Historical continuity of Democrats and Republicans

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

@NCYankee, the dynamic you discuss at the end leaves us with a Democratic Party, by the 1910s, probably resembles the UK's Liberal Party. The Liberals lost any chance at power shortly thereafter, which leads us to question the place of the Democrats. The four possibilities are (1) this pattern somehow holds, and the left in the United States is even weaker than OTL--given the very good possibility of some sort of depression, combined with a very combative and pluralistic domestic schema that encourages instability, I see this as unlikely; (2) the Democrats moving left as in OTL; (3) the Republicans moving left as was flirted with briefly; and (4) the emergence of a third party that could displace the two (the Democrats being more likely as the weaker party).

In the short run this likely leaves greater room for ideological diversity in the GOP as the liberal Democrats may not have much to offer unions in a variety of industries, and a Theodore Roosevelt-like figure might have substantial support from the cadres. But ultimately involvement in a world war combined with domestic ethnic discrimination and an economic downturn could serve to cleave substantial portions of the working class from either party. I was toying with this idea in at least one timeline, though I never saw it through.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Cathcon: how about 5th: the Democratic Party dies off outside of the South, but keeps the South as a one party ruled area run through terror and electoral style events.

I could see a situation where the Democrats become basically kingmakers in the House and the Senate between the GOP and some new Progressive Party fighting it out in the North/West.

I was under the impression that in the context discussed this is a US without the South.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I am dubious that the U.S. would have seen a powerful socialist or "labor" party emerge in this alternate reality. Disregarding the probable repercussions of a Confederate victory on the Second Industrial Revolution and Westward expansion (the latter having significant implications for the Grange movement and the Populists), the American labor movement was fractured and politically isolated throughout the late nineteenth century. (We tend to forget that most Americans viewed labor organizers as dangerous insurrectionists during this period.) Without the Solid South propping them up or holding them back, the Democrats would need to look elsewhere for support against a powerful and conservative Whig successor party: so I tend to think we'd see the Democrats evolve leftward, albeit differently from IOTL.

I'm curious as to what you think the available room to maneuver leftward is, sans a labor + agrarian populist movement. That leads us away from both industrial proletarian "socialism" and more traditional Jeffersonian "small farmer" foci... into what? I can see one credible alternative being a coalition centered on anti-imperialism, as that would probably still end up being an issue even with more restricted access to the Caribbean, and it could assemble a geographically-diverse constituency. This might align well with an increased emphasis on rights for both immigrants and freedmen.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Ok, fine. The Gilded Age Republicans were conservatives, the Democrats liberals, both in the classical sense and meaning very different things from today. But if that's really the case, I'm curious, did Republicans back then describe themselves as conservatives, and Democrats as liberals, like they do today? Did other contemporary observers describe them in those ways? Considering the names of the British parties at this time, I don't think I'm being modern centric here.

I think this is actually a very good question and, were I an Americanist (I am not), something I'd be keen to answer. I think you've probably a better chance of seeing the Democrats described as "liberals" than Republicans as "conservatives" in that period. I don't really have a reason to explain this other than the fact that I feel like Jefferson and Jackson were more emphatically identified in the past as part of a liberal tradition than their counterparts were as part of their own ideological lineage (Republican rhetoric--I'm going off a few limited impressions here--seems to have been more centered around the idea of the "nation" and patriotic service in the Civil War than around "an unbroken ideological tradition from the Founding to present" in this era; think maybe patriotism over substance and also the lack of truly iconic presidents to look to between Washington and Lincoln, and Lincoln's own association with victory and patriotism). The 1st party system in this sense is rather explicit in terms of who the American "Jacobins" were (Jefferson, Burr), and as I've said years before on this forum, the lines are most blurred from our perspective in the 1824-1896 period (aka 2nd and 3rd party systems), and I know a lot less about the nature of political rhetoric in the era of the Whigs and the first Republicans.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

^You've made some good points in this thread Yankee, and have somewhat convinced me of your "continuously conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats" theory. However, I think that once you start calling plantation owners "liberals", the term basically loses all meaning.

TIL Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry, Andrew Jackson, and investor in the slave trade who helped draft the (obviously pro-slavery) colonial Constitution of the Carolinas John Locke weren't liberals (or rather, Liberals, to be crystal clear).

They may have been perceived as or thought themselves to be liberals, but their actions didn't match their rhetoric. The owning of other humans as property is clearly inconsistent with core liberal principles like individual liberty and personal freedom, unless one takes an extreme propertarian stance to justify their actions (like Locke and others did).

Are you saying liberals cannot be blinded by prejudice? They are liberals because on a variety of topics they advanced or helped formulate the liberal side of thinking. They were not perfectionists and they weren't saints tough, that is what you guys need to grasp since you are used to conceiving of liberals as being perfect and thus cannot contemplate how a liberal in a previous context would be unable to apply said values to another group of people.

Moreover, I think the importance of liberalism as a phenomenon is that it could, and did, expand its view of who ought to be liberated, and who was granted inalienable rights.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Wtf even happened here, and God bless.