Lincoln was absolutely a Republican. He wasn’t even the first Republican to run for President, it was John Fremont in 1856, who got 1/3 of the popular vote and almost 40% of the electoral college, even with former President Millard Fillmore running as a Whig (who did much worse than Fremont); if there hasn’t been a Whig candidate, Fremont probably would have won.
When Lincoln won in 1860, there were only 4 national candidates, but Lincoln still got 40% of the popular vote, and almost 60% of the electoral college.
No Lincoln was a Republican. Him and the GOP created a new so called party that was just a temporary name change basically for the 1864 election. The new so called party was basically just Republicans and pro-war Northern Democrats.
Well okay, but if we're being overly-literal with post titles then we can say none of the presidents were a republican or democrat when they were babies.
Yeah, in reality the parties that go by those names have had several political realignments since the Whig party died. Political parties that have new ideologies don't really just spawn anymore and become dominant. Instead, the two major parties change their ideologies now and then - unlike their predecessors who stubbornly stuck to the same ideology(which is what led to new parties overtaking them.)
People should look up the 7 party systems. The most recent ideology shift in the parties came in ~2016, starting off the 7th party system that we are currently in which could probably be nicknamed the populist party system.
While I agree we have entered a new party system, I do want to stress that it's not a universally agreed upon concept, and many deny the 7th party system's existence.
Also the exact date it started cannot be agreed upon, with some pushing its start back to 2008.
Somewhere before or after Obama and definitely after Bush & the Iraq War things shifted. The internet becoming a common, in your pocket thing for almost everyone 2011-2013 and beyond probably had the biggest impact in things shifting regardless of political content. Democrats won in a lot of civil rights issues while maintaining a capitalistic, imperialist America point of view and the backlash was intense.
Coupled with the shutdown of American manufacturing & heavy industry and the Democrats failing to pick up that ball in the way they traditionally have left a lot of room on the republican side.
Mainstream democrats haven’t changed that much in 25 years but today’s Republican Party doesn’t resemble of the Reagan era through to Bush
Arguably Newt Gingrich had the biggest impact on the shift, though he was planting the seeds with Clinton that wouldn’t come to fully bloom in the Republican Party until Obama was elected
Yeah I personally agree re: Gingrich’s CwA being the start of the current movement. Combine that with the Clinton “Third Way” democrat movement and it makes sense. You also start to see more significant followership for populist republicans commentators like Rush Limbaugh.
I find It interesting you claim that the GOP has changed more in 25 years because as someone who was in High School when Clinton was elected I would say the exact opposite is true.
He may be thinking of things like Clinton's tough illegal immigration stance - listen to him on that in the 1996 State of the Union. In 1996 Clinton also signed the Defense of Marriage Act to keep a court ruling in Hawaii approving gay marriage from having to be accepted everywhere else in the country.
The Democrats have changed a good deal over the last 30 years, growing more overtly liberal on many social issues while on the other hand competing ever more with the GOP to be a good servant to Wall Street and becoming comfortable being associated with the military and national security state, seen in their recent habit of running former CIA officials.
Still, there's no question that Trump's takeover of the Republicans in the last ten years has changed them even more.
Coupled with the shutdown of American manufacturing & heavy industry and the Democrats failing to pick up that ball in the way they traditionally have left a lot of room on the republican side.
Bidens infrastructure bills pumped billions into the rust belt for manufacturing jobs. The idea democrats don’t care is a meme.
I could be mistaken but I believe this is referring more in recent history Clinton and Obama. And they are correct. Major societal wins took place while mfg and production got exported. There is a reason WV went blue to deep red, the greener and cleaner we went was a societal win, but until Biden there wasn’t a ton of concerns for exactly what would happen to those left behind. I will agree with you, Biden really really tried. I just wish his admin was so much louder about the things they tried for then just pushing the - we’re not Trump - envelope.
Obama tried to help with retraining programs as well. It doesn’t matter.
Because their grievances aren’t economic, they’re cultural. They want it to be 1983 again, when they had a privileged position in society and they were the countries centre of gravity.
Voters also want it both ways: They want high wage manufacturing jobs that produce goods they can buy at Chinese prices with German quality.
I agree with you actually. Having spent a ton of time on depressed old mfg mountain towns of PA, and the surrounding - these people are pissed and rightfully so but at the wrong thing. They view progression as a cultural thing that arrives to leave them behind. They ofc don’t realize its virtues which is its own problem. However - you can’t just shutter a thing like coal production and be like “but hey here’s new job training go there now, k bye!” Which is a little bit of what they did.
I’ve spent time in lots of urban cities as well, there is entire buildings dedicated to helping people get the resources to get on a better track, and sometimes there are multiple in one block. For these depressed mountain towns- those resources may be an hour + away , in what is essentially a foreign land to them. This further alienates them when they find themselves asking …. Why do I a 4th generation coal miner have to go so far and deal with so much when these city people are coddled and have it right here???
My point is - they were kind of left in the dust, they do have a right to be pissed off. Lots of these towns their supermarket is dollar general ffs. And in recent history Dems didn’t do much to appeal to them directly , which is to say - screaming from the goddam rooftops - THIS IS FOR YOU. Hell trump made sure these people got checks with his big name on it so they KNEW (or so they thought) who that check was coming from.
That’s my take on this situation ; there could have been more done and more aggressively to figure out how to not lose these blue collar folk to the insanity ; but instead the Dems just kept saying “this will be good for you”
I’m not saying the folks in these towns have their heads on straight btw; 5 mins of educating themselves would go a long long long way.
I think part of the reason the infrastructure bills get forgotten about so much is because at the end of the day it was largely just a funding mechanism. Don't get me wrong the funding is very important and it's good but that alone doesn't reform any of the other issues we have with infrastructure construction that might give the government more credit. A lot of this money gets entangled in bureaucracy with contractors and sub-contractors, instead of the government being able to use this money themselves through agencies to do the work directly. That's a big difference between new deal construction programs of the 1930s-1960s, and what we saw with the 2020's infrastructure bills. We've lost/given away so much of our state capacity to do infrastructure work, and rely so heavily on private contractors now. It makes it so that outside of the funding itself, the governments role in helping improve people's lives is not that visible. You rarely have government employed workers doing the design, engineering, and construction at all levels of a project, so the government's role gets ignored or downplayed because at the end of the day it's the private contractors usually doing the more visible work and employing more people on a project.
Obviously this is just a generalization of the way the federal government handles infrastructure now and it differs depending on the state/region, but this is the case for much of the country. There are also other issues with the way we do infrastructure with contractors, such as the cost, delays, etc. but that's a whole other topic. I just wanted to focus on the visibility aspect of who gets the credit for it. Basically the optics. I'm not saying all this to crap on the infrastructure bill, it was really good for what it did and I do think dems should absolutely credit for that, but unfortunately the bill had quite a few issues and didn't go nearly far enough on a lot of things.
It's denied by many, because it is useful for the current Republican party to wear the cut-off face of the facially-serious Republican party of 20 years ago.
It’s because largely the issues stretch across time in America. You can take the Federalist and Democratic-Republican views on core issues and see them in the Democrats and Republicans, albeit very jumbled. Then some major new core issues were added to the mix with the end of the Civil War and the question of what it means to be a multi-racial democracy.
They gained 1.7% in percentage, but yeah, massive majority in parliament on 1/3rd of the vote. And next election could be a Reform majority on an even lower percentage, which is fairly terrifying.
