Historical continuity of Democrats and Republicans

[Orser67]

I sort of view it as the Republicans always being the representative of the "in-group" (starting with Northern WASPs and expanding to other whites as time went on) and Democrats being a coalition of "out groups" (Southerners + white ethnics in the 19th century, shifting more to non-whites in the 20th century).

As college-educated whites increasingly move towards the Democratic Party, I think that there are some parallels to the Second Party System (~1828-1856). The Whigs were the party of the elites and metropolitan areas and generally favored more governmental intervention, the Democrats were the party of rural voters and generally opposed to government action. To be clear, there are still major differences, most notably to me with regard to the goals of today's Democratic Party as opposed to the Whigs.

[Orser67]

I sort of view it as the Republicans always being the representative of the "in-group" (starting with Northern WASPs and expanding to other whites as time went on) and Democrats being a coalition of "out groups" (Southerners + white ethnics in the 19th century, shifting more to non-whites in the 20th century).

Well, there is one very obvious exception to this "rule." There's something of merit here, but it's lost in trying to be overly simplistic.

Yes it needs to be qualified along the lines that I used a few days ago. Not in a position to do that right now on my phone.

That’s funny, I didn’t see you mention African-Americans in any of your previous posts in this thread.

I assume Yankee is responding to the second part of my post ("lost in trying to be overly simplistic"). There's more that's problematic about Orser67's analysis than neglecting to mention African-Americans.

I agree that African Americans are the clear exception to the general rule I laid out before, but it's worth mentioning that very few African Americans could actually vote between the end of Reconstruction and the 1930s, when they mostly shifted into the Democratic Party. So there was a brief period (1865-1876) when African Americans were a critical part of the Republican coalition, but unfortunately they were largely disenfranchised during the period they were aligned with the Republican Party.

I am interested in what other parts of my general theory you disagree with, but please understand that I generally don't lay out my full argument on these types of forums unless people ask for more detail.

[Orser67]

I sort of view it as the Republicans always being the representative of the "in-group" (starting with Northern WASPs and expanding to other whites as time went on) and Democrats being a coalition of "out groups" (Southerners + white ethnics in the 19th century, shifting more to non-whites in the 20th century).

Well, there is one very obvious exception to this "rule." There's something of merit here, but it's lost in trying to be overly simplistic.

Yes it needs to be qualified along the lines that I used a few days ago. Not in a position to do that right now on my phone.

That’s funny, I didn’t see you mention African-Americans in any of your previous posts in this thread.

I assume Yankee is responding to the second part of my post ("lost in trying to be overly simplistic"). There's more that's problematic about Orser67's analysis than neglecting to mention African-Americans.

I agree that African Americans are the clear exception to the general rule I laid out before, but it's worth mentioning that very few African Americans could actually vote between the end of Reconstruction and the 1930s, when they mostly shifted into the Democratic Party. So there was a brief period (1865-1876) when African Americans were a critical part of the Republican coalition, but unfortunately they were largely disenfranchised during the period they were aligned with the Republican Party.

I am interested in what other parts of my general theory you disagree with, but please understand that I generally don't lay out my full argument on these types of forums unless people ask for more detail.

As an alternative history, I am really interested in what might have happened if Harrison got to sign his proto-VRA "Force Bill" into law in 1890?  Assume he gets reelected.  Democrats are clearly going to take over after the Panic of 1893 and will either quit enforcing it or just repeal it outright, but Harrison's 2nd term will mean a good 6 years of strong enforcement for black voters to regain control of some Southern state governments where they were at or close to a majority of the statewide population. In some states, this would have to be done in coalition with some poor white voters opposed to the planter elite.  That actually happened for 2 or 3 elections in NC in the 1890's without anything like the VRA, so this isn't crazy.  It's conceivable that Jim Crow laws could be permanently blocked at the state level in some states, while the system hardens after 1896 in other neighboring states. 

Could cross-racial anti-elite Southern coalitions become a permanent feature of Republican politics?

That would be fascinating. The Populists actually did have some success outside of NC in building up a cross-racial coalition of voters, and it was partly the threat of this movement that led to the Jim Crow laws of the 1890s (to be clear, Democrats had already taken control of the South following the end of Reconstruction, but it was only in the late 1890s and early 1900s that the South really became a one-party system). But perhaps the extra intervention of the federal government could have been enough to establish some durable cross-racial coalitions.

On the other hand, especially with a Democrat in the White House in 1897, it seems entirely plausible that Southerners would respond much as they did in NC: with a violent crackdown that re-established conservative, white, Democratic control of the South.

[Orser67]

This quote is from the first page of Lewis Gould's "The Republicans: A History of the Grand Old Party", and I think it's an interesting insight:

The historical record shows that through more than a century and a half of its existence, the Republican Party has viewed the world of American politics as an arena in which it is entitled to govern against a partisan rival that has always been out of the national mainstream. Thus, for the Republican Party, the issue of legitimacy is not some arcane political science term. Republicans have always believed that they have an inalienable right to hold power because of their record and their values. They see themselves holding firm against the Other: Democrats-potentially if not actually disloyal, influenced by non-American ideas, and never to be trusted. The unfolding of Republican history has been the working out in practice of these fundamental beliefs.

I had never considered that a "right to hold power" was a key aspect of the Republican Party before, but in my own experience I have found that Republicans do tend to view Democrats as illegitimate more often than the reverse (though it's certainly not a sentiment exclusive to Republicans), and this would at least support that notion.

[Orser67]

You remember that James Madison himself had been a Federalist but was one of the earliest defectors to the DRs.

I think that your comparison to the NCLB later in this paragraph is spot-on, but I disagree with this characterization of Madison on two levels. Firstly, Madison wasn't "one of" the earliest defectors to the Democratic-Republican Party; he was one of its two co-founders (alongside Jefferson). Jefferson may have won the party's presidential nomination in 1796, but he and Madison were very much partners in founding and developing the party in the early 1790s, and it was Madison who led the party after in the mid-1790s after Jefferson temporarily retired from public life.

More importantly, you seem to be conflating the Federalists of the 1780s with the Federalists of the 1790s. There were continuities there, to be sure, but these were two different groups with different goals. The Federalists of the 1780s were a loosely-organized group that agreed on the necessity for constitutional reforms to empower a federal government capable of defending the country and performing basic functions without the unanimous consent of the states; perhaps their single biggest issue (other than the general agreement on the need for a stronger government) was on the necessity of a tariff. Though the Federalists of the 1790s did build on the work of Robert Morris, who had been sort of the informal leader of a nationalist faction in the early 1780s, the original split between the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists occurred about midway through Washington's first term in reaction to Alexander Hamilton's economic policies (the national bank, rather ironically given later developments, was perhaps the single biggest area of disagreement). And even then, the parties didn't really solidify along clear lines until the 1800 election; e.g. in 1796 several electors split their votes among Federalist and Democratic-Republican candidates.

(Jackson favored hard money because he believed it would tamp down on speculators, whereas the Whigs wanted soft money to fuel business investment. The reason why WJB takes a different view from Jackson is because WJB's base was debtor farmers who benefitted from inflation while Jackson's base was people who were screwed over by speculators).

To expand on this point (because the degree to which arguably the most well-known 19th century #populist Democrats differed on currency is rather remarkable), Jacksonians disliked soft money because they believed it led to a boom-and-bust speculation cycle as banks would over-leverage themselves by printing more money than they were prepared to redeem (and also because they viewed it as part of a corrupt system that empowered bankers to control the economy). Bryanites didn't face those same concerns because of a shift in circumstances, policy, and economic thinking.

It's important to understand that, while the U.S. federal government did coin money after the ratification of the Constitution, it did not issue paper money (known as "greenbacks") until the Civil War. During and after this period, a new group of economists had begun to advocate for the long-term usage of fiat money, i.e. currency that has no intrinsic value other than its backing by the government; nonetheless, Republican and Democratic administrations alike generally pursued hard money policies designed to retire the Greenbacks, leading to a long period of deflation. Not only did this hurt farmers by increasing the value of their debts, it arguably contributed to one of the more economically-troubled periods in U.S. history (including two major recessions: the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1893). So from the perspective of a populist, calling for soft money in the 1820s meant potentially empowering banks and risking boom-and-bust cycles based on money backed by private banks, while calling for soft money in the 1890s would mean issuing government-backed fiat money to end a period of deflation and hopefully increase economic growth.

[Orser67]

You remember that James Madison himself had been a Federalist but was one of the earliest defectors to the DRs.

I think that your comparison to the NCLB later in this paragraph is spot-on, but I disagree with this characterization of Madison on two levels. Firstly, Madison wasn't "one of" the earliest defectors to the Democratic-Republican Party; he was one of its two co-founders (alongside Jefferson). Jefferson may have won the party's presidential nomination in 1796, but he and Madison were very much partners in founding and developing the party in the early 1790s, and it was Madison who led the party after in the mid-1790s after Jefferson temporarily retired from public life.

More importantly, you seem to be conflating the Federalists of the 1780s with the Federalists of the 1790s. There were continuities there, to be sure, but these were two different groups with different goals. The Federalists of the 1780s were a loosely-organized group that agreed on the necessity for constitutional reforms to empower a federal government capable of defending the country and performing basic functions without the unanimous consent of the states; perhaps their single biggest issue (other than the general agreement on the need for a stronger government) was on the necessity of a tariff. Though the Federalists of the 1790s did build on the work of Robert Morris, who had been sort of the informal leader of a nationalist faction in the early 1780s, the original split between the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists occurred about midway through Washington's first term in reaction to Alexander Hamilton's economic policies (the national bank, rather ironically given later developments, was perhaps the single biggest area of disagreement). And even then, the parties didn't really solidify along clear lines until the 1800 election; e.g. in 1796 several electors split their votes among Federalist and Democratic-Republican candidates.

For the purposes of our conversation we have gone back to Shays and the Constitutional Convention, of which James Madison was a principle architect. Most of the politicians to come later were Federalists if they supported the Constitution and yes, broke off later on (as in the early 1790s) as opposed to someone like JQA Adams (who jumped ship in 1808). There are a vast array of books that talk about the decline of the Federalists, the Anti-Federalists (opponents of the Convention and the Constitution, some of whom joined the DRs) and as you can clearly see, I made a multi-paragraph post at 3 AM in the morning to the extend that I practically buried myself into sleep. Surely, I can be allotted some simplification lest I start making 100 paragraph posts that only Truman reads.

The thing is while Jefferson was deviating from ideology out of expediency, Madison I think was open to nationalist arguments owing to his background as a "Federalist" during the Constitutional Convention and thus was willing to go along with the young gun nationalists like Clay on things like the Bank and the 1816 Tariff.

Well, it's not that big of a deal if you're just speaking generally, and I'll admit that this is pretty far from the original topic. But I would be wary of fully equating the Federalists and Anti-Federalists of the 1780s to the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans of the 1790s; I think that there was a lot of continuity there, but they were arguing over very different things and had a fairly different set of leaders, especially on the Democratic-Republican side. I would compare the realignment of the 1790s to that of the 1820s; there was a lot of continuity between the Democratic-Republican Party of Jefferson/Madison and the Democratic Party of Jackson/Van Buren, but there were enough important differences that afaik historians generally treat them as different parties.

My personal opinion of Madison is that, of all the major Founders (other than maybe Franklin), he was probably the guy who got the most right (excluding slavery, but even there he was more open-minded than the vast majority of pre-Civil War Southerners). I think that he and Gallatin steered the Democratic-Republicans in a direction that allowed the party to accept the best aspects of the Federalist Party while remaining true to egalitarian spirit that defined the party. I do think that his views did legitimately change over time as he responded to events, but I would definitely agree that he was always more open to nationalist ideas than Jefferson was.