Democratic Party (United States)

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The Democratic Party is one of two major parties in the United States. The party is currently the minority party in the U.S. Senate, House of Representatives, and among state governors. The party also trails in state legislatures as the Republican Party controls 21 legislatures and Democrats control 19. Ten states are divided legislatures. Of the two major U.S. parties, the Democratic Party is to the left of the Republican Party, though its politics are not as consistently leftist as the traditional social democratic and labor parties in much of the rest of the world.

The Democratic Party started out as an ultra-conservative party in the early nineteenth century, later becoming a left-of-centre party. (the Republican Party experienced a similar transition, from left-of-centre to ultra-conservative). The party has been divided recently between two main factions: the "Progressives" and the "New Democrats", who like the New Labour faction of the UK Labour Party, have been working to move the party rightward to a centre or right-of-centre position.

Issue positions

The principles and values of any political party - especially one as factional as the Democratic Party - are difficult to define and apply generally to all members of the party. There is always debate within either American major political party. Some members may disagree with one or more plank of his or her party's platform. However, it is important to give researchers and other readers a general idea of a particular party's position on the issues. The following will give readers a summary of the position expressed in the platforms that the Democratic Party adopted in 2000 and 2004.

• Budget: In the platform of 2004, the Democrats swore to halve the yearly federal budget deficit by 2009. They also stated that they seek "a Constitutional version of the line-item veto to make it easier to root out pork-barrel spending."
• Civil Liberties: In regards to the USA PATRIOT Act, the Democratic agenda is to "change the portions of the Patriot Act that threaten individual rights, such as the library provisions." They further explained in their platform, "Our government should never round up innocent people only because of their religion or ethnicity, and we should never stifle free expression." The party is against racial profiling in the war against terror.
• Crime: Democrats place more focus on methods of prevention of crime rather than on what penalties are applied to crimes. They emphasize improved community policing and more on-duty police officers in order to help accomplish that. Their platforms for 2000 and 2004 also cite crackdowns on gangs and drug trafficking as preventive methods. The 2004 platform also calls for rehabilitation for prisoners, in order to "reintegrate former prisoners into our communities as productive citizens." Their platforms have also particularly addressed the issue of domestic violence, calling for strict penalties for offenders and protections for victims.
• Equality and nondiscrimination: Citing that "a day's work is worth a day's pay," and that on average a woman continues to earn 77% of what a man does, the Democrats call for laws for equitable pay. The Democrats wish to uphold the Americans with Disabilities Act to prohibit discrimination against people on the basis of physical or mental disability. The Democrats cite affirmative action as a method with which to redress past discrimination and to ensure equitable employment regardless of ethnicity or gender.
• Legal standing of same-sex unions: Many Democrats have publicly supported civil unions or same sex marriage, but it is not yet an official position of the party as a whole, or any of the members of the party leadership in Congress. The legal standing of gay marriage is a subject of debate within the Democratic Party. In the campaigns for the Party candidacy for the 2004 presidential election, candidates were divided, with John Kerry supporting civil unions while Howard Dean supported same-sex marriage. Most Democrats support the continued legalization of same-sex marriage and/or unions and progress in their nationwide acceptance. Many Democrats consider gay marriage to be a civil right of Americans.

• Health Care: In their 2004 platform, the Democrats affirmed the pursuit of federally funded zygotic stem-cell "research under the strictest ethical guidelines, but we will not walk away from the chance to save lives and reduce human suffering." Democrats also typically call for "affordable health care," and many advocate an expansion of government funding in this area.
• Choice/Abortion: The Democrats believe that privacy is a constitutional right under the 14th Amendment. Thus as a matter of privacy and gender equality, women should be allowed to control their fertility and child bearing, including access to termination of pregnancy, in accordance with Roe v. Wade. This includes access under Roe v. Wade to surgical termination of pregnancy. Many Democratic politicians include in this right practical access to abortion through government subsidies. In September 1993 Congress rewrote the Hyde Amendment to allow for federal funding of abortions. (NAF Abortion Facts) Their proposal (in 2000 and 2004) for public policy on termination of pregnancy is for abortion to be "safe, legal and rare" - namely, keeping it legal by rejecting laws that include governmental interference in any individual matter, and reducing the number performed by promoting both knowledge of reproduction and incentives for adoption. However, in the platform adopted in 2000, the Democrats stated a respectful inclusiveness of Democrats who feel differently about the issue. (See Democrats for Life.) It should be noted that not all Democratic party members are pro-choice; Democratic Senate minority leader Harry Reid, the party's ranking Congressional leader, is anti-abortion. A stand on abortion rights is sometimes more influenced by religious or personal beliefs than by political party preference.

