I have long argued that there never was a time when the Democrats were the more "conservative" party than their opponents
where economic issues were concerned. (This is an important qualification.) i See my post at
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...onservative-party.421348/page-2#post-15208325
***
A biographer of the wealthy merchants of New York wrote in the 1860s:
"It is a very common fact that for thirty-four years [since the revival of
two-party politics in 1828] very few merchants of the first class have
been Democrats. The mass of large and little merchants have, like a flock
of sheep, gathered either in the Federalist, Whig, Clay, or Republican
folds. The Democratic merchants could have easily been stored in a large
Eighth Avenue railroad car."
Quoted in Seymour Martin Lipset, *Political Man: The Social Bases of
Politics*, p. 312. Lipset was writing in the 1950s when there were many
more liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats than there are today,
and when the rhetoric of each party was centrist. He warned his readers
not to be misled by this fact; as he noted, even if an individual
Republican candidate is to the left of an individual Democrat, the parties
still rely on different bases of support, in terms of classes, ethnic
groups, and religions (p. 329):
"The differences between the social bases of the two major parties which
have held up for more than a century and a half suggest that those who
believe in the Tweedledee-Tweedledum theory of American politics have been
taken in by campaign rhetoric and miss the underlying basis of the
cleavage. It is especially ironic that the Marxist critics of American
politics who pride themselves on differentiating between substructure and
ideology have mistaken the ideology for the substructure." He adds in a
footnote:
"The conservative strata, on the other hand, have repeatedly recognized
that the differences between the parties are fundamental, even though in
given historical situations the Republicans may nominate a candidate who
is as liberal as, or even more liberal than, his Democratic rival. Thus
in 1904 the progressive Republican Theodore Roosevelt ran against the
conservative Democrat Alton Parker for the presidency. And the New York
*Sun*, the newspaper with closest ties to Wall Street, wrote: 'We prefer
the impulsive candidate of the party of conservatism to the conservative
candidate of the party which the business interests regard as permanently
and dangerously impulsive.'
"It should be remembered that it was a conservative Democrat, Grover
Cleveland, who, in 1886, sent the first message to Congress on labor. In
it he urged that a commission on labor disputes be set up which could
investigate and even arbitrate if so requested by the parties involved or
by the state government. In 1888 in his last message to Congress after
being defeated for re-election, Cleveland denounced 'the communism of
combined wealth and capital, the outgrowth of overwhelming cupidity and
selfishness...not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty
and toil...'...It is important to note that Cleveland was much more
conservative in his second term of office when he no longer had to
anticipate facing the voters than in his first one, and that he was
repudiated by the Democratic party at its next convention in 1896. In
fact, Cleveland was the only President elected in his own right to be
repudiated by a convention of his own party while still holding office.."
Lipset also notes that even what seems to be the most "conservative"
stance of pre-New Deal Democrats--their hostile attitude toward blacks--
reflected their lower-class (white) basis of support. Clement
Vallandigham, for example, argued in 1861 that "The great dividing line
was always between capital and labor" and that the "monied interest" used
anti-slavery and sectionalism as a trick to weaken its opponents....
...the class divergences between the parties do not necessarily dictate
either activist government or laissez-faire. In the nineteenth century,
the lower classes were more concerned with stopping federal programs that
they regarded as favoring the rich (high tariffs and the internal
improvements they paid for, the national bank, etc.) while business was
interested in positive help from the government, not mere laissez-faire.
(Here too there were exceptions: workers in protected industries, like
steel, favored high tariffs, and poor farmers who needed roads to connect
them with the rest of the world favored internal improvements; conversely,
some busines interests, which relied on the import of cheap raw materials,
favored free trade.) In the twentieth century, the lower classes have
generally supported a more activist federal government (in terms of
supporting organized labor, social insurance, etc.) while business has
theoretically been more in favor of laissez-faire (though in practice it
still wants positive assistance from the federal government). The point,
though, is that in both eras the Democrats have generally been more in
favor of action--or, in the nineteenth century, inaction--to benefit the
lower classes, and their opponents (Federalist, Whig, or Republican) in
favor of a more pro-business government (which they would of course argue
benefits the economy as a whole, and therefore all classes). In that
sense, the Democrats have always been the party of the economic "left,"
the Federalists, Whigs, and Republicans of the "right." Conservative
accusations that Democrats are engaging in "class warfare" go back more
than a century and a half, at least to Andrew Jackson's Bank veto message,
where he scandalized conservatives by saying that the Bank oppressed "the
humble members of society - the farmers, mechanics, and laborers."
***
Since people often bring up TR and the Progressive Era, I'll quote another old post of mine:
"... even when TR was president in OTL, congressional Democrats often provided more support for his "Square Deal" policies than did Republicans. David Sarasohn has noted in
The Party of Reform, p. 3, "From 1905 to 1908, the nation grew accustomed to the spectacle of congressional Democrats providing the strongest support for a Republican president "...
"Indeed, it would be more accurate to say that congressional Republicans in the early twentieth century were the party of Joe Cannon, not of TR. Note that Norris' anti-Cannon coup of 1910 depended primarily on Democrats for its success: "coalition of 42 progressive Republicans and the entire delegation of 149
Democrats in a revolt..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Gurney_Cannon ..."
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...es-president-in-the-20s.474806/#post-19454267
