He took steps to concentrate power and to make sure that he was a very powerful
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executive. He had taken certain policies that really infringed on the rights of Native
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Americans and the rights states.
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And this sort of sowed the seeds of what would gradually flare up into the start of the
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modern Republican Party.
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And also, the disagreements that flared out into the Civil War.
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So remember the- part of the story is that the parties want to maintain cohesion.
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They understand that is difficult for minor parties, third parties, or smaller parties to
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win the presidency.
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It's difficult for them to win Senate seats, or seats in the House of Representatives,
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and be appointed to Senate seats.
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And because they are worried about splitting their power they are trying to do everything
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they can to... to remain together.
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And one of the things that splits them up more than anything else, kind of- I would say
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the thing that stresses the party the most- is a conversation about slavery.
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And if we want to have a party that is unified in the north and in the south we can't
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have this conversation about slavery because people in the north are going to disagree
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from people in the South. So we end up with these parties that exist in different ways
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because the one thing that they probably should be talking about they are not talking
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about. So we end up with these cleavages, kind of, for that reason- where we have a
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northern Democratic Party that looks different from a southern Democratic Party.
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But eventually they do have that conversation.
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And we end up with a Republican Party that's more dominant in the north, because they
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have had the conversation and come down on the side of black people.
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Come down against slavery- for various reasons, again, not all of them on the up and up-
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set up where we have a party, again Republican Party in the north.
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A Democratic Party that's kind of dominant in the south.
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And then we have some kind of debate about who's going to win the west, and what the
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farmers want, and whether or not the parties will be willing to bend to the demands of
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the people, who are in the West, and who now have the ability to vote and influence
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politics too.
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All right. Now I want to learn about that shift.
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How does the party that is the party of slavery, the party of the Ku Klux Klan, become
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the party of the civil rights movement?
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The party that gives us our first African-American president?
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So if you want to sound really smart with your friends, if you like know a political
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scientist and you want to get their gears going, you just say "re-alignment".
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Because that... that is the one word answer to that question.
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Realignment happens and the parties change.
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And so the political scientists argue about how realignment happens.
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I'm in the camp of people who think realignment is a slow and gradual process.
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The short version is that America changes.
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So in the story that we've been telling up to this point there are folks who live in the
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south, there are folks who live in the north.
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We don't yet have like a large wave of immigrants coming into the United States.
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So we get an industrial revolution and we get a world war.
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We get immigrants coming into the United States and we don't yet in the nation have rules
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that are structured to prevent them from participating, in the ways that we try to
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prevent them from participating now.
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And so it's kind of easier to get to citizenship, easier to get to participation in
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politics. And so, a part of the answer about how the Democratic Party in particular
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becomes the party of the people, as opposed to the party of the slave owners or the party
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of Southern business interest, has to do with their decisions to or attempts to win
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elections. Particularly, I would say, at the state and local level and to to speak to the
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needs of immigrants.
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Now I do want to step in here and say that the North and the South are not just one
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unified thing, that's unfair.
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There were people who opposed slavery in the South.
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People who supported it in the north.
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Whites only signs.
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Other forms of segregation in schools, businesses, housing.Those
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existed in the North as well as the South.
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And as Keneshia told me, African-American voters are a huge part of the story.
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It's not just immigrants who are flooding into the cities, black people are flooding into
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the cities. The Great Migration brings about 6,500,000 black people from the south into
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the north. And parties on the ground, local party leaders, mayors, aldermen, governors
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have to contend with how they might get this bloc of voters to support them as well.
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Which makes them takes, kind of, steps towards civil rights that they might not otherwise
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take.
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And then we have the Great Depression in the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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and his party, the Democrats, said "People are suffering.
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We need to do something."
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And what they did was the New Deal, relief reform, recovery.
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This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms-
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What this did was further cement the notion that the Democratic Party is the party of big
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government spending on domestic programs and social welfare programs.
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But the civil rights movement that initially was more allied by geography than by party.
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Almost 100% of northern Democrats in Congress supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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But, so too did 85 percent of northern Republicans.
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Just 9% percent of Southern Dems and 0 Southern Republicans supported it in Congress.
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So here's Paddy Riley.
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He's a professor of history and humanities at Reed College.
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But I mean I think the key thing is that the Democratic Party...is
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just no longer become possible for Southern white supremacist to remain in the party
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because the because the national party has moved so hard on civil rights.
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I mean that's Johnson's- Lyndon Johnson's famous line, "We lost the South for a
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generation". And it turns out to be true, a generation and more at this point.
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So I think effectively the South kind of becomes up for grabs.
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Because they're not going to remain in the Democratic Party.
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So is someone going to capitalize on them?
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And Republicans do.
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I mean, that's just what happens.
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I don't want to sound cynical here.
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Go ahead. Go ahead.
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But it just kind of sounds like a big part of the reason that the Democrats completely
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reversed their positions on just about everything was not purely because of ideals, but
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to court voters?
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Well, I mean, I'm a political scientist so I think everything is about political
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strategy, political expediency.
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But yes, I think that one of the kind of biggest broadest ways of understanding party
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history is that parties are trying to- one- maintain themselves.
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And then parties as groups who are willing to court coalitions in order to keep or
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maintain power. "Black people are here.
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They want to have some kind of intervention on civil rights.
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We're not opposed to that.
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That seems like it could be okay for us.
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We think that they would help us win these local and state elections.
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We think that because they live in these states with large electoral college votes they
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could help us win the presidential election.
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Let's test out a coalition between black people and the Democratic Party."
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So it's the same kind of thing, parties kind of moving and shapeshifting as they
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encounter groups so that they can maintain dominance.
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So thinking about like the party today versus the party then, there's a lot of arguing
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going on on social media about the problematic history of both parties.
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Right? And I'm just wondering, like, given how different the parties are today- from how
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they were at their genesis- is that even fair to do?
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Yeah. People taking the Democratic Party to task for being the party of the KKK.
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I asked Paddy about that specifically.
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That accusation, in some sense, it seems like it has power partly because maybe we are
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just not open and public enough about just how deep and powerful the history of white
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supremacy is in the United States.
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You know, it shouldn't be possible for us to continue to, like, romanticize the past.
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So, you know, those accusations seem to have power just because we need to be more open.
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So finally, with all that history under our belt, I ask Keneshia about the party going
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forward. If she thinks there might be another realignment?
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The Democratic Party is a big tent party.
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Keep these coalitions in mind.
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The Democratic Party has to please immigrants, black people, gay people, progressive
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white people.
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Like- business interest for some people...
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like people- just so many groups of people they have to be worried about.
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When you think about the Democratic Party or any party, particularly in a national
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election, they have to get in a room and fight it out.
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A party platforms only so long and, you know, not everybody's gonna read it.
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But it matters a lot to the party and it matters a lot to the messaging of the party.
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And so how do I say, "I really care about urban development and I really don't like
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displacement of people as a result of gentrification"?
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In some instances that stuff is going to be in conflict.
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And so the Democratic Party has this difficult road to travel, because they have to
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please all these different groups of people and these different groups of people have
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different interests.
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So the Democratic Party has come a long way.
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Changing names, switching positions on the way to the blue party we think of today.
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And that's the thing. These parties are always changing.
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So it's really hard to say what a Democrat is because there's not one answer and it
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depends on a ton of other things.
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And you can still see that push and pull of this big tent, that Keneshia mentioned, in
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the huge pool of Democratic candidates in the 2020 race.
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So, we need to pay teachers more because the data clearly shows that a good teachers-
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-public colleges, and universities, and HBCU's debt free-.
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I think I'm the only person on the stage who has been a public school teachers-
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{montage of candidates}
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Well that will just about tie it all up in a big blue bow or a red bow maybe if it's pre
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the 1992 election.
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Today's episode is produced by me, Nick Capodice, with you Hannah McCarthy.
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Thank you!
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You're welcome. Our staff includes Jacqui Fulton.
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Erika Janik is our executive producer and her cut of the week, lots of stuff about a
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national bank. Thanks, Erika.
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When it comes to salting her food, Maureen McMurray is liberal with the small L, as
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scholars say.
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Music in this episode by Chad Crouch, Blue-Dog Sessions, Diala, The Grand Affair, Reed
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Mathis.
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And it wouldn't be a Nick Capodice episode without Worth the whiskey, Chris Zabriskie.
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Civics 101 is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and is a
00:19:01
production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.