But fair to note that FPTP is not absolutely guaranteed to lead to a two-party system as extreme as that in the US. There are other factors of US political history at play. For example. the UK has FPTP but for a long time had a serious third party that could often be kingmaker, and has flirted with 3 or even 4 party systems of late. And that's not to account for the Scottish Nationalists and other parties which can have hugely important effects regionally. The US just hasn't had any constituent national parties (nor any constituent countries as such) - even fiercely Texan Texas hasn't rallied behind a secessionist or Texan Nationalist party, for example.
Yes, FPTP is not exactly the problem, but it certainly does contribute to the problem. First Past the Post makes third candidates sub optimal--if you need a majority to win, the less popular candidates are not only unlikely to win, but often to play spoiler to candidates who are closest in ideology to themselves. Not only do you lose the seat, but the incoming majority is likely to be against your platform wholesale.
The more important element is that the US does not have any mechanism for coalition government, unlike the UK--the American system awards government offices to the victor, without any way of forcing new elections if the government becomes unpopular or ineffective. Parliament needs to create a government, and can only do so with a majority of seats; this means that a small third party has a legitimate pathway to power, by being part of a coalition. They can use their control of seats to negotiate for their preferred heads of government offices, or even to get their own members into those offices. If the leader of the plurality party does not make a coalition, they cannot form a government and will not be Prime Minister. The US does not have any mechanism for Congress to exact the same concessions from the President. There is a general ability of the House to deny funding or for the Senate to withhold consent for certain appointments, but the President is still President for the next four years.
These two elements: FPTP and the winner-take-all system make American politics uniquely geared towards two-parties. As such, each party is made up of coalitions. The coalition-building is done prior to election-day, often through primary campaigns, and sometimes long before that. This is also expressed in the Caucus system within Congress. I would also argue that this makes third parties untenable, as the barrier to office is high, and the isolation of third party office-holders makes it difficult to accomplish anything when in office. As a result, third parties have been a short phenomenon, often lasting no longer than one or two election cycles.
Until recently, Congress has not used their powers to shut down the government or leave major offices unfilled--Mitch McConnell's play to keep Garland out of SCOTUS, and the more extreme fights over budget bills may have a big impact on party power. Depending on how unreasonable these fights become in the future, we may see greater emphasis on the sub-categories of each major party when running for office.
Which blows my mind. Washington (not literally but essentially literally) said don't be a two party state, and what did we do immediately after him? Be a two party state. The two parties changed over the years, but still
It was already a two party system. It had been since the revolution. The entire debate on the Constitution was undertaken by two parties. Washington spoke about factions which may be may not have been parties.
He specifically I believe was trying to stop sectionalism, the tying of political views to regional identity of the sort that was becoming common when he left office. The North, South, and West all developed along distinctly separate lines that led to their people becoming more and more concentrated in their regionally unified views, something that would hurt the nation come the 1860s.
Here's a quote from his address "I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations" and he goes on to say "[let me] warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally". So altogether against polarization but specifically in a sense tied to geography, something he could observe having adverse effects in his lifetime
Yea, Washinton can say what ever he wants, unfortunatly the voting system the US implemented means that 2 parties will always emerge, because anything else is at a massive disadvantae.
Well if he didn’t want people to form parties then he should’ve fucking come up with a better voting system
Sometimes you look at American democracy and go: “Wow, you can really tell this was the first time people tried to build a modern democracy in centuries”. This shit’s held up by twigs, glue, and a series of laws designed to centralise power into the hands of white landowners and curtail any legitimate mass democracy movements from gaining a foothold in government.
Political parties are inevitable; people will always want to organise with likeminded people, and the party offers a way to do that in a centralised, organised manner while also providing a united front and clear identity to your movement. Plenty of other countries have party systems, but only America has 2. Admittedly, I do not know enough about the minutia of American electoral history to tell you why that is the case; many other countries have party systems, and while those parties frequently form coalitions, none of them have mimicked the American outcome (except for maybe Australia, where we have our own duopoly, albeit with some relatively big third parties compared to America)
Sometimes you look at American democracy and go: “Wow, you can really tell this was the first time people tried to build a modern democracy in centuries”. This shit’s held up by twigs, glue, and a series of laws designed to centralise power into the hands of white landowners and curtail any legitimate mass democracy movements from gaining a foothold in government.
The core issue was that they were trying to create a system of government that would be acceptable to two sets of opposed groups:
Northern and southern states that were becoming increasingly divided over the issue of slavery even in the late 18th-century. They also already had cultural and economic differences that were diverging even further, becoming a serious issue by the War of 1812.
Large and small states: how do you properly represent states with large populations without denying representation of smaller states?
A third related issue to both was how slaves should be represented. They weren't citizens nor had voting rights, so should they have been counted as full people (unacceptable to the northern states as it gave far to much power to the south), not represented at all (unacceptable to the southern states that would have lost significant representation), or as some proportion (they settled on the Three-Fifths compromise).
There were also differing opinions between states as to how centralized a government should be, how religion should be handled (see Maryland), and so on.
There were also disagreements about how new states should be inducted if at all, if previous colonial claims should be abandoned for new states, and Vermont.
The fact that they actually managed to cobble together a working government at all is amazing.
Parties are only really a good thing in a multiparty system. In a two party system they’re generally not great, as evidenced by the current USA and the rapidly rising deadlock over the last forty years.
Inevitable is right though. People are inherently community minded. Groups of people with similar views will inevitably band together.
Like we said, parties are largely inevitable so what you want is a system with strong, principled parties that contest elections in good faith.
Plenty of Westminster style governments are relatively robust - though they have their flaws too.
The worst problems come from two party systems because that tends to drive down electoral participation, and calcified policy. Both those things are symptoms of a sick democracy.
Right but the multi party systems especially with proportional representation require negotiation between parties after elections to form governments.
Even without PR, multi party systems are healthier because you have to actually stake out a policy set, and try to sell yourself to voters to achieve electoral success.
It’s way better to have multiple parties to force actual competition and debate rather than two parties where the big selling point is “vote for us, the other guy sucks.”
As for multi party systems having better participation, there’s fuck tons of data out there to find. PR type systems tend to have better results. While there are voter participation issues in all the democracies, in general the more people feel their vote and voice counts, the more likely they are to vote. It’s not the sole factor, but it is a significant one.
Saying we have a system that prefers two options, by way of the way people think does not make it a "two-party system".
The two party organizations are not facets of the functioning of our politics, except by virtue of the traditional thinking that ties people's minds to them.
This is said in the effort of wanting this system to function better, but I'm never surprised by downvotes when I point this out.
I speak of the father of American liberalism-Thomas Jefferson.
I speak also of the man who later gave American liberalism new and even richer meaning--Andrew Jackson.
Although these meetings tonight are political gatherings, the things I shall talk about are important to every citizen in the Nation no matter what political affiliation he or she may have.
The party system prevails in this country. I believe in it and I have confidence in it. It constitutes the most effective means of presenting the issues of the day to the American people.
The party of progressive liberalism in the United States, the party that carries on the traditions of Jefferson and Jackson, the party that has four times in succession received the people's mandate--is the Democratic Party.
This year its mandate must again be considered by the people for renewal.
This is a year of challenge. I propose that we meet that challenge head on.
The people will again decide whether they want the forces of positive, progressive liberalism to continue in office, or whether, in these challenging times, they want to entrust their government to those forces of conservatism which believe in the benefit of the few at the expense of the many.
This is the choice that Americans have had to make since the earliest years of the Republic: a choice between a parcel labeled progressive liberalism and a parcel labeled reactionary conservatism. This being true, it is highly important to know what the American people have found in each of these parcels.
Our Constitution made no provision for government by political parties. But political parties were not long in developing in the early years of the Republic. Sharp differences of opinion arose in George Washington's Cabinet over the powers and purposes of the new Government. And I can say right here that George Washington wasn't the only President that had differences in his Cabinet !
Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, frankly affirmed his belief that government should be controlled by the rich and the well born. He believed that government should be aristocratic and that it should operate primarily in the interest of wealth and privilege.
Fortunately for the people, there was also in Washington's administration a powerful man, Thomas Jefferson, who believed just as strongly that government should be by the whole people and for the whole people. He was convinced that true democratic progress could be attained only by extending political and economic liberty, religious freedom, and educational opportunity. Jefferson passionately believed that the genius of America rested in the ranks of the ordinary men, and that they must control the government.
There could hardly have been a sharper cleavage than that between Hamilton and Jefferson.
The supporters of Jefferson organized a political party of progressive liberalism that has continued in American political life down to the present day. That party is today known as the Democratic Party.
The followers of Alexander Hamilton also banded themselves together as a political party. This, the party of conservatism, the party of rule by the privileged few, has its counterpart in our national life today.
I have long been impressed by the continuity of these two political philosophies throughout American history.
I have been impressed because the policies of their disciples are such faithful images of the philosophies themselves. The parcel of reactionary conservatism may be wrapped in bright colors and gay tinsel, but when you open it, you always find party rule for the benefit of the privileged few. Inside the parcel of progressive liberalism, however, you always find government for the benefit of all the people--true democratic government.
Fillmore was a member of the Whig Party, which was the second national political party during the Second Party System. Both the Democrats and the Whigs formed in 1828 following the rather chaotic 4-way 1824 election for President. Future president Andrew Jackson was one of the contenders and won the popular vote that year, but failed to win the electoral college. Railing against his defeat, he organized the first true national political party for his reelection bid. The Whigs in turn formed as a response, sparking the first proper iteration of the 2 Party system in the United States.* The Whigs and Democrats competed nationally until 1854 when the growing intractability of the institution of slavery collapsed the Whig party for good and gave rise to the Republican party and the Third Party system starting in 1854.
*The first party system had the Federalist Party and the Democratic Republicans (also called Republicans, no relation) but these parties were less formal, more fractured across regions, and did not compare to the level of national organization that would emerge with the Second Party system.
I mean it’s a perfect system - Divide and conquer. We all talk shit, hate, and argue with our fellow citizens that are “on the other side” while the politicians that are actually in the parties perpetuating the system just stir things up and laugh all the way to the bank.
While thats true it’s missing the bigger point. It’s like how one party is staunchly 2A and would never consider even discussing more gun regulations - can’t piss off a significant portion of the voter base. Most of the elected officials at the federal level are all about themselves first, party second. Voters are just people they lie to every 4 years so they can keep their jobs. There may be a handful of exceptions that actually do actually care about the common person and want to enact positive change, but the majority are perfectly fine maintaining the status quo as long as they stay in power.
No - the policy changes that affect those people are the bigger issue. The whole point here is to the law to benefit the people. And, for that, it makes a huge difference which party is in power.
It seems like you’re mainly concerned with whether politicians are benefiting from being elected. I’m more concerned with how policy changes affect the rest of us. People with your concern (cynics) are a lot of the reason we’re in the situation we’re in.
Sadly the propaganda of "not voting for X is a vote for those dastardly Y!" pushed by the two entrenched parties has worked.
Republicans would rather lose to a Democrat than a 3rd party and the Democrats would rather lose to a Republican than a 3rd party. They enjoy being able to point fingers at one another for mistakes and follies, and introducing a competitive 3rd party would mean that they now have to start tallying up what benefits they have provided to the common voter.
To be clear, Millard Fillmore was not from a third party. He was a Whig at the time. The Whigs and Democrats were in a two party system. The Republicans merely replaced the Whigs. The United States has pretty much always had a two party system besides the era of good feelings when there was only one party.
There were technically even more than three, but you wouldn't really call any of them cohesive third parties. The Northern and Southern Democratic tickets don't really represent separate parties in the sense that most people would mean when they say third party.
I think they would. The Northern and Southern faction split can be seen in the votes where they both total to about 40% of the vote, which is what Lincoln got. They were functioning as two parties at the time.
There’s other parties even now, but there has never been a third party as strong as either of the Democrat parties at the time for most of US history. Definitely enough to be considered a third party.
There was also the Constitutional Union Party who got a whopping 12.6% at that time too. So 4 parties.
Yes, the constitutional union party is what I was referring to when I said there were more than 3 major parties (or more like candidates) in the 1860 election.
Let me be clear, when I say there has been no third party in American history I mean that there has been no party system where there are three parties which all have a chance of victory. There have been plenty of third party spoiler candidates in US history but none of them really came within striking distance of victory or held any significant presence in Congress. If you’d like to see the candidate split in 1860 as making the Democratic Party two separate parties you may, but that doesn’t change the fact that if their votes were combined they would have fallen short of Lincoln. They’re all just causing spoiler effects for each other.
Which is actually a great example for why theres only 2 parties, cause by splitting up they destroyed their chances in the election and handed the win to their primary rival.
Actually even if you add their percentages up they still wouldn’t have beaten Lincoln, and this was also when many Southern states removed Lincoln from the ballot so you couldn’t vote for him.
We had our first leader explicitly tell us a two party system would lead to ruin. And we promptly had a two party system set up by our next president. We definitely deserve what's coming. But it really sucks to be part of 'us' for that.
You are misremembering history. Washington did not warn against a two party system, he warned against parties in general. This was 1. Naive and totally unrealistic aristocratic nonsense, 2. Hypocritical given that he aligned with the Federalist faction, 3. Not a sentiment shared by other founding Fathers, including Madison (who actually led the drafting of the constitution).
Wouldn't really call it misremembering. Maybe misinformed when I was explained.
But after looking through, "The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge" does pretty heavily imply a back and forth between TWO alternating factions.
The primary point that Washington was trying to make on political parties was that he believed political parties would serve as a vehicle for ambitious demagogues to seize power for their own ends in the government. This is something that is perhaps true of political parties but it’s not really exclusive to countries with a two party system.
" However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
He is probably drawing on the history of British politics, which had thus far been a two party system between the Whigs and Tories. Therefore his conception of party politics is based on two party system government. However, the point he is making is not that the US specifically should not have two parties, it is that the US should avoid having parties and factionalism at all. If he was in favor of multiple political parties we would have expected him to voice that opinion at some point in his life. What he actually did was participate in the two party system by basically being a Federalist then condemn it on his way out.
He’s actually basically being anti-republican. He doesn’t think parties work specifically in non-monarchical states. He thought that political parties would serve public opinion and that the public was too easy to mislead.
If the view is that two (or more broadly, a very few amount of) parties should not exist, then I do not understand where even the possibility of democracy could live. A political party is just a group of people willing to vote together to achieve shared political goals.
No political parties sounds even more insane than having only two.
Yes, that is why what he was saying is naive. He’s probably being inspired by the high Roman Republic, which also technically had no parties in the modern sense. He literally meant that all politicians should be independents.
You’re oversimplifying. The fact of the matter is, the two party system is inevitable because chances are two of the three candidates will be more alike than the third person. The two similar candidates will split votes.
For example if people were voting for the best fruit and the candidates were gala apples, pink lady apples, and oranges, then oranges would almost certainly win even if 60 percent of the people prefer apples over oranges. (30 gala, 30 pink lady, 40 orange).
You’re right but there’s another reason for our two party system, the 12th amendment. In order to win the election a candidate has to receive an absolute majority, not just a simple majority. If not the House of Representatives gets to pick a president from the top 3 candidates, one vote per state not per representative. This would be won hands down by the Republicans. So if the Democrats split and the progressives form their own party their chances of winning again wouldn’t improve until they formed an alliance back with the Democrats… like they have now. Our primaries are where we really vote parties ideals, once someone wins the primaries they’re the head of a coalition that we have named Party.
I used to think this but having multiple parties doesn't change much. Just look at the examples of most other democratic nations with multiple parties in parliament. There could be several different parties, but they will always form into 1 of 2 coalitions when it comes to legislation time.
And our two parties both have multiple factions within, essentially recreating a multi party system but with the two main parties acting as the coalition.
Don't forget the idea that voting for a 3rd party candidate is considered "throwing away your vote" by both sides. Oddly enough, the Simpsons had a fantastic tree house of horror over this. The two octopus alien monsters took over the country and ran for president. The humans said they'll run a third party candidate and take things back... in the end everyone voted for one of the 2 aliens because they were with a major party.
I could see Trump officially starting and switching to the MAGA Party before the end of this term. Not that it would become some relevant party or change the system, but it seems like something he would do once he was lame duck enough that everyone stopped caring otherwise.
Technically not true. That would be Andrew Johnson. When Lincoln ran for reelection, he formed an alliance with Democrat Andrew Johnson and ran on the National Union party ticket instead of the Republican ticket. Of course, Lincoln was assassinated, and Johnson became president, although he associated with the Democrats again later in his presidency.
Today you also learned that the democrats and republicans have evolved so far over such time that the definitions of these parties resembles nothing like todays.
They've evolved a lot even in my adult life. Republicans used to be who well educated people voted for while Democrats won the poorly educated. The Republican Party has moved a lot even just in the last 10byears due to Trump.
Check out the REGION that those politicians came from actually. Southern Democrats were the most opposed to it and Northern Democrats were the most in favor of it. Republican support for it was average. Southern Democrats then fled the party and joined, you guessed it, the Republicans as a part of the Nixon era "Southern Strategy." The party of the racists then and continuing to this day are the Republicans.
Exactly. The parties have moved around quite a bit throughout history, but for the most part the voters have broadly stayed the same. We've just seen different parties represent those consistent voters over time. The Southern Conservatives have always had some similar trends whether they were Republicans, Democrats, Dixiecrats, or Democratic Republicans. Meanwhile, the northeast has always been similarly opposed to those same trends as Democratic Republicans, Whigs, Free Soilers, Republicans, and Democrats.
I assume you are talking about the "college educated" voters stat. That "flipped" in 2000 and prior to then the was entirely about race and gender demographics of higher education, with (consistently Republican leaning) whites making up over 85% of the college population in 1974, dropping to a still significant majority of 65% in 2008 and now down to 47%, and (even more strongly Republican leaning) males going from 58% of the college population to 43%.
Highly educated voters have been consistently more democratic than their in-group peers, with post graduate educated voters leaning Democrat as far back I can find data on.
You are 100% correct about the Democrats losing the support of the non-college educated voters though.
He was also the first president with flushing toilets, and a writer claimed he was the first to have indoor plumbing, so the town he is from celebrates by racing bathtubs on wheels down the street (used to be yearly).
The White House was pretty early to getting plumbing. Trouble was that the resevior was somewhat compromised, and the water of the White House would arguably kill both William Henry Harrison and Willie Lincoln.
And yes. The Fillmore days still happen yearly in August. At ...you guessed it. Fillmore Glen State Park. Which is right down the road from Milliard Fillmore Elementary School. The bathtub races still happen. Although since the old clawfoot bathtubs are rare these days, the definition of bathtub for the races is...a little loose.
In Elementary school we had a whole week dedicated to learning about him. I dont recall a whole lot cause it was 30 years ago.
Another fun fact, Utah has a city named Fillmore in Millard county. It was temporarily the state capitol. It's basically just a few gas stations and I think people pretend to live there.
Yeah it was a gesture of gratitude and cooperation after years of beefing with the federal government especially with Fillmore’s predecessor Zachary Taylor.
Wut?? First, I didn't even know my TIL was posted before. Second, my comment was also posted before? Jeez, I can't have one original thought or post anymore. Has all content already been done in this sub?
This is true in a literal sense, but the major political parties have changed so much in ideology and policies that they might as well be different from whatever existed in the 19th century.
For foreign readers: the United States has never had an actual major political party in the sense that members can be kicked out at the whim of the leadership, or strict whipping on anything except the initial organizing vote for Speaker of the House or Senate Majority Leader - and even on those votes, members get leeway sometimes.
Fillmore was staunchly anti two-party. He not only ran for one third party but two. That being said fillmore isnt exactly our greatest president. He signed the fugitive slave act.
I'll stress that those are just names and we have a two party system as a consequence of how the system works. It naturally leads to it.
He was part of the two parties. The Whigs were a major party.
The last time someone outside of the existing two-party system won was Lincoln, which of course started the modern two-party system.
Lincoln was absolutely a Republican. He wasn’t even the first Republican to run for President, it was John Fremont in 1856, who got 1/3 of the popular vote and almost 40% of the electoral college, even with former President Millard Fillmore running as a Whig (who did much worse than Fremont); if there hasn’t been a Whig candidate, Fremont probably would have won.
When Lincoln won in 1860, there were only 4 national candidates, but Lincoln still got 40% of the popular vote, and almost 60% of the electoral college.
No Lincoln was a Republican. Him and the GOP created a new so called party that was just a temporary name change basically for the 1864 election. The new so called party was basically just Republicans and pro-war Northern Democrats.
They’re making a joke; there was a 2 party system of white and democrats, and with Lincoln’s win it became democrats and republicans.
Lincoln ended the previous 2 party system by essentially supplanting one of the parties.
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Not as a President
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Well okay, but if we're being overly-literal with post titles then we can say none of the presidents were a republican or democrat when they were babies.
Yes it does.
Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican while he was president.
He split the Republican vote which led to Wilson getting elected.
Incorrect. Wilson was president 1912-1920.
By that logic, the answer is Trump (Reform Party, in which he tried getting nominated).
Yeah, in reality the parties that go by those names have had several political realignments since the Whig party died. Political parties that have new ideologies don't really just spawn anymore and become dominant. Instead, the two major parties change their ideologies now and then - unlike their predecessors who stubbornly stuck to the same ideology(which is what led to new parties overtaking them.)
People should look up the 7 party systems. The most recent ideology shift in the parties came in ~2016, starting off the 7th party system that we are currently in which could probably be nicknamed the populist party system.
While I agree we have entered a new party system, I do want to stress that it's not a universally agreed upon concept, and many deny the 7th party system's existence.
Also the exact date it started cannot be agreed upon, with some pushing its start back to 2008.
Somewhere before or after Obama and definitely after Bush & the Iraq War things shifted. The internet becoming a common, in your pocket thing for almost everyone 2011-2013 and beyond probably had the biggest impact in things shifting regardless of political content. Democrats won in a lot of civil rights issues while maintaining a capitalistic, imperialist America point of view and the backlash was intense.
Coupled with the shutdown of American manufacturing & heavy industry and the Democrats failing to pick up that ball in the way they traditionally have left a lot of room on the republican side.
Mainstream democrats haven’t changed that much in 25 years but today’s Republican Party doesn’t resemble of the Reagan era through to Bush
Arguably Newt Gingrich had the biggest impact on the shift, though he was planting the seeds with Clinton that wouldn’t come to fully bloom in the Republican Party until Obama was elected
I'm in the camp which says 1994's Contract With America set off the current populist movement.