• Gun Control: The Democratic Party has supported and introduced various gun-control measures over the last 100 years. Most notable of these is the National Firearms Act of 1934 (signed into law by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 1939 Gun Control Act (also signed into law by FDR), the 1968 Gun Control Act (introduced by Senator Dodd and heavily endorsed by Senator Edward Kennedy), the Brady law of 1993 (signed by President Bill Clinton), and the Crime Control Act of 1994 (signed by Bill Clinton).

Factions of the Democratic Party

It should be noted that defining the views of any "faction" of any political party, especially a major political party in the United States, is difficult at best, and that any attempt to apply labels within a single political party is no more effective than the application of broad labels to political parties as a whole. Keeping that in mind, there are several ideological groups widely recognized within the modern-day Democratic Party:

• The New Democrats - A grouping of centrists, formally organized as the Democratic Leadership Council. The organization became particularly prominent during and after Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. The group was founded and continues to be led by Al From. Governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa is the current chairman.

• The Blue Dog Democrats - A congressional caucus of fiscal and social conservatives and moderates, primarily southerners, willing to broker compromises with the Republican leadership. They have acted as a unified voting bloc in the past, giving its thirty members some ability to change legislation. The name appears to be both a reference to several well-known Louisiana paintings featuring blue dogs, as well as a reference to the old "yellow dog" Democrats having been "choked blue." Oddly, blue is the color chosen by the media to represent Democrats.

• Deaniacs (supporters of Howard Dean) - Howard Dean, a failed candidate for the party's 2004 presidential nomination, currently serves as chairman of the Democratic National Committee and is a leading opponent of the New Democrats group. His campaign organization, "Dean for America," became a new group, Democracy for America, which advocates progressive policies. Many Deaniacs became politically active and contributed financially to other progressive candidates because of Gov. Dean's internet campaign.

• The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) - An influential non-profit organization that advocates centrist positions for the party. Moderate party leaders founded the DLC in response to the landslide victory of Republican candidate Ronald Reagan over Democratic candidate Walter Mondale during the 1984 presidential election. The founders believed the Democratic Party needed to reform their political philosophy if they were to ever retake the White House, a goal which had eluded the Democrats since the 1976 election of Jimmy Carter. The DLC hails President Bill Clinton as proof of the viability of third way politicians and a DLC success story. Critics contend that the DLC is effectively a powerful, corporate-financed mouthpiece within the Democratic Party that acts to keep Democratic Party candidates and platforms sympathetic to corporate interests and the interests of the wealthy.

• 21st Century Democrats - A political organization active since 2000 in assisting candidates it describes as "progressive" or "populist" in winning elections. Its strategy puts emphasis on training large numbers of organizers to work at the grassroots level. It targets specific campaigns it sees as important. It has strong ties to veterans of Senator Paul Wellstone's campaigns.

• Congressional Progressive Caucus - The CPC is a caucus of progressive Democrats, along with one independent, in the U.S. Congress. It is the single largest Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives, although it currently has no members from the Senate. Well-known members include Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-TX), and Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).The CPC advocates universal health care, fair trade agreements, living wage laws, the right of all workers to organize into trade unions and engage in strike actions and collective bargaining, the abolition of significant portions of the USA PATRIOT Act, the formation of a Department of Peace, the legalization of gay marriage, strict campaign finance reform laws, a complete pullout from the war in Iraq, a crackdown on corporate crime and what they see as corporate welfare, an increase in income tax on the wealthy, tax cuts for the poor, and an increase in welfare spending by the federal government. [1] [2]

• Progressive Democrats of America - The supporters of Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign also started an organization to press their ideas after the election, although it is not restricted to Kucinich supporters.

• Southern Democrats - Socially conservative, southern, white Democrats, previously a key element in the Democratic coalition, are increasingly rare, many having lost, or opting not to run, in the 1994, 2002, and 2004 elections. Senator Zell Miller, a Democrat from Georgia, actually spoke in favor of President George W. Bush at the 2004 Republican National Convention.

• Organized Labor - As a key source of political contributions, volunteers, and field organizing expertise, labor unions hold significant sway in the Democratic Party. Former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt was a leading supporter of labor in Congress.

• African Americans - This group votes consistently for Democratic Party candidates in the 85 to 90% range, and as such can be considered a faction in the party. Democratic African American leadership coalesces around the Congressional Black Caucus and civil rights activists and is generally considered liberal in outlook. Senator Barack Obama, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and Congressman John Conyers are prominent leaders of this faction.

• Civil libertarians often support the Democratic Party because its positions on such issues as civil rights and separation of church and state are more closely aligned to their own than are the positions of the Republican Party, and because the Democrats' economic agenda may be more appealing to them than that of the Libertarian Party. They oppose the "War on Drugs," protectionism, corporate welfare, immigration restrictions, governmental borrowing, and an interventionist foreign policy. The Democratic Freedom Caucus is an example of this faction.

Symbols

On January 19, 1870, a political cartoon by Thomas Nast appearing in Harper's Weekly titled "A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion" for the first time symbolized the Democratic Party as a donkey. Since then, the donkey has been widely used as a symbol of the Party, though unlike the Republican elephant, the donkey has never been officially adopted as the Party's logo. The DNC's official logo, pictured above, depicts a stylized kicking donkey. In the media, Democrats (and states which consistently vote Democratic) have relatively recently been depicted as blue, while Republicans, and the states in which they dominate, as red.

In the early 20th century, the traditional symbol of the Democratic Party in Midwestern states such as Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Ohio was the rooster, as opposed to the Republican eagle. This symbol still appears on Kentucky and Indiana ballots. For the majority of the 20th Century, Missouri Democrats used the Statue of Liberty as their ballot emblem. This meant that when Libertarian candidates received ballot access in Missouri in 1976, they could not use the Statue of Liberty, their national symbol, as the ballot emblem. Missouri Libertarians instead used the Liberty Bell until 1995, when the mule became Missouri's state animal. From 1995 to 2004, there was some confusion among voters, as the Democratic ticket was marked with the Statue of Liberty, and it seemed that the Libertarians were using a donkey.

The Democratic Party draws on its history of politicians (Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy), programs (Social Security, minimum wage, Medicare) and goals (expanded health insurance, greater incomes for average U.S. citizens, progressive taxation, and an internationalist foreign policy).

Organization

For more information on how American political parties are organized, see Politics of the United States.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) provides national leadership for the United States Democratic Party. It is responsible for developing and promoting the Democratic political platform, as well as coordinating fundraising and election strategy. There are similar committees in every U.S. state and most U.S. counties (though in some states, Party organization lower than the state-level is arranged by legislative districts). This structure can be considered the counterpart of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and Republican state and local organizations. The current chair of the DNC is Howard Dean.

The Democratic Party also has fundraising and strategy committees for U.S. House races (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee), U.S. Senate races (Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee), gubernatorial races (Democratic Governors Association), and state legislative races (Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee).

History

Origins

The Democratic Party's origins lie in the original Republican Party founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1794. (Today, this party is usually referred to as the "Democratic-Republican Party" to avoid confusion). After the disintegration of the Federalist Party, the Republicans were the only major party in American politics. For 20 years, the Era of Good Feelings marked one party rule in America, with different factions of the party contending for the presidency, whose candidates were nominated by congressional caucuses. In 1824, a particularly bitter election was thrown to the House of Representatives, and John Quincy Adams was elected after being supported by Henry Clay even though Andrew Jackson had won a plurality of electoral votes, and the plurality of popular votes in states where electors were chosen by direct election. Jackson and his supporters recoiled at both the "corrupt deal" and the choosing of electors by state legislature. Jackson gathered together prominent leaders, including Martin Van Buren of New York and even Vice-President John C. Calhoun to support his next bid for the White House, and organized around the country to change election laws to universal white male suffrage and choice of electors by popular ballot.

By the election of 1828, the unified party had broken into two pieces, one became the National Republican Party, and backed the incumbent President, and the other, termed the "Democrats", after their insistence that the President held a national mandate from the people, backed Andrew Jackson. The National Republican faction became the Whig Party, after their opposition to "King Andrew", which would disintegrate in the 1850's when dissident Whigs and Northern Democrats formed the modern Republican Party.

The next step in the establishment of parties as permanent entities came with the Whig Party holding a national convention to select its presidential candidate. Since the nomination of candidates by Congress, called "King Caucus", was one of the key means of keeping a one party system going, this effectively ended the possibility of a rapprochement between the factions, and established a second period of two party politics in America.

Antebellum Democratic Politics

Initially the Democratic Party was a coalition between Western pioneers in the Ohio River valley and Illinois - the "North West" of America at that time - and southern planters and agrarians from the Jeffersonian coalition. This coalition was very similar to the one that Jefferson and Madison had worked to create, and lead to the belief that Jackson, and not John Quincy Adams, represented a continuous "Jeffersonian" tradition. This was in opposition to the "Federalist" and Hamiltonian conception of government which Adams was said to represent. The key issues were election access and the Bank of the United States. The Jeffersonians had opposed the first bank, but had allowed it to continue for 20 years of their time in power. The issue of the Bank, and tariffs would be the central domestic policy issue of the 1828-1850 period, even though it was increasingly overshadowed by expansion and nativism in the run up to the Civil War.

The Democratic Party would lose the White House to William Henry Harrison, only to gain it back when his Vice-President took office, and proceeded to enact many Democratic policies. James Polk would solidify the party's hold on power with a coalition that was increasingly based on holding a solid South and taking enough states in the north to win national power. The party also became increasingly associated with protection of slave holding, including pressing for more and more aggressive laws to enforce the recapture of enslaved individuals who had escaped, and for more of the Great Plains to be opened to slave owning. This ran into the Missouri Compromise, which had set a free line, north of which slave owning would be prohibited, in return for keeping a balance of power in the Senate. With the disintegration of the Whig Party in 1856 into two factions, the American Party of Millard Fillmore and the Republican Party whose first candidate was John Fremont, it seemed as if the Democratic Party would have a permanent dominance of national power.

Civil War and Reconstruction

In the 1850s, following the disintegration of the Whig Party, the Democratic Party became increasingly divided, with its Southern wing staunchly advocating the expansion of slavery into new territories, in opposition to the newly founded Republican Party, which sought to prohibit such expansion. Democrats in the Northern states joined the Republicans in opposing the expansion of slavery, and at the 1860 nominating convention the Party split and nominated two candidates (see U.S. presidential election, 1860). As a result, the Democrats went down to defeat with the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln, a link in the chain of events leading up to the Civil War. During the war, Northern Democrats divided into two factions, War Democrats, who supported the military policies of President Abraham Lincoln, and Copperheads, who strongly opposed them. From 1864 onward, the Democratic Party's main opposition has come from the modern Republican Party.

The Democrats were shattered by the war but nevertheless benefited from white Southerners' resentment of Reconstruction and consequent hostility to the Republican Party. Once Reconstruction ended, and the disenfranchisement of blacks was re-established, the region was known as the "Solid South" for nearly a century because it reliably voted Democratic and there was, in many places, effectively only one party, there being no significant Republican presence. Though Republicans continued to control the White House until 1885, the Democrats remained competitive, especially in the mid-Atlantic and lower Midwest, and controlled the House of Representatives for most of that period. In the election of 1884, Grover Cleveland, the reforming Democratic Governor of New York, won the Presidency, a feat he repeated in 1892, having lost (but won the popular vote) in the election of 1888 (as had Samuel J. Tilden in the election of 1876.

Populism and Republican dominance

In the presidential election of 1896, widely regarded as a political realignment, Democrats favoring Free Silver defeated their conservative counterparts and succeeded in nominating William Jennings Bryan for the presidency (as did the agrarian Populist Party). Bryan, perhaps best known for his "Cross of Gold" speech delivered at the 1896 convention, waged a vigorous campaign attacking Eastern monied interests, but lost to Republican William McKinley in an election which was to prove decisive: the Republicans controlled the presidency for 28 of the following 36 years. That reign was interrupted in the election of 1912 when Theodore Roosevelt's independent Bull Moose candidacy split the Republican vote, giving Woodrow Wilson a popular plurality and victory in the electoral college, but Republican Warren Harding regained the White House in the election of 1920.

The New Deal

The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression set the stage for a more activist government and Franklin D. Roosevelt won a landslide victory in the election of 1932, campaigning on a platform of "relief, recovery, and reform". This came to be termed "The New Deal" after a phrase in his acceptance speech. The Democrats also swept to large majorities in both houses of Congress, and among state Governors. Roosevelt altered the nature of the party, away from laissez-faire petite capitalism, and towards an ideology of national government being involved in economic regulation and insurance against hardship.

