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  • Today’s Democratic Party believes government has an important role to play in society.

  • It fights against economic inequality.

  • It advocates policies that battle racial and gender discrimination.

  • But it wasn’t always this way.

  • The Democratic Party was once the party of white supremacy, supporting slavery and the Ku Klux Klan.

  • To understand how the party made such a huge shift, you have to go back to its origins in the mid-1820s,

  • when it sprung up supporting the presidential candidacy of a popular former general, Andrew Jackson.

  • Jackson was an outsider challenging the political establishment and elites of his day,

  • and his critics disparaged him as a “jackass.”

  • But Jackson embraced the animal as a symbol of determination, and donkeys started appearing

  • in newspapers to represent him and his followers.

  • In the 1828 presidential election, which saw record-breaking popular participation, Jackson

  • won a landslide victory.

  • So his supporters argued that they and not the old elites represented the popular will of the country

  • and they started calling themselves the Democratic Party.

  • Jackson’s administration immediately began expelling Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River,

  • an issue that defined the new administration.

  • After he signed the Indian Removal Act into law in 1830, five large tribes were rounded up

  • and forcibly marched to territories and camps further west.

  • And Democratsambitions didn’t stop there.

  • In the 1840s, the party adopted the doctrine ofmanifest destiny” —

  • the idea that Americanswhite Americans

  • were divinely entitled to dominate the whole North American continent.

  • Democratic president James K. Polk put this idea into action, massively expanding US holdings

  • by annexing Texas, acquiring Oregon, and winning much of what’s now the southwestern US in a war with Mexico.

  • But soon afterward, national politics devolved into bitter controversy over whether new states entering the Union should be permitted to allow slavery.

  • Democrats said they should, since their support base was strongest in the slaveholding states.

  • Yet a new Northern partythe Republicans

  • sprang up in opposition to expanding slavery any further.

  • When Republican Abraham Lincoln won the presidency, the South seceded, and the Civil War began.

  • Once the Civil War was over, the Republican party was bitterly unpopular among white Southerners,

  • who wanted to maintain their supremacy over former slaves.

  • So the Democratic Party promised to limit federal government intervention on behalf of black citizens.

  • Democrats became effectively the only political party in the South, aided by intimidation and suppression of black voters.

  • Democrats also won on the state and local level leading to constant abuses of the rights of black citizens.

  • As the 20th century began, the country was changing, and the Democratic Party was changing too.

  • A handful of individuals and corporations had grown enormously rich and powerful,

  • using their vast fortunes to influence politics.

  • As a reaction to this, some reformers began pushing an agenda of progressivism

  • arguing that the government would take more of a role in regulating big businesses and improving ordinary people’s lives.

  • At first, these progressive reformers were present in both parties.

  • But it was Democrat Woodrow Wilson who won the presidency in 1912 and put much of this

  • agenda into action, over Republican resistance.

  • So the Democratic Party became the main home for progressives, and Republicans became more the party of business.

  • But it was the Great Depression of the 1930s that sealed the Democratic Party’s new identity as the party of government activism.

  • In an effort to combat the crippling economic situation, President Franklin Roosevelt signed

  • what was then the largest package of domestic government projects in American History, calling it the New Deal.

  • And in the process of doing it, his administration dramatically expanded the size of government.

  • Yet the party was still split over race.

  • By the mid-20th century, it contained Southerners who staunchly supported segregation, liberal

  • reformers trying to end it, and many politicians were just happy to look the other way.

  • But it was 1964 when the senate voted on the anti segregation civil rights act that shows

  • how the progressive reformers in the party had gained the upper hand, steering the party

  • away from its racists past towards equality.

  • But the democrats in the south voted against the civil rights act, remaining wedded to the idea of segregation.

  • This chart shows the presidential vote of black voters.

  • Around the 1960s the Black voters who had already been moving toward the Democratic party

  • would begin overwhelmingly support the Democrats from then on, and conversely the Republicans

  • would take a huge hit among black voters.

  • Meanwhile, white Southerners, moved away from the Democratic Party they had been loyal to for so long

  • in part because of race, but also because of suspicion of big government

  • and a desire to defendtraditional valuesagainst liberal activists.

  • Democrats would go from dominating the South, to losing almost all influence in the region.

  • Thanks in part to this drop in popularity among white voters, Democrats started losing elections,

  • often losing by huge margins.

  • But demographically, the US is becoming an increasingly non-white country,

  • and the democrats have had a comeback thanks in part to minority voters.

  • The huge influx of hispanic voters has especially benefitted democrats.

  • These demographic shifts helped the Democratic Party, once the advocates of white supremacy

  • and slavery to elect the first black president in 2008, showing just how much the party had changed over the years.

  • Yet it’s not entirely clear where the future of the Democratic Party will lie.

  • But as America becomes more diverse, it’s likely that the democratic party’s appeal

  • among minorities will continue to be its strength into the future.

Today’s Democratic Party believes government has an important role to play in society.

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白人至上主義からバラク・オバマへ。民主党の歴史 (From white supremacy to Barack Obama: The history of the Democratic Party)

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    Anita Lin に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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