From Contract With America to The Tea Party to MAGA to ...?
Yeah I personally agree re: Gingrich’s CwA being the start of the current movement. Combine that with the Clinton “Third Way” democrat movement and it makes sense. You also start to see more significant followership for populist republicans commentators like Rush Limbaugh.
Hell?
I find It interesting you claim that the GOP has changed more in 25 years because as someone who was in High School when Clinton was elected I would say the exact opposite is true.
Would you like to say why or
He may be thinking of things like Clinton's tough illegal immigration stance - listen to him on that in the 1996 State of the Union. In 1996 Clinton also signed the Defense of Marriage Act to keep a court ruling in Hawaii approving gay marriage from having to be accepted everywhere else in the country.
The Democrats have changed a good deal over the last 30 years, growing more overtly liberal on many social issues while on the other hand competing ever more with the GOP to be a good servant to Wall Street and becoming comfortable being associated with the military and national security state, seen in their recent habit of running former CIA officials.
Still, there's no question that Trump's takeover of the Republicans in the last ten years has changed them even more.
No probably not. Typical revisionist crap.
The tea party never happened obviously/s
The old Republicans wouldn't be selling out the country to the Russians and kidnapping citizens with vans.
Definitely not the first part, the second part is a coin-flip
Bidens infrastructure bills pumped billions into the rust belt for manufacturing jobs. The idea democrats don’t care is a meme.
I could be mistaken but I believe this is referring more in recent history Clinton and Obama. And they are correct. Major societal wins took place while mfg and production got exported. There is a reason WV went blue to deep red, the greener and cleaner we went was a societal win, but until Biden there wasn’t a ton of concerns for exactly what would happen to those left behind. I will agree with you, Biden really really tried. I just wish his admin was so much louder about the things they tried for then just pushing the - we’re not Trump - envelope.
Obama tried to help with retraining programs as well. It doesn’t matter.
Because their grievances aren’t economic, they’re cultural. They want it to be 1983 again, when they had a privileged position in society and they were the countries centre of gravity.
Voters also want it both ways: They want high wage manufacturing jobs that produce goods they can buy at Chinese prices with German quality.
I agree with you actually. Having spent a ton of time on depressed old mfg mountain towns of PA, and the surrounding - these people are pissed and rightfully so but at the wrong thing. They view progression as a cultural thing that arrives to leave them behind. They ofc don’t realize its virtues which is its own problem. However - you can’t just shutter a thing like coal production and be like “but hey here’s new job training go there now, k bye!” Which is a little bit of what they did.
I’ve spent time in lots of urban cities as well, there is entire buildings dedicated to helping people get the resources to get on a better track, and sometimes there are multiple in one block. For these depressed mountain towns- those resources may be an hour + away , in what is essentially a foreign land to them. This further alienates them when they find themselves asking …. Why do I a 4th generation coal miner have to go so far and deal with so much when these city people are coddled and have it right here???
My point is - they were kind of left in the dust, they do have a right to be pissed off. Lots of these towns their supermarket is dollar general ffs. And in recent history Dems didn’t do much to appeal to them directly , which is to say - screaming from the goddam rooftops - THIS IS FOR YOU. Hell trump made sure these people got checks with his big name on it so they KNEW (or so they thought) who that check was coming from.
That’s my take on this situation ; there could have been more done and more aggressively to figure out how to not lose these blue collar folk to the insanity ; but instead the Dems just kept saying “this will be good for you”
I’m not saying the folks in these towns have their heads on straight btw; 5 mins of educating themselves would go a long long long way.
I think part of the reason the infrastructure bills get forgotten about so much is because at the end of the day it was largely just a funding mechanism. Don't get me wrong the funding is very important and it's good but that alone doesn't reform any of the other issues we have with infrastructure construction that might give the government more credit. A lot of this money gets entangled in bureaucracy with contractors and sub-contractors, instead of the government being able to use this money themselves through agencies to do the work directly. That's a big difference between new deal construction programs of the 1930s-1960s, and what we saw with the 2020's infrastructure bills. We've lost/given away so much of our state capacity to do infrastructure work, and rely so heavily on private contractors now. It makes it so that outside of the funding itself, the governments role in helping improve people's lives is not that visible. You rarely have government employed workers doing the design, engineering, and construction at all levels of a project, so the government's role gets ignored or downplayed because at the end of the day it's the private contractors usually doing the more visible work and employing more people on a project.
Obviously this is just a generalization of the way the federal government handles infrastructure now and it differs depending on the state/region, but this is the case for much of the country. There are also other issues with the way we do infrastructure with contractors, such as the cost, delays, etc. but that's a whole other topic. I just wanted to focus on the visibility aspect of who gets the credit for it. Basically the optics. I'm not saying all this to crap on the infrastructure bill, it was really good for what it did and I do think dems should absolutely credit for that, but unfortunately the bill had quite a few issues and didn't go nearly far enough on a lot of things.
It's denied by many, because it is useful for the current Republican party to wear the cut-off face of the facially-serious Republican party of 20 years ago.
It’s because largely the issues stretch across time in America. You can take the Federalist and Democratic-Republican views on core issues and see them in the Democrats and Republicans, albeit very jumbled. Then some major new core issues were added to the mix with the end of the Civil War and the question of what it means to be a multi-racial democracy.
How would this be called the populist party system when it’s almost entirely characterized as being non-populist
Get rid of first past the post voting!
They are also just names, remember that too.
I mean, the UK system also uses first past the post that leads naturally to a two part system, yet we currently have something like 5 major parties.
Which lead to Labour getting a massive amount of seats despite having less of a percentage of the vote than they did in 2019, right?
They gained 1.7% in percentage, but yeah, massive majority in parliament on 1/3rd of the vote. And next election could be a Reform majority on an even lower percentage, which is fairly terrifying.
And even then, damn near every democratic system has two parties, if you zoom out enough to “ruling government” and “opposition”.
Duverger’s Law. I wrote a paper about it in college.
But fair to note that FPTP is not absolutely guaranteed to lead to a two-party system as extreme as that in the US. There are other factors of US political history at play. For example. the UK has FPTP but for a long time had a serious third party that could often be kingmaker, and has flirted with 3 or even 4 party systems of late. And that's not to account for the Scottish Nationalists and other parties which can have hugely important effects regionally. The US just hasn't had any constituent national parties (nor any constituent countries as such) - even fiercely Texan Texas hasn't rallied behind a secessionist or Texan Nationalist party, for example.
Yes, FPTP is not exactly the problem, but it certainly does contribute to the problem. First Past the Post makes third candidates sub optimal--if you need a majority to win, the less popular candidates are not only unlikely to win, but often to play spoiler to candidates who are closest in ideology to themselves. Not only do you lose the seat, but the incoming majority is likely to be against your platform wholesale.
The more important element is that the US does not have any mechanism for coalition government, unlike the UK--the American system awards government offices to the victor, without any way of forcing new elections if the government becomes unpopular or ineffective. Parliament needs to create a government, and can only do so with a majority of seats; this means that a small third party has a legitimate pathway to power, by being part of a coalition. They can use their control of seats to negotiate for their preferred heads of government offices, or even to get their own members into those offices. If the leader of the plurality party does not make a coalition, they cannot form a government and will not be Prime Minister. The US does not have any mechanism for Congress to exact the same concessions from the President. There is a general ability of the House to deny funding or for the Senate to withhold consent for certain appointments, but the President is still President for the next four years.