After winning re-election in 1936, Roosevelt claimed a mandate and embarked on an ambitious legislative program that came to be called "The Second New Deal." He was stymied, however, by an alliance of Republicans and conservative Democrats, as well as by the Supreme Court. Frustrated by the conservative wing of his own party, Roosevelt made an attempt to rid himself of it; in 1938, he actively campaigned against five incumbent conservative Democratic senators, and to appoint more justices to the court. However, Roosevelt's attempt to chastise the conservatives failed when all five senators won re-election despite Roosevelt's efforts, and his attempts to add justices to the court became derisively known as "Court Packing".

Roosevelt's New Deal programs focused on job-creation through public works projects as well as on social welfare programs such as Social Security. It also included sweeping reforms to the banking system, work regulation, transportation, communications, stock markets and attempts to regulate prices. His policies soon paid off by uniting a diverse collection of Democratic voters called the New Deal Coalition, which included labor unions, minorities (most significantly, Catholics and Jews), liberals, and the traditional base of Southern whites. This united voter base allowed Democrats to control the government for much of the next 30 years.

Under FDR, the Democratic Party became identified more closely with "modern liberalism", which included the use of government programs, far reaching national enforcement of civil rights, and an active role for government in regulating the economy.

Civil Rights Movement

In 1924 at the Democratic national convention, a resolution denouncing the white-supremacist Ku Klux Klan was introduced. After considerable debate, the resolution failed by a single vote. This resolution later passed during the 1948 national convention as part of a larger resolution endorsing civil rights.

The New Deal Coalition began to fracture as more Democratic leaders voiced support for civil rights, upsetting the party's base of Southern Democrats. When Harry Truman's platform displayed support for civil rights and anti-segregation laws during the 1948 Democratic National Convention, many Southern Democratic delegates split from the party and formed the "Dixiecrats", led by South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond (who, as a U.S. Senator, would later join the Republican party). Over the next few years, many white Democrats in the "Solid South" drifted away from the party. On the other hand, African Americans, who had traditionally given strong support to the Republican Party since its inception as the "anti-slavery party", shifted to the Democratic party due to its New Deal economic opportunities and support for civil rights.

The party's dramatic reversal on civil rights issues culminated when Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Republicans began their Southern strategy, which aimed to woo the conservative Southern Democrats. Southern Democrats took notice of the fact that 1964 Republican Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater had voted against the Civil Rights Act (an unusual departure from his previous support for such legislation), and in the presidential election of 1964, Goldwater's only electoral victories outside his home state of Arizona were in the states of the deep south.

The degree to which the Southern Democrats had abandoned the party became evident in the 1968 Presidential election when every former Confederate state except Texas voted for either Republican Richard Nixon or independent George Wallace, the latter a former Southern Democrat. Defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey's electoral votes came mainly from the Northern states, marking a dramatic shift from the 1948 election 20 years earlier, when the losing Republican candidate's electoral votes were mainly concentrated in the Northern states.

In 1972, the Democrats nominated South Dakota Senator George McGovern as the party's presidential candidate on a platform which advocated, among other things, withdrawal from Vietnam and a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans. McGovern was defeated in a landslide by incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon, the former winning only Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.

By 1976, however, things had changed dramatically. Nixon, because of the Watergate scandal, had been forced to resign the presidency in 1974. Prior to that, his Vice-President, Spiro Agnew had been forced out by a separate scandal. After Agnew resigned, Nixon appointed Gerald Ford a Republican House Member from Michigan as his replacement. Thus, when Nixon resigned, Ford became the first President in the nation's history to have been neither elected President nor Vice-President. Ford soon pardoned Nixon. Mistrust of the administration, complicated by a combination of economic recession and inflation, sometimes called "stagflation", led to Ford's loss in 1976 to Democrat Jimmy Carter, a former governor of Georgia. In 1980, Carter lost after one term to Ronald Reagan.

1980s-2000s

After the election of Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1980, Democrats who supported many conservative policies were called "Reagan Democrats." Many in the so-called "Reagan Democrats" faction of the party eventually joined the Republican Party.

The 1980s are often seen as the era in which the old New Deal coalition finally collapsed as Reagan handily defeated former Vice-President (under Carter) and Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale, a New Deal stalwart, in 1984. Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis also lost in 1988 to Reagan Vice-President George H. W. Bush.

In response to these losses, the Democratic Leadership Council worked to move the Party more towards the ideological center. With the Party retaining left-of-center supporters as well as supporters holding moderate or conservative views on some issues, the Democrats became generally a catch all party with widespread appeal to most opponents of the Republicans. This includes organized labor, educators, environmentalists, supporters of civil rights, progressive taxation proponents, gays, lesbians, blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Native Americans, supporters of gun control, pro-choice groups and other opponents of the social conservatism favored by many Republicans.

In the 1990s the Democratic Party re-invigorated itself, in part by moving to the right on economic and social policy. President Bill Clinton, who defeated the incumbent President Bush in 1992, implemented a balanced federal budget and welfare reform, traditionally Republican causes. Labor unions, which had been steadily losing membership since the 1960s, found they had also lost political clout inside the Democratic Party: Clinton enacted the NAFTA free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico over the strong objection of the unions. Those on the left of the party were dismayed at this agreement as well.

When the New Democrat movement attempted to move the Democratic agenda in favor of a more centrist approach, prominent Democrats from the moderate and conservative factions (such as Chairman Terry McAuliffe) assumed leadership of the party and its direction. In addition to its perceived abandonment of labor unions, Democratic candidates' acceptance and use of large sums of corporate donations for campaign finances; the inconsistency of some Democratic officeholders (including Democratic leaders) on environmental, financial, labor and other issues that were core to the party; and the D.N.C.'s, D.L.C.'s and N.D.N.'s acceptance of monied interests, all unintentionally contributed to a negative public image of the Democratic Party in some people's eyes. Some liberals and progressives felt alienated from the Democratic Party, which they felt had become unconcerned with the interests of common people. Democrats challenged the validity of such critiques, citing the important Democratic role in pushing progressive reforms in many states and localities. The far-left Green Party emerged as a vehicle for resentment against the Democrats in the 2000 election. This party believed that centrist Democrats were not safeguarding progressivism in government.

In the 2000 presidential election, the Democrats ran Vice President Al Gore, a founding member and former chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council. Although Gore and Governor George W. Bush, the candidate of the Republican Party, clearly disagreed on issues such as abortion, tax cuts, gun control, environmentalism, foreign policy, public education, support for trade unions, alternative energy research, global warming, and affirmative action, some critics -- Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader in particular -- asserted that Bush and Gore were too similar because they held the same views on free trade and reductions in government-provided social welfare.

On election day, Gore won the popular vote by just over 500,000 votes, but lost in the Electoral College by four votes. Some election observers blamed the Nader candidacy for Gore's defeat. They pointed to the states of New Hampshire (4 electoral college votes) and Florida (25 electoral college votes), where Nader's total votes exceeded Governor Bush's margin of victory. In Florida, Nader received 97,000 votes; Bush defeated Gore by a mere 1,000. Winning either Florida or New Hampshire would have given Gore enough electoral votes to win the presidency.

The Democratic Senators went from the majority in the 106th Congress to a split minority in the 107th Congress. However, that changed when Sen. Jim Jeffords (Vermont) changed party affiliation from Republican to independent, which effectively returned majority privileges back the Democratic Senators. Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota continued to lead the Senate Democrats with an agenda of compromise.

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the nation's focus changed to issues of national security and increasing isolation of the United States as the sole remaining and increasingly proactive superpower. All but one Congressional Democrat voted with their Republican colleagues to authorize President Bush's 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Daschle pushed for his party to approve what are arguably two of the most controversial and inflammatory (to opponents) measures the Senate has ever approved: the USA PATRIOT Act and the invasion of Iraq. The Democrats were split over the 2003 invasion of Iraq and increasingly expressed concerns about both the justification and progress of the War on Terrorism and the domestic effects including challenges to civil liberties and privacy from the USA PATRIOT Act.

In the wake of the financial frauds of Enron and other corporations, Congressional Democrats were integral in pushing for and developing a legal overhaul of business accounting with the intention of preventing further accounting fraud; Congress unanimously approved it and Pres. Bush signed it into law. With job losses and bankruptcies across regions and industries increasing in 2001 and 2002, the Democrats generally campaigned on the issue of economic recovery. The Democratic Party lost a few seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and three seats (Georgia as Max Cleland was unseated, Minnesota as Paul Wellstone died and his succeeding Democratic candidate lost the election, and Missouri as Jean Carnahan was unseated) in the Senate, failing to regain the majority in the House and losing their majority in the Senate. Also, while Democrats gained governorships in New Mexico (where Bill Richardson was elected), Arizona (Janet Napolitano) and Wyoming (Dave Freudenthal), other Democrats lost governorships in South Carolina (Jim Hodges), Alabama (Don Siegelman) and, for the first time in more than a century, Georgia (Roy Barnes). In considering that most Americans had become more concerned about corporate crime and other economic issues, the election was preceded with widespread debate over how and why the Democrats lost. [ref3]

The Democrats began fielding Presidential candidates as early as 2002 Dec., when Gore announced he would not run in 2004. For a time, Gen. Wesley Clark, an opponent of the war in Iraq, was the frontrunner for the nomination. Ex-Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, another opponent of the war and a critic of the Democratic establishment, was the frontrunner leading into the Democratic primary elections. Clark and, in particular, Dean both had immense grassroots support. John Kerry, though, received the nomination because he was widely seen as more "electable" than the often blunt Dean.

In 2003-2004, with layoffs of American workers occurring in various industries due to the "shipping of jobs abroad," some Democrats (including John Kerry, ex-Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont and Senatorial candidate Erskine Bowles of North Carolina) began to refine their positions on free trade and some even question their past support for it. By 2004, the failure of George W. Bush's administration to find weapons of mass destruction, mounting combat casualties in Iraq, and the lack of any end point for the War on Terror were also issues in the American national elections. That year, Democrats generally campaigned on surmounting the jobless recovery, exiting Iraq, and their own proposals for policies on counterterrorism.

Despite strong campaigning and the faltering image of George W. Bush and the Republican Party, the Democrats were not victorious nationally. Kerry narrowly lost both the popular and electoral vote. Republicans gained four seats in the Senate and three seats in the House of Representatives. Also, for the first time since Barry Goldwater of Arizona won his first election to the Senate, the Democratic leader of the Senate lost reelection. In the end there were 3,660 Democratic state legislators across the nation to the Republicans' 3,557, and Democrats gained governorships in Louisiana (after a statewide election in 2003), New Hampshire and Montana. However, the Democrats lost the governorship of Missouri and a legislative majority in Georgia - which had once been a Democratic stronghold since Reconstruction.

Following the elections of 2004 was debate of why and how the Democrats lost. Some argued that the Democratic Party had lost Clinton's "vision thing," and lacked clear policies or alternatives. In these arguments, the platform adopted at the 2004 Democratic National Convention is sometimes cited; three partisan insiders authored it and mostly vaguely addressing a minimal number of issues across its 56 pages, and with only passing mentions of women's rights, gay rights, environmental protection and other issues that were previously consistent strongholds of the Democratic Party. [ref4] Others said that the Democrats did not have an inspiring story to tell (whereas Republicans touted that their candidate, Pres. Bush, "met the call of duty" in the aftermath of 9/11). [ref5]

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) has asserted that Kerry lost because he did not do enough to reach out to rural citizens. [ref6] Some suggested that the Democrats had received too negative a public image and that Republicans exploited that image. [ref7] A commonly accepted argument is that the Republicans ran in opposition to gay rights and used state ballot initiatives against same-sex marriage to attract more so-called "values voters" to vote. [ref8] Some voters, especially in Ohio, have alleged that votes in Ohio and other states were illegally suppressed and mistabulated in favor of the Republican candidate, resulting in substantial uncertainty about the actual outcome. In Florida, Bev Harris discovered garbage bags full of ballots on which votes had been switched. (see 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities) The controversies led U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer of California and several Democratic U.S. Representatives to force a Congressional debate on the issue when the 109th Congress first convened and in such propose working together to fix problems with the election system.

Another aspect of the Democratic Party's defeat in 2004 was the apparent loss of overwhelming popularity the party once had with Hispanic voters. In 1996, President Clinton won 72 percent of the Latino vote and in 2000 Al Gore won 65 percent of the Latino voters, however in 2004 John Kerry only received 55 percent of the Latino vote. Overall, President Bush increased his percentage among Hispanics by 9 percent, from 35 in 2000 to 44 percent in 2004.

