![]() ![]() Several discrete historical comparisons will serve to aid strategic thinking about a left electoral strategy. What can we learn from the party realignment of the 1850s? By the 1850s, the parties entered into a period of transformative crisis. Like the Democrats of today, Whigs were united in their opposition to what they saw as a reactionary party but, also like today’s Democrats, antislavery Whigs were deeply compromised by their partisan alliance. As strange as it may seem, most anti-slavery politicians and free men of color in the North were Whigs, in many cases even into the 1850s. In the 1830s, National Republicans coalesced with other reform-oriented groups to form the nationalist (as in statist), development-oriented Whig Party, whose chief leader was Henry Clay, a moderate Upper South slaveholder. Jackson won resoundingly, and his Democratic Party became the most powerful political force for a generation, winning six of eight presidential races in 1828-1856. ![]() He was opposed by Andrew Jackson, whose new Democratic Party (also called “the Democracy”) advocated the republicanism of Jefferson, especially in its laissez-faire, states’ rights, herrenvolk (master race) dimensions. President John Quincy Adams ran as a “National Republican” avowing much of the old Federalist program. The Second Party System emerged in 1828 as these ideological trends took new organizational forms. The main divisions were “sectional,” meaning North versus South. By the 1820s, virtually everyone claimed to be a Republican. The Federalists faded away while becoming increasingly anti-Southern and anti-slavery. From 1800 to 1824, Southern Republicans dominated national politics via three Virginian presidents: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. Jeffersonian Republicans put states’ rights and the prerogatives of the South first, but they drew support from northerners who saw Federalists as pro-British aristocrats. Most free black men and early abolitionists favored them. Federalists were ardent nationalists, favoring a strong state, and in some senses progressive. In the 1790s, the revolutionaries divided into Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists and Thomas Jefferson’s Republicans. There were two long-lasting “party systems” before the Civil War. political parties leading up to the period of party disintegration and formation that takes place in the 1850s. Second, it’s worth giving a brief pre-history of U.S. In the 1850s, for instance, voters were presented with up to seven statewide tickets, including three different varieties of Democrats. Many activists know that because of the legality of “fusion” tickets, the Empire State has featured many so-called “third parties” in its recent history, including the American Labor, Liberal, Right to Life, and Conservative parties and (most recently) the Working Families Party. Inside the U.S., we can see what vigorous multi-party competition looks like via the political history of New York state. Go to other electoral democracies, and you will find multiple parties putting up lists of candidates, often a dozen or more, because ballot access is open. This restriction forces all kinds of partisans, from far right to radical left, into one or the other if they want to have any access to the state. In other words, they determine for whom you can vote. What distinguishes the U.S.’s vaunted “two-party system” is that both of the party formations are really parastatal apparatuses, in that they exert exclusive legal control over access to the ballot. political parties-is not a political party in the usual sense, but rather a floating coalition or vehicle. ![]() party system itself and in the period leading up to the crisis of the 1850s.įirst, I want to emphasize my agreement with Fletcher and Davidson’s point that the Democratic Party-like all U.S. party systemīefore tracing the similarities and differences between the 1850s and today, a few introductory remarks are in order about the U.S. history will clarify the depth of the challenges facing us, and some of the opportunities as well. Nonetheless, Fletcher and Davidson invoked this precedent and we should take it seriously. Examining the only prior process of party decomposition leading to ideological realignment in U.S. It may be a hard sell to convince contemporary readers that the collapse of the Whigs and the birth of the Republicans in the 1850s is relevant to today’s partisan flux. Doing so, they argue, will pave the way for a “transformative crisis,” much like the crisis of the Whig Party in the 1850s, from which a new, working class party can emerge. and Carl Davidson have recently argued that leftists should work inside-and also alongside-the left flank of the Democratic Party to grow a new party inside the husk of the old one. ![]()
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