AHC: The Democrats Collapse by 1880

The American political party.

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to, with a PoD no earlier than the firing on Fort Sumter, have the Democratic Party collapse by 1880. The North has to have won the Civil War. The Party can still exist, but it just has to be a rump with nothing but history to have the respect of the ther political players. No credit for just having a name change.

Go!
 
easy as pie, the Republicans protect black civil rights, the deep south is ruled by the freeman-carpetbagger-scalawag coalition in 1872 the GOP splits (as in OTL) Greeley doesn't do any better but lives long enough to have all his votes cast for him, with the GOP in control of the deep south and midwest most conservative join Grant's Stalwarts and the GOP's machine, white southerners and others latch on to the Liberal Republicans that push reform of the civil service and a more hands off view of civil rights for the freeman
 
Everything that the above poster said...

I imagine eventually the second party would just become the Liberal Party. the nature of the American political system, whereby it is Elections-Based far more than it is ideology-based, means that no matter what the names of the Big Two are, the same basic centrism will rule.

The only thing that might affect this cynical scenario, however, is that there will be no "Waving the Bloody Shirt" and the South might not go through that odd combination of "cordon sanataire" from 1880-1930 mixed with civil rights obstructionism from 1930-1970.
 
Honestly--yeah. No Democrats to win over the unions makes some form of Labor Party--possibly with an alliance with the Populist movement--highly likely.
 
OTL was like you're wanting

Real history's way ahead of you. It's true!

Though there were local democratic parties after the Civil War, there was no real national one for decades. There were occasional (D) Presidents, but the national coalition that you need to get in national power was weakish all the way 'til FDR.

The Dem Big Tent was slashed to pieces by two bad conservative Presidents of the same high caliber as Bush -except, they had more damage available to them - they could cause a Civil War, which they did. Yes, back then, conservatives were the Dem label. After the war, the national coalition stayed broken.

Lincoln was elected because, after President Pierce and Buchanan's mistakes, maybe five northerners were willing to vote for Southern Dem, or even strongly pro-slavery northerners like Pierce. That separation between North and Southern Dems stayed after the Civil War. Southern enthusiasm for sharecropping, slavery in all but name, kept the divide wide. Also, Northern democrats were far more liberal than the still-conservative Southern dems.
 
Though there were local democratic parties after the Civil War, there was no real national one for decades. There were occasional (D) Presidents, but the national coalition that you need to get in national power was weakish all the way 'til FDR

Not quite -- the Wilson Presidency prior to the 1918 midterms was solidly controlled by the Democrats...
 
Yeah, Wilson had a national coalition, as a liberal, but way racist southerner. BUT - it took (R) 3rd-term fatigue and Taftish mediocrity to get him In. And, it was three presidential terms more before another (D) President, FDR, came, so it can hardly've been called Dem competitive yet,
 
Yeah, Wilson had a national coalition, as a liberal, but way racist southerner. BUT - it took (R) 3rd-term fatigue and Taftish mediocrity to get him In. And, it was three presidential terms more before another (D) President, FDR, came, so it can hardly've been called Dem competitive yet,

the same would be true of the Dems 1968-1989
 
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