Since then, many Democrats have voiced serious concern over the future of their party. In this situation, some prominent Democrats - including the party's leaders - began to rethink the party's direction, and a variety of strategies for moving forward were voiced. Some have suggested moving towards the center to regain seats in the House and Senate and possibly win the presidency in 2008. One topic of discussion is the party's policies surrounding reproductive rights, especially abortion. Rethinking the party's position on gun policy became a matter of discussion, brought up by Howard Dean, Bill Richardson, Brian Schweitzer and other Democrats who had won governorships in states where Second Amendment rights were important to many voters. [ref9] In What's the Matter with Kansas?, commentator Thomas Frank wrote the Democrats needed to return to campaigning on economic populism.

These debates were reflected in the 2005 campaign for chair of the Democratic National Committee, which Howard Dean won over the objections of many party insiders. Dean sought to move the Democratic strategy away from the establishment of Washington, DC, and bolster support for the party's state and local chapters. Dean also asserted, of the issue of bipartisanship, that "there are some things we can support the President on", but that the Democrats' should oppose the President's agenda "when he's wrong." [ref10]

When the 109th Congress convened, the Democratic Senators chose Harry Reid of Nevada as their leader and Richard Durbin of Illinois to replace Reid as their Assistant Minority Leader. Reid convinced the Democratic Senators to vote more as a bloc on some important issues, something which forced the Republican majority to abandon its push for Privatization of Social Security and instatement of the so-called "nuclear option" to end judicial filibuster. The Senate did not vote on either proposal. [ref5]

Presidential tickets

Refer also to: List of Presidents of the United States

Prominent figures of the Democratic Party

Currently notable Democrats

• Evan Bayh (1955), U.S. senator from Indiana
• Joseph Biden (1942), U.S. senator from Delaware, candidate for the Democratic nomination for president
• Barbara Boxer (1940), U.S. senator from California
• Jerry Brown (1938), mayor of Oakland, California, former governor of California, candidate for Democratic nomination for president
• Robert Byrd (1917), U.S. senator from West Virginia, former Senate Majority Leader, candidate for the Democratic nomination for president
• Wesley Clark (1944), former NATO commander, candidate for Democratic nomination for president
• Hillary Clinton (1947), U.S. senator from New York, former First Lady
• John Conyers (1929), U.S. congressman from Michigan
• Richard M. Daley (1942), mayor of Chicago, Illinois
• Tom Daschle (1947), former U.S. senator from South Dakota, former Senate Minority Leader
• Howard Dean (1948), former governor of Vermont, candidate for Democratic nomination for president, current chair of the Democratic National Committee
• Richard Durbin, (1944), U.S. senator from Illinois, Senate Minority Whip
• Mike Easley, (1950), Governor of North Carolina
• John Edwards (1953), former U.S. senator from North Carolina, candidate for Democratic nomination for President, Democratic Vice Presidential nominee 2004
• Russ Feingold (1953), U.S. senator from Wisconsin
• Tom Harkin (1939), U.S. senator from Iowa, candidate for Democratic nomination for president
• Jesse Jackson (1941), civil rights activist, candidate for Democratic nomination for president
• Ted Kennedy (1932), U.S. senator from Massachusetts, candidate for Democratic nomination for president
• Dennis Kucinich (1946), U.S. congressman from Ohio, candidate for Democratic nomination for president
• Patrick Leahy (1940), U.S. senator from Vermont
• Norman Mineta (1931), Secretary of Transportation, only Democrat in the Bush cabinet.
• Cynthia McKinney (1955), U.S. congresswoman from Georgia
• Barack Obama (1961), U.S. senator from Illinois
• Martin O'Malley, mayor of Baltimore, candidate for governor of Maryland
• Nancy Pelosi (1940), House Minority Leader from California
• Harry Reid (1939), Senate Minority Leader from Nevada
• Bill Richardson (1947), governor of New Mexico, former Energy Secretary
• Charles Schumer (1950), U.S. senator from New York, chairman of Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
• Al Sharpton (1954), civil rights activist, candidate for Democratic nomination for president
• Louise Slaughter (1929), U.S. congresswoman from New York, Ranking Member of the House Rules Committee
• Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General of New York, candidate for governor of New York
• Antonio Villaraigosa, mayor of Los Angeles, California
• Tom Vilsack (1950), governor of Iowa, chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council
• Mark Warner (1954), governor of Virginia
• Anthony A. Williams, mayor of Washington, D.C.

Historically notable Democrats

• Carl Albert (1908�2000), Speaker of the House for six years (1971-1977)
• Clinton Anderson, U.S. senator from New Mexico for 24 years
• Reubin Askew, Governor of Florida, candidate for Democratic nomination for president