Democrat and Republican switch!

[Gustaf]

There was a massive realignment, but not along economic lines.  The Democratic Party has always been the party most focused on ensuring rights and benefits for the poor, and the Republican Party has always been the party of business (both big and small).  It's the social issues that switched, not the economic issues.

I realize that I've hugely oversimplified somewhat.

Not really true. The Democrats under Grover Cleveland was mostly a conservative party. The Republicans has always been the party of big business though. There wasn't a leftist party in the modern sense until the late nineteenth century. And it could have become either fof the two parties. In 1904 the GOP obviously had the more leftist candidate for instance.

[Gustaf]

Lewis, saying that the Republicans were against slavery, to a greater or smaller degree, is a true statement, given the fact that the DEmocrats were in favour of it,  to a greater or smaller degree. Just like stating that the Democrats are against free trade or the Iraq war doesn't necessarily mean that they all want to abolish trade or leave Iraq now.

Cleveland was a conservative, which isn't contradictory of the fact that he was isolationist. Bryan would probably never have supported a right-wing party at any time or place in history, so I would characterize him as left.

I thought national Democratic politicians like Bryan or Cleveland largely ignored race issues? Are their positinons on them well known?

On the topic of Western Republicans, the realignement of the Bryan era was largely about turning most of these  into Democrats, no?