These two elements: FPTP and the winner-take-all system make American politics uniquely geared towards two-parties. As such, each party is made up of coalitions. The coalition-building is done prior to election-day, often through primary campaigns, and sometimes long before that. This is also expressed in the Caucus system within Congress. I would also argue that this makes third parties untenable, as the barrier to office is high, and the isolation of third party office-holders makes it difficult to accomplish anything when in office. As a result, third parties have been a short phenomenon, often lasting no longer than one or two election cycles.
Until recently, Congress has not used their powers to shut down the government or leave major offices unfilled--Mitch McConnell's play to keep Garland out of SCOTUS, and the more extreme fights over budget bills may have a big impact on party power. Depending on how unreasonable these fights become in the future, we may see greater emphasis on the sub-categories of each major party when running for office.
[citation needed]
You can Google it.
Which blows my mind. Washington (not literally but essentially literally) said don't be a two party state, and what did we do immediately after him? Be a two party state. The two parties changed over the years, but still
Our system of voting makes it inevitable.
It was already a two party system. It had been since the revolution. The entire debate on the Constitution was undertaken by two parties. Washington spoke about factions which may be may not have been parties.
He specifically I believe was trying to stop sectionalism, the tying of political views to regional identity of the sort that was becoming common when he left office. The North, South, and West all developed along distinctly separate lines that led to their people becoming more and more concentrated in their regionally unified views, something that would hurt the nation come the 1860s.
Here's a quote from his address "I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations" and he goes on to say "[let me] warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally". So altogether against polarization but specifically in a sense tied to geography, something he could observe having adverse effects in his lifetime
Yea, Washinton can say what ever he wants, unfortunatly the voting system the US implemented means that 2 parties will always emerge, because anything else is at a massive disadvantae.
Well if he didn’t want people to form parties then he should’ve fucking come up with a better voting system
Sometimes you look at American democracy and go: “Wow, you can really tell this was the first time people tried to build a modern democracy in centuries”. This shit’s held up by twigs, glue, and a series of laws designed to centralise power into the hands of white landowners and curtail any legitimate mass democracy movements from gaining a foothold in government.
Political parties are inevitable; people will always want to organise with likeminded people, and the party offers a way to do that in a centralised, organised manner while also providing a united front and clear identity to your movement. Plenty of other countries have party systems, but only America has 2. Admittedly, I do not know enough about the minutia of American electoral history to tell you why that is the case; many other countries have party systems, and while those parties frequently form coalitions, none of them have mimicked the American outcome (except for maybe Australia, where we have our own duopoly, albeit with some relatively big third parties compared to America)
The core issue was that they were trying to create a system of government that would be acceptable to two sets of opposed groups:
A third related issue to both was how slaves should be represented. They weren't citizens nor had voting rights, so should they have been counted as full people (unacceptable to the northern states as it gave far to much power to the south), not represented at all (unacceptable to the southern states that would have lost significant representation), or as some proportion (they settled on the Three-Fifths compromise).
There were also differing opinions between states as to how centralized a government should be, how religion should be handled (see Maryland), and so on.
There were also disagreements about how new states should be inducted if at all, if previous colonial claims should be abandoned for new states, and Vermont.
The fact that they actually managed to cobble together a working government at all is amazing.
He was wrong. Parties are a good thing and, more than that, inevitable.
Parties are only really a good thing in a multiparty system. In a two party system they’re generally not great, as evidenced by the current USA and the rapidly rising deadlock over the last forty years.
Inevitable is right though. People are inherently community minded. Groups of people with similar views will inevitably band together.
Is there a country that doesn’t have political parties? What’s even the alternative?
Like we said, parties are largely inevitable so what you want is a system with strong, principled parties that contest elections in good faith.
Plenty of Westminster style governments are relatively robust - though they have their flaws too.
The worst problems come from two party systems because that tends to drive down electoral participation, and calcified policy. Both those things are symptoms of a sick democracy.
Depends what you mean by a party. Multi-party systems end up in 2 coalitions when it comes time to decide who governs.
You’d have to have some stats to backup this supposed connection between 2 party systems and low participation.
Right but the multi party systems especially with proportional representation require negotiation between parties after elections to form governments.
Even without PR, multi party systems are healthier because you have to actually stake out a policy set, and try to sell yourself to voters to achieve electoral success.
It’s way better to have multiple parties to force actual competition and debate rather than two parties where the big selling point is “vote for us, the other guy sucks.”
As for multi party systems having better participation, there’s fuck tons of data out there to find. PR type systems tend to have better results. While there are voter participation issues in all the democracies, in general the more people feel their vote and voice counts, the more likely they are to vote. It’s not the sole factor, but it is a significant one.
Saying we have a system that prefers two options, by way of the way people think does not make it a "two-party system".
The two party organizations are not facets of the functioning of our politics, except by virtue of the traditional thinking that ties people's minds to them.
This is said in the effort of wanting this system to function better, but I'm never surprised by downvotes when I point this out.
Okay, start a third party and lose.
I speak of the father of American liberalism-Thomas Jefferson.
I speak also of the man who later gave American liberalism new and even richer meaning--Andrew Jackson.
Although these meetings tonight are political gatherings, the things I shall talk about are important to every citizen in the Nation no matter what political affiliation he or she may have.
The party system prevails in this country. I believe in it and I have confidence in it. It constitutes the most effective means of presenting the issues of the day to the American people.
The party of progressive liberalism in the United States, the party that carries on the traditions of Jefferson and Jackson, the party that has four times in succession received the people's mandate--is the Democratic Party.
This year its mandate must again be considered by the people for renewal.
This is a year of challenge. I propose that we meet that challenge head on.
The people will again decide whether they want the forces of positive, progressive liberalism to continue in office, or whether, in these challenging times, they want to entrust their government to those forces of conservatism which believe in the benefit of the few at the expense of the many.
This is the choice that Americans have had to make since the earliest years of the Republic: a choice between a parcel labeled progressive liberalism and a parcel labeled reactionary conservatism. This being true, it is highly important to know what the American people have found in each of these parcels.
Our Constitution made no provision for government by political parties. But political parties were not long in developing in the early years of the Republic. Sharp differences of opinion arose in George Washington's Cabinet over the powers and purposes of the new Government. And I can say right here that George Washington wasn't the only President that had differences in his Cabinet !
Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, frankly affirmed his belief that government should be controlled by the rich and the well born. He believed that government should be aristocratic and that it should operate primarily in the interest of wealth and privilege.
Fortunately for the people, there was also in Washington's administration a powerful man, Thomas Jefferson, who believed just as strongly that government should be by the whole people and for the whole people. He was convinced that true democratic progress could be attained only by extending political and economic liberty, religious freedom, and educational opportunity. Jefferson passionately believed that the genius of America rested in the ranks of the ordinary men, and that they must control the government.
There could hardly have been a sharper cleavage than that between Hamilton and Jefferson.
The supporters of Jefferson organized a political party of progressive liberalism that has continued in American political life down to the present day. That party is today known as the Democratic Party.
The followers of Alexander Hamilton also banded themselves together as a political party. This, the party of conservatism, the party of rule by the privileged few, has its counterpart in our national life today.
I have long been impressed by the continuity of these two political philosophies throughout American history.
I have been impressed because the policies of their disciples are such faithful images of the philosophies themselves. The parcel of reactionary conservatism may be wrapped in bright colors and gay tinsel, but when you open it, you always find party rule for the benefit of the privileged few. Inside the parcel of progressive liberalism, however, you always find government for the benefit of all the people--true democratic government.
-Harry Truman, 1948 Jefferson-Jackson Dinner
Corporate Conservatives and Cultural Conservatives
Fillmore was a member of the Whig Party, which was the second national political party during the Second Party System. Both the Democrats and the Whigs formed in 1828 following the rather chaotic 4-way 1824 election for President. Future president Andrew Jackson was one of the contenders and won the popular vote that year, but failed to win the electoral college. Railing against his defeat, he organized the first true national political party for his reelection bid. The Whigs in turn formed as a response, sparking the first proper iteration of the 2 Party system in the United States.* The Whigs and Democrats competed nationally until 1854 when the growing intractability of the institution of slavery collapsed the Whig party for good and gave rise to the Republican party and the Third Party system starting in 1854.
*The first party system had the Federalist Party and the Democratic Republicans (also called Republicans, no relation) but these parties were less formal, more fractured across regions, and did not compare to the level of national organization that would emerge with the Second Party system.
This is well written but fucking confusing
boi yu bes lern
and will probably remain so forever
Forever is a strong word.
I mean it’s a perfect system - Divide and conquer. We all talk shit, hate, and argue with our fellow citizens that are “on the other side” while the politicians that are actually in the parties perpetuating the system just stir things up and laugh all the way to the bank.
If you’re just above 400% of the poverty level, it makes quite a big difference to you which party is in power. Those are real people.
So ~60k annual income as an individual?
About that, I think, yes. It’s when the ACA subsidies suddenly disappear.
I think that’s fairly convincing. Also about median individual income in the US.
While thats true it’s missing the bigger point. It’s like how one party is staunchly 2A and would never consider even discussing more gun regulations - can’t piss off a significant portion of the voter base. Most of the elected officials at the federal level are all about themselves first, party second. Voters are just people they lie to every 4 years so they can keep their jobs. There may be a handful of exceptions that actually do actually care about the common person and want to enact positive change, but the majority are perfectly fine maintaining the status quo as long as they stay in power.
No - the policy changes that affect those people are the bigger issue. The whole point here is to the law to benefit the people. And, for that, it makes a huge difference which party is in power.
Since you’re just saying random shit completely unrelated to what I’m talking about I’m going to assume you’re a bot.
“Missing the bigger point”
“No the bigger issue is…”
That’s the relation.
It seems like you’re mainly concerned with whether politicians are benefiting from being elected. I’m more concerned with how policy changes affect the rest of us. People with your concern (cynics) are a lot of the reason we’re in the situation we’re in.
Sadly the propaganda of "not voting for X is a vote for those dastardly Y!" pushed by the two entrenched parties has worked.
Republicans would rather lose to a Democrat than a 3rd party and the Democrats would rather lose to a Republican than a 3rd party. They enjoy being able to point fingers at one another for mistakes and follies, and introducing a competitive 3rd party would mean that they now have to start tallying up what benefits they have provided to the common voter.
To be clear, Millard Fillmore was not from a third party. He was a Whig at the time. The Whigs and Democrats were in a two party system. The Republicans merely replaced the Whigs. The United States has pretty much always had a two party system besides the era of good feelings when there was only one party.
There were 3 parties during Lincoln’s time because the Democrats split into 2.
There were technically even more than three, but you wouldn't really call any of them cohesive third parties. The Northern and Southern Democratic tickets don't really represent separate parties in the sense that most people would mean when they say third party.
I think they would. The Northern and Southern faction split can be seen in the votes where they both total to about 40% of the vote, which is what Lincoln got. They were functioning as two parties at the time.
There’s other parties even now, but there has never been a third party as strong as either of the Democrat parties at the time for most of US history. Definitely enough to be considered a third party.
There was also the Constitutional Union Party who got a whopping 12.6% at that time too. So 4 parties.
Yes, the constitutional union party is what I was referring to when I said there were more than 3 major parties (or more like candidates) in the 1860 election.
Let me be clear, when I say there has been no third party in American history I mean that there has been no party system where there are three parties which all have a chance of victory. There have been plenty of third party spoiler candidates in US history but none of them really came within striking distance of victory or held any significant presence in Congress. If you’d like to see the candidate split in 1860 as making the Democratic Party two separate parties you may, but that doesn’t change the fact that if their votes were combined they would have fallen short of Lincoln. They’re all just causing spoiler effects for each other.
And Lincoln was also removed from the ballot in most southern states. They were trying to get rid of him at all costs.
Which is actually a great example for why theres only 2 parties, cause by splitting up they destroyed their chances in the election and handed the win to their primary rival.
Actually even if you add their percentages up they still wouldn’t have beaten Lincoln, and this was also when many Southern states removed Lincoln from the ballot so you couldn’t vote for him.
Remember when Lincoln got elected the Republicans were the 3rd party
We had our first leader explicitly tell us a two party system would lead to ruin. And we promptly had a two party system set up by our next president. We definitely deserve what's coming. But it really sucks to be part of 'us' for that.
You are misremembering history. Washington did not warn against a two party system, he warned against parties in general. This was 1. Naive and totally unrealistic aristocratic nonsense, 2. Hypocritical given that he aligned with the Federalist faction, 3. Not a sentiment shared by other founding Fathers, including Madison (who actually led the drafting of the constitution).
Wouldn't really call it misremembering. Maybe misinformed when I was explained.
But after looking through, "The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge" does pretty heavily imply a back and forth between TWO alternating factions.
The primary point that Washington was trying to make on political parties was that he believed political parties would serve as a vehicle for ambitious demagogues to seize power for their own ends in the government. This is something that is perhaps true of political parties but it’s not really exclusive to countries with a two party system.
" However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
He is probably drawing on the history of British politics, which had thus far been a two party system between the Whigs and Tories. Therefore his conception of party politics is based on two party system government. However, the point he is making is not that the US specifically should not have two parties, it is that the US should avoid having parties and factionalism at all. If he was in favor of multiple political parties we would have expected him to voice that opinion at some point in his life. What he actually did was participate in the two party system by basically being a Federalist then condemn it on his way out.
He’s actually basically being anti-republican. He doesn’t think parties work specifically in non-monarchical states. He thought that political parties would serve public opinion and that the public was too easy to mislead.
If the view is that two (or more broadly, a very few amount of) parties should not exist, then I do not understand where even the possibility of democracy could live. A political party is just a group of people willing to vote together to achieve shared political goals.
No political parties sounds even more insane than having only two.
Yes, that is why what he was saying is naive. He’s probably being inspired by the high Roman Republic, which also technically had no parties in the modern sense. He literally meant that all politicians should be independents.
You’re oversimplifying. The fact of the matter is, the two party system is inevitable because chances are two of the three candidates will be more alike than the third person. The two similar candidates will split votes.
For example if people were voting for the best fruit and the candidates were gala apples, pink lady apples, and oranges, then oranges would almost certainly win even if 60 percent of the people prefer apples over oranges. (30 gala, 30 pink lady, 40 orange).
You’re right but there’s another reason for our two party system, the 12th amendment. In order to win the election a candidate has to receive an absolute majority, not just a simple majority. If not the House of Representatives gets to pick a president from the top 3 candidates, one vote per state not per representative. This would be won hands down by the Republicans. So if the Democrats split and the progressives form their own party their chances of winning again wouldn’t improve until they formed an alliance back with the Democrats… like they have now. Our primaries are where we really vote parties ideals, once someone wins the primaries they’re the head of a coalition that we have named Party.
Sorry we don’t allow non-conspiratorial thinking here
It's why Australia's preferential voting (adopted by Maine and Alaska) is such a great innovation.
I used to think this but having multiple parties doesn't change much. Just look at the examples of most other democratic nations with multiple parties in parliament. There could be several different parties, but they will always form into 1 of 2 coalitions when it comes to legislation time.
And our two parties both have multiple factions within, essentially recreating a multi party system but with the two main parties acting as the coalition.
It's not propaganda in the states with first past the post voting, which is most of them
Nah. It's just a mathematical inevitability with our system of voting.
It's always going to devolve into two parties.
It’s not propaganda. That’s just the way FPTP voting works.
It's not really propaganda. It's just a fact.
Don't forget the idea that voting for a 3rd party candidate is considered "throwing away your vote" by both sides. Oddly enough, the Simpsons had a fantastic tree house of horror over this. The two octopus alien monsters took over the country and ran for president. The humans said they'll run a third party candidate and take things back... in the end everyone voted for one of the 2 aliens because they were with a major party.
Did the episode skip over the primary process?
Kang and Kodos assumed the bodies of Clinton and Dole after they were both the nominees.
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Hopefully we move to a more sensible system of election eventually
No way. We'll have a revolution on our hands soon enough.
I could see Trump officially starting and switching to the MAGA Party before the end of this term. Not that it would become some relevant party or change the system, but it seems like something he would do once he was lame duck enough that everyone stopped caring otherwise.
Technically not true. That would be Andrew Johnson. When Lincoln ran for reelection, he formed an alliance with Democrat Andrew Johnson and ran on the National Union party ticket instead of the Republican ticket. Of course, Lincoln was assassinated, and Johnson became president, although he associated with the Democrats again later in his presidency.
Came here to say this.
Today you also learned that the democrats and republicans have evolved so far over such time that the definitions of these parties resembles nothing like todays.
They've evolved a lot even in my adult life. Republicans used to be who well educated people voted for while Democrats won the poorly educated. The Republican Party has moved a lot even just in the last 10byears due to Trump.
More Republicans voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act than Democrats at the time, too.
In fact, Democrats filibustered it for 60 days.
Check out the REGION that those politicians came from actually. Southern Democrats were the most opposed to it and Northern Democrats were the most in favor of it. Republican support for it was average. Southern Democrats then fled the party and joined, you guessed it, the Republicans as a part of the Nixon era "Southern Strategy." The party of the racists then and continuing to this day are the Republicans.
Dixie Democrats
It's funny to me how so many southerners love Nixon and Reagan, both guys from Illinois and California. And Trump from New York.
All 'outsiders' who took advantage of them by pandering , and still conservatives in the South play geography politics.
Exactly. The parties have moved around quite a bit throughout history, but for the most part the voters have broadly stayed the same. We've just seen different parties represent those consistent voters over time. The Southern Conservatives have always had some similar trends whether they were Republicans, Democrats, Dixiecrats, or Democratic Republicans. Meanwhile, the northeast has always been similarly opposed to those same trends as Democratic Republicans, Whigs, Free Soilers, Republicans, and Democrats.
Hey everybody, we found the oldest living redditor.
It flipped after 2012 so basically anyone 30+ should have experienced it.
Its good to get periodic reminders of how much knowledge/life experience a lot of the comments in these threads actually have behind them.
Helps put a lot of it in perspective.
I assume you are talking about the "college educated" voters stat. That "flipped" in 2000 and prior to then the was entirely about race and gender demographics of higher education, with (consistently Republican leaning) whites making up over 85% of the college population in 1974, dropping to a still significant majority of 65% in 2008 and now down to 47%, and (even more strongly Republican leaning) males going from 58% of the college population to 43%.
Highly educated voters have been consistently more democratic than their in-group peers, with post graduate educated voters leaning Democrat as far back I can find data on.
You are 100% correct about the Democrats losing the support of the non-college educated voters though.
This was the case in 2008 and 2012.
Theyve also ruined the economy
He was also the first president with flushing toilets, and a writer claimed he was the first to have indoor plumbing, so the town he is from celebrates by racing bathtubs on wheels down the street (used to be yearly).
The White House was pretty early to getting plumbing. Trouble was that the resevior was somewhat compromised, and the water of the White House would arguably kill both William Henry Harrison and Willie Lincoln.
My hometown of Moravia, NY!
And yes. The Fillmore days still happen yearly in August. At ...you guessed it. Fillmore Glen State Park. Which is right down the road from Milliard Fillmore Elementary School. The bathtub races still happen. Although since the old clawfoot bathtubs are rare these days, the definition of bathtub for the races is...a little loose.
In Elementary school we had a whole week dedicated to learning about him. I dont recall a whole lot cause it was 30 years ago.
Yep, we raced it many times, back when it was still on the main road (80-90's). I watched my crazy cousins race a few years ago at the Glen.
I'm so glad that someone else knows what i'm talking about.
Another fun fact, Utah has a city named Fillmore in Millard county. It was temporarily the state capitol. It's basically just a few gas stations and I think people pretend to live there.
They were def kissing ass when they named it
Yeah it was a gesture of gratitude and cooperation after years of beefing with the federal government especially with Fillmore’s predecessor Zachary Taylor.
Specifically, last sitting president. Theodore Roosevelt ran for an unsuccessful third term as the head of the Bull Moose Party.
Is it just me or does Millard Fillmore look like Alec Baldwin?
Did you just steal this top comment from the last time this TIL was reposted? 🤣
Bots
Wut?? First, I didn't even know my TIL was posted before. Second, my comment was also posted before? Jeez, I can't have one original thought or post anymore. Has all content already been done in this sub?
We already have exhausted all human thought, yes
I've always thought so
Queen Victoria called him the handsomest man she had ever seen
You call yourself a president you son of a bitch?
Covfefe is for presidents only.
Put that cocoa down!
I can’t speak for you but, yes, Millard does.
This is true in a literal sense, but the major political parties have changed so much in ideology and policies that they might as well be different from whatever existed in the 19th century.
Yeah, a 30s Mississippi Liberal Democrat and a Modern Californian Social Liberal Democrat would hate each other on every level.
One thing in his favor: he’s the only president whose presidential library is a bar
Also, one of two US presidents to found a University (The University at Buffalo). The other being Thomas Jefferson, of course.
Time to bring back the Millard Fillmore Died For You Society
TIL there are apparently 11,427 people running around out there right now named ‘Millard’. Crazy world.
https://www.mynamestats.com/First-Names/M/MI/MILLARD/index.html
For foreign readers: the United States has never had an actual major political party in the sense that members can be kicked out at the whim of the leadership, or strict whipping on anything except the initial organizing vote for Speaker of the House or Senate Majority Leader - and even on those votes, members get leeway sometimes.
And mallard Fillmore was a bird
Fillmore was staunchly anti two-party. He not only ran for one third party but two. That being said fillmore isnt exactly our greatest president. He signed the fugitive slave act.
I once had a betta named Millard Fillmore. He died.
And we all lived happily ever after. The End.
If you can think of a simpler way for presidents to exchange long protein strings I'd like to hear it.
Looking at the American Civic structure, I'm glad many countries have multi-party systems. Still problematic, but different flavours of problems.
What about Mallard Fillmore? What party was he?
Because he was in the Whig Party when the Republican Party was just really starting.
more people know fillard millmore wasn't president than know millard fillmore was LOL
Shout out to the 13th
There’s a song to help you remember
showcase showdown - last of the whigs
Dude even has his own punk anthem
Millard Fillmore - LAST OF THE WHIGS!!
Last of the Whigs - Showcase Showdown
TIL that there was a US president named Millard Fillmore
So there’s hope for people to abandon the duopoly of commerce in red and blue, phew.
Abraham Lincoln ran in 1864 as national unity party. It was very much a real party that had a convention that nominated Lincoln in 1864.
Til the nazi got elected twice