Democratic Party

The Democratic Party is the longest-lived political party in the United States. The Democratic Party traces its origins to the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other influential opponents of the Federalists in 1792. However, the modern Democratic party truly arose in the 1830s, with the election of Andrew Jackson. Since the division of the Republican Party in the election of 1912, it has gradually positioned itself to the left of the Republican Party on economic and social issues.

Democratic Party in The Man With the Iron Heart
While the Democratic Party had held power since 1932, steering the country through the New Deal and World War II, the rise of the German Freedom Front in 1945 and the substantial casualties it inflicted on American troops helped turn public opinion away from the Democrats. Despite the exhortations of President Harry Truman, the opposition Republican party gained control of Congress in the elections of 1946.

Democratic Party in Southern Victory
Prior to the War of Secession, the Democratic Party was friendly to Southern interests, and after the war, advocated taking a soft line against the Confederate States. This position was ultimately rejected by American voters with the 1880 election of Republican James G. Blaine to the Presidency.

Following the Second Mexican War, and the marginalization of the Republican Party with former President Abraham Lincoln's defection to the Socialist Party, the Democrats were able to outflank the Republicans on the issue of Remembrance, and they adopted a hard line foreign policy and the gearing of the entire US society to nationalism and revanchism. This plan came to fruition in the Great War. US politics stabilised as a two-party system with the Democrats to the Right and the Socialists to the Left, the Republicans surviving as a rump party having a few representatives in Congress but no hope of ever regaining power.

Following the Great War, the Socialist Party got political mileage by attacking the Democrats' economic and labor policies. In 1920 President Theodore Roosevelt was defeated by Upton Sinclair. The two decades saw the Democrats and the Socialists trading power back and forth. While Sinclair's administration was successful, his Socialist successor, Hosea Blackford, was unable to effectively cope with the economic depression that took place after the stock market crash, and appeared weak in the Pacific War with Japan. Briefly, the Dems were able to recapture power, gaining a majority in Congress in 1930, and electing a Democrat, Calvin Coolidge (whose term was served by Herbert Hoover upon Coolidge's pre-inauguration death) in 1932. But, when the Democrats appeared weak on the economic depression, the American public returned to the Socialists, electing Al Smith in 1936.

However, the Democrats began to look more attractive when Jake Featherston became Confederate President and took an extremely hard line against the US. The Democrats opposed the Richmond Agreement brokered between Smith and Featherston in 1940, and the ensuing plebiscites in Sequoyah, Houston, and Kentucky. They were proven correct when Featherston used the Agreement as a casus belli to invade the US. However, as the Socialists supported the Second Great War with enthusiasm equal to that of the Democrats', taking advantage of the rising tide of nationalism in the US electorate proved difficult.

Nonetheless, the Democrats were able to regain power after the Second Great War, despite the fact that the Socialists led the country to victory. In 1944, the Democrats gained a majority in Congress, and saw the election of Thomas Dewey to the office of the President.

Democratic Party in Worldwar
The Democratic Party, under the leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt, had become the party of liberalism in the wake of the Great Depression. When World War II began, the Democrats were firmly in power in both the executive and the legislative branches. Nonetheless, the mood the country overall remained isolationist. However, the United States entered the war in December, 1941, when tensions between the U.S. and Japan led to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. As the United States set its industrial base on a war-footing, World War II was interrupted by the Race Invasion.

Although the Democrats were able to help steer the country through the war and maintain the country's sovereignty (at an admittedly high price), the mood of the country shifted in the years after the 1944 Peace of Cairo. By 1960, the Republican Party was viewed as the hardline party on the issue of national security, in anticipation of the arrival of the Race's Colonization Fleet.

Democratic Party in Joe Steele
The populist stance of the Democratic Party became a vehicle for Joe Steele's rise to the presidency, and his subsequent imposition of tyranny in the United States.

Democratic Party in "News From the Front"
The Democratic Party was fractured early in 1942, as the American public and press turned against President Franklin D. Roosevelt's handling of World War II. Vice President Henry Wallace publicly broke with Roosevelt, questioning the president's veracity on the war in the first months of the year. By June, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Hatton Sumners (also a Democrat) had met to discuss initiating impeachment proceedings against Roosevelt.