Factions in the Democratic Party (United States)#Liberals

{{main|Modern liberalism in the United States|Social liberalism}}

{{see also|Center for American Progress}}

{{multiple image

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| footer = The Kennedy family dynasty was extremely influential to the development and popularity of the modern American liberal movement throughout the 1960s.

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| caption1 = The Kennedy brothers: 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy (right), Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (left), and Senator Ted Kennedy (middle) in 1963

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Modern liberalism in the United States began during the Progressive Era with President Theodore Roosevelt (a Republican) and his Square Deal and New Nationalism policies, with center-left ideas increasingly leaning toward the political philosophy of social liberalism, better known in the United States as modern liberalism. Following Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, Harry S. Truman's Fair Deal, John F. Kennedy's New Frontier, and Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society (the latter of which established Medicare and Medicaid) further established the popularity of liberalism in the nation and became part the Democratic tradition.{{cite book |last=Schulman |first=Bruce J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZaN2AwAAQBAJ |title=Student's Guide to the Presidency |date=2009 |publisher=CQ Press |isbn=978-1-4522-6742-5 |location=Washington, D.C. |pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=ZaN2AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA88 88]–[https://books.google.com/books?id=ZaN2AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA93 93] |chapter=Democratic Party (1828– ) |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZaN2AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA88}}{{rp|page=91}} While the resurgence of conservatism and the Third Way of Bill Clinton's New Democrats briefly weakened the influence of modern liberalism, Barack Obama acted as an ideological bridge. While characterizing himself as a New Democrat, Obama toed the ideological line between the Third Way and modern liberalism.{{cite news |last1=Martin |first1=Jonathan |last2=Lee |first2 =Carole |title=Obama: 'I am a New Democrat'|url=https://www.politico.com/story/2009/03/obama-i-am-a-new-democrat-019862 |work=Politico |date=March 10, 2009 |access-date=May 31, 2022}}{{cite web |last=Yglesias |first=Matthew |title=Bill Clinton is still a star, but today's Democrats are dramatically more liberal than his party|url=https://www.vox.com/2016/7/26/12280198/democrats-changed-since-1992 |website=Vox |date=July 26, 2016 |access-date=May 31, 2022}}

File:Self-identified liberals 2018 Gallup.svg poll:{{Cite web|last=Jones|first=Jeffrey M.|date=2019-02-22|title=Conservatives Greatly Outnumber Liberals in 19 U.S. States|url=https://news.gallup.com/poll/247016/conservatives-greatly-outnumber-liberals-states.aspx|access-date=2021-12-27|publisher=Gallup}}{{legend|#0f0fd6;|32% and above}}{{legend|#3333ff;|28–31%}}{{legend|#7373ff;|24–27%}}{{legend|#9f9fff;|20–23%}}{{legend|#bbbbff;|16–19%}}{{legend|#dcdcff;|15% and under}}]]

The key legislative achievement of the Obama administration, the passage and enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), was generally supported among liberal Democrats.{{cite news |last=Clement |first=Scott |title=Moderate Democrats are quitting on Obamacare |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2013/07/23/moderate-democrats-are-quitting-on-obamacare/ |newspaper=The Washington Post |access-date=17 May 2020}} Under Obama, Democrats achieved an expansion of LGBT rights and federal hate crime laws, rescinded the Mexico City policy (later reinstituted by President Donald Trump) and the ban on federal taxpayer dollars to fund research on embryonic stem cells, and implemented the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and the Cuban thaw.{{cite news |last=Ingraham |first=Christopher |title=Obama says marijuana should be treated like 'cigarettes or alcohol' |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/30/obama-says-marijuana-should-be-treated-like-cigarettes-or-alcohol/ |newspaper=The Washington Post |access-date=17 May 2020}}

In 2011, the Democratic Leadership Council, which supported centrist and Third Way positions, was dissolved. In 2016, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton eschewed her husband's "New Covenant" centrism and pursued more liberal proposals, such as rolling back mandatory minimum sentencing laws, a debt-free college tuition plan for public university students, and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.{{cite news|url=https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/hillary-clinton-was-liberal-hillary-clinton-is-liberal/|title=Hillary Clinton Was Liberal. Hillary Clinton Is Liberal|first=Harry|last=Enten|date=May 19, 2015|website=FiveThirtyEight|access-date=January 3, 2025}}{{cite news|url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/07/26/bill-clinton-democratic-convention/87542864/|title=Party of Clinton looks different than in 1992|first=Heidi|last=Przybyla|date=July 26, 2016|work=USA Today|access-date=January 3, 2025}} President Joe Biden, a moderate Democrat, also adopted more traditional liberal policies during his presidency and was more willing to address the concern of the progressive wing than Presidents Clinton and Obama.{{cite news |last1=Kapur |first1=Sahil |last2=Seitz-Wald |first2=Alex |title=Joe Biden is proving progressives wrong. And they're loving it |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/joe-biden-proving-progressives-wrong-they-re-loving-it-n1265089 |work=NBC News |date=April 30, 2021 |access-date=May 31, 2022}}

Liberals include most of academia,{{cite news|title=College Faculties A Most Liberal Lot, Study Finds|last=Kurtz|first=Howard|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8427-2005Mar28.html|newspaper=The Washington Post|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120604090510/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8427-2005Mar28.html|archive-date=June 4, 2012|access-date=July 2, 2007|date=March 29, 2005|url-status=dead}} as well as large portions of the professional class.{{cite magazine |last=Levitz |first=Eric |date=October 19, 2022 |title=How the Diploma Divide Is Remaking American Politics |url=https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/education-polarization-diploma-divide-democratic-party-working-class.html |access-date=October 21, 2022 |magazine=New York |quote=Blue America is an increasingly wealthy and well-educated place. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Americans without college degrees were more likely than university graduates to vote Democratic. But that gap began narrowing in the late 1960s before finally flipping in 2004 ... A more educated Democratic coalition is, naturally, a more affluent one ... In every presidential election from 1948 to 2012, white voters in the top 5 percent of America's income distribution were more Republican than those in the bottom 95 percent. Now, the opposite is true: Among America's white majority, the rich voted to the left of the middle class and the poor in 2016 and 2020, while the poor voted to the right of the middle class and the rich. |archive-date=October 20, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221020215535/https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/education-polarization-diploma-divide-democratic-party-working-class.html |url-status=live }} The liberal wing differs from the traditional organized labor base. According to political scientists Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins, the increase in educational attainment in the United States has led to the increase of liberalism in the Democratic Party.{{cite book |last1=Grossmann |first1=Matt |last2=Hopkins |first2=David A. |date=|title=Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics |url=https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/politics-international-relations/american-government-politics-and-policy/polarized-degrees-how-diploma-divide-and-culture-war-transformed-american-politics#contentsTabAnchor |access-date=May 23, 2024 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-316-51201-2 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=tN4aEQAAQBAJ&pg=PA2 2] |quote=Democrats have become the home of highly-educated citizens with progressive social views who prefer credentialed experts to make policy decisions, while Republicans have become the populist champions of white voters without college degrees who increasingly distrust teachers, scientists, journalists, universities, non-profit organizations, and even corporations.}}

{{main|Third Way|New Democrats (United States)}}

{{see also|Blue Dog Coalition|Centrism in the United States|Problem Solvers Caucus|Third Way (United States)}}

{{multiple image

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| footer = The Clinton-Gore administration marked the height of the politically moderate Third Way movement (also known as Clintonism) within the Democratic Party during the 1990s.

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| caption1 = 42nd U.S. President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore in 1993

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Generally speaking, moderate Democrats are Democrats who are fiscally moderate-to-conservative and socially moderate-to-liberal.{{cite magazine|url=https://www.newyorker.com/news/campaign-chronicles/on-the-campaign-trail-with-michael-bloomberg-money-talks|title=On the Campaign Trail with Michael Bloomberg, Money Talks|first=Eric|last=Lach|magazine=The New Yorker |date=March 2, 2020|access-date=January 3, 2025}} They are more likely to be located in swing states and swing seats.{{cite web |last=Brenes |first=Michael |date=July 12, 2018 |title=Ocasio-Cortez shows the Democrats are moving left. But liberal centrists are still necessary |url=https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/7/12/17562562/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-tammy-duckworth-centrist-democrats-midwest |access-date=January 4, 2025 |website=Vox}} The success of modern liberalism was weakened with the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the ensuing tide of conservative popularity in response to a perception of liberal failure.{{cite book |last=Krugman |first=Paul |url=https://www.google.com/books/?id=k7Gf2nzCHtMC |title=Conscience of a Liberal |date=2007 |location=New York|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |isbn=978-0-393-06069-0 }}{{page needed|date=January 2025}} In reaction to angst following Reagan's landslide victory over liberal Democrat Walter Mondale in the 1984 United States presidential election, the Third Way movement was formed. It is associated with the presidency of Bill Clinton and the New Democrats.{{cite journal |last=Hale |first=Jon F. |year=1995 |title=The Making of the New Democrats |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/2152360 |journal=Political Science Quarterly |volume=110 |issue=2 |pages=207–232 |doi=10.2307/2152360|jstor=2152360 |access-date=January 9, 2025}}{{cite magazine |last=From |first=Al |title=Recruiting Bill Clinton |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/recruiting-bill-clinton/281946/ |magazine=The Atlantic |date=December 3, 2013 |access-date=May 17, 2020}}

During the 1992 United States presidential election, Clinton and running mate Al Gore ran as New Democrats who were willing to synthesize fiscally conservative views with the more culturally liberal position of the Democratic Party ethos, or to harmonize center-left and center-right politics. Clinton was both the first Democrat elected president since 1976 and the first re-elected to a second full term since 1948. Most moderate Democrats in the United States House of Representatives are members of the New Democrat Coalition, although there is considerable overlap in the membership of New Democrats and Blue Dogs, with most Blue Dogs also being New Democrats.{{cite web |last=Skelley |first=Geoffrey |title=The House Will Have Just As Many Moderate Democrats As Progressives Next Year |url=https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-house-will-have-just-as-many-moderate-democrats-as-progressives-next-year/ |website=FiveThirtyEight |date=December 20, 2018 |access-date=17 May 2020}} Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden largely tried to unify the various factions of the Democratic Party while still addressing the goals of the progressive wing, although Obama was hammered by the conservative factions and the Tea Party movement. The Third Way is still a large coalition in the modern Democratic Party. Clinton himself helped to move the Democratic Party beyond the New Democrats and the Third Way, owing to a more favorable political context than the 1990s, with Obama and Hillary Clinton representing a more liberal ambitious vision.

The Blue Dog Coalition, commonly known as Blue Dogs or Blue Dog Democrats, is a caucus of moderate members from the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives.{{cite news |last=Davis |first=Susan |date=February 2, 2012 |title=U.S. House has fewer moderate Democrats |url=http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-02-02/moderate-blue-dog-democrats-house/52992548/1 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141204165608/http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-02-02/moderate-blue-dog-democrats-house/52992548/1 |archive-date=December 4, 2014 |access-date=July 23, 2014 |work=USA Today}}{{cite book |last=Bloch Rubin |first=Ruth |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bLYrDwAAQBAJ |title=Building the Bloc: Intraparty Organization in the US Congress |date=2017 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-316-51042-1 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=bLYrDwAAQBAJ&q=centrist+Blue+Dog+Coalition&pg=PA188 188] |quote=In contrast to the halting mobilization of Insurgent Republicans and southern Democrats, the Blue Dogs' adoption of formal organization strategies – including an array of selective incentives – to promote participation and deter defection within their ranks was rapid. Aware that centrist lawmakers often struggled to convince constituents of their ideological bonafides, the Coalition worked to establish a Blue Dog brand and associate it with support for centrist policies.}}{{cite web |last=Gangitano |first=Alex |date=January 26, 2021 |title=Lobbying from the center |url=https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/lobbyist-profiles/535835-lobbying-from-the-center |access-date=January 3, 2025 |work=The Hill}} The Blue Dog Coalition was originally founded in 1995 as a group of conservative Democrats focused on fiscal responsibility. In the 2010s, the Blue Dogs became more demographically diverse and less conservative.{{cite news |last1=Mendoza |first1=Jessica |title=Centrist Democrats are back. But these are not your father's Blue Dogs. |url=https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2019/0604/Centrist-Democrats-are-back.-But-these-are-not-your-father-s-Blue-Dogs |work=Christian Science Monitor |date=June 4, 2019|access-date=January 3, 2025}} As of May–August 2023 during the 118th United States Congress, 10 House Democrats were part of the Blue Dog Coalition.{{cite news|url=https://www.politico.com/minutes/congress/05-24-2023/blue-dog-boost-centrists-house/|title=The Blue Dog Coalition is adding a new member to their centrist ranks, alongside a fresh 'fishing states' leadership group|first=Sarah|last=Ferris|date=May 24, 2023|work=Politico|access-date=January 4, 2025}}{{cite news |last1=Meyer |first1=Theodore |last2=Caldwell |first2=Leigh Ann |date=August 8, 2023 |title=Meet the new Blue Dogs |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/08/meet-new-blue-dogs/ |access-date=January 4, 2025 |newspaper=The Washington Post}}

{{main|American Left|Progressivism in the United States}}

{{see also|Congressional Progressive Caucus|Democratic Socialists of America|Justice Democrats|The Squad (United States Congress)}}

File:FDR 1944 Color Portrait.jpg advanced many progressive economic causes and is largely credited with inspiring modern progressivism in the United States with his New Deal policies.]]

The modern progressive wing draws deeply from the progressive economic and political philosophies of Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom and Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, and more broadly from the New Deal coalition. Historically, progressives were not limited to the Democratic Party, and the modern progressives in the Democratic Party are influenced by the activist reformism of Theodore Roosevelt (particularly the Square Deal and New Nationalism, which in turn influenced the New Freedom and the New Deal) and Herbert Croly (who rejected the thesis that the liberal tradition was inhospitable to anti-capitalist alternatives), as well as La Follette family (particularly Robert M. La Follette who founded the Progressive Party in 1924) and former Franklin D. Roosevelt's Vice President Henry A. Wallace, who founded another Progressive Party in 1948 after denouncing the anti-Communist foreign policy of the liberal President Harry S. Truman.{{cite magazine |last=Wilentz |first=Sean |date=2018 |title=Fighting Words: No, 'liberal' and 'progressive' aren't synonyms. They have completely different histories—and the differences matter |url=https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/48/fighting-words/ |access-date=June 10, 2022 |magazine=Democracy Journal|issue=48 }}

The historical progressive wing of the Democratic Party is associated with William Jennings Bryan and the People's Party. They gained control of the party in 1896, when the Democratic Party selected at that time the youngest presidential candidate in Bryan and repudiated the more conservative administration of Grover Cleveland, and kept it until 1908, the last time Bryan was the presidential nominee. With the exception of 1904, when the Bourbon Democrats and conservative allies of Cleveland regained control while Theodore Roosevelt's platform included progressive policies advocated by Bryan and his supporters, the Democratic Party nominee was from the progressive wing. Bryan and the historical progressives successfully turned the Democratic Party from a conservative party to a progressive alliance that elected Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson.{{cite web |date=2022 |title=William Jennings Bryan |url=http://netwagtaildev.unl.edu/nebstudies/en/1875-1899/roots-of-progressivism/william-jennings-bryan/ |access-date=January 8, 2025 |website=Nebraska Studies |publisher=Nebraska Public Media}}

Unlike some members of the historical progressive wing, such as Bryan who held fundamentalist religious views, modern progressives in the Democratic Party are secular and culturally liberal on social issues like race and identity, where they draw inspiration from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 proposed by President Kennedy, enacted by President Johnson, and advocated