Democratic Party

Andrew Jackson Reinvents American Democracy

David S. Reynolds | Winter 2020

Jackson had deep flaws, but he left a lasting legacy, strengthening the executive office and striving to represent as many Americans as possible.

David S.

Compromise 5: Medicare’s Complicated Birth

Robert Dallek | Summer 2010

Employing shrewd politics and a strong dose of compromise, LBJ passes comprehensive federal insurance for seniors.

In 1965, after winning in a landslide against Barry Goldwater and helping to carry Democratic supermajorities into both houses of Congress, President Lyndon Johnson set out to enact a battery of Great Society reforms, including Medicare, government insurance for seniors. Despite his political mandate, 60 years of conservative opposition to such a measure meant proceeding with caution. Later, California Governor Ronald Reagan, for example, would characterize the Medicare bill as the advance wave of a socialism that would “invade every area of freedom in this country.” Reagan predicted that this reform would compel Americans to spend their “sunset years telling our children and our grandchildren what it was like in America when men were free.”

Cartoonery

Jennifer J. Rodibaugh | Spring/Summer 2008

When the Donkey and the Elephant First Clashed

140 years ago, Harper’s Weekly’s cartoonist of genius, Thomas Nast, sired the Democrat donkey and the Republican elephant into ridicule. In an environment of flourishing editorial cartoons, Nast’s ready vocabulary of political symbols caught on.

The Democratic Debacle in 1964

Joshua Zeitz | June/July 2004

The Republican party ensured a landslide defeat when it nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964, but the Democrats did far more lasting damage to themselves at their convention in Atlantic City that year. In fact, they still haven’t recovered.

The Lives of the Parties

Bernard A. Weisberger | September 1992

The two-party system, undreamt of by the founders of the republic, has been one of its basic shaping forces ever since their time.

“I Hardly Know Truman”

David McCullough | July/August 1992

Thus did Franklin Roosevelt characterize the man who was to be his running mate in 1944 and, as everyone at the astonishing Democratic Convention knew, almost certainly the next president. Here is FDR at his most devious, Harry Truman at the pivot of his career, and the old party-boss system at its zenith.

Why the Candidates Still Use FDR as Their Measure

William E. Leuchtenburg | February 1988

It’s not surprising that Democrats seek to wrap themselves in the Roosevelt cloak; what’s harder to understand is why so many Republicans do, too. A distinguished historian explains.

“Big Jim” Farley: The True-blue Democrat

Virginia Van Der Veer Hamilton | August 1971

One of FDR's closest aides remembers "the Boss" and a lifetime in politics.

Douglas, Deadlock, & Disunion

Murat Halstead | June 1960

In 1860, Southern delegates bolted the Democratic convention at Charleston. An eyewitness describes the first giant step toward secession

Subscribe to Democratic Party

Featured Authors

Acheson, Dean

Dean Acheson (1893-1971) was an attorney and statesman who served as Secretary of State from 1949 to 1953 under President Harry Truman. A key architect of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, Acheson stressed the importance of multilateral organizations in the fight against totalitarianism. Prior to his service in the Truman Administration, Acheson clerked for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, worked at Washington law firm Covington & Burling, and served as Undersecretary of the Treasury for one year under President Franklin Roosevelt.

Ambrose, Stephen E.

Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002) was a historian and professor who wrote on military history, presidential history, and American expansion and foreign policy. Ambrose has been praised for his biographies of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, and for helping to galvanize interest in World War II.

Becker, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Becker is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books. Her history When The War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge won accolades from the Robert F. Kennedy book award, while her recent biography of female conflict journalists You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War won the 2022 Sperber Book Prize and Harvard’s Goldsmith Book Prize. She is also the author of America’s Vietnam War: A Narrative History for young adults.

Bird, Kai

Kai Bird is a historian and Executive Director of Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York. He is best known for writing about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, US-Middle East relations and biographies of political figures. Bird is the author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, a New York Times bestseller. His most recent book is The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Blight, David W.

David W. Blight is the Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition at Yale University. Recently, Blight has written A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation, and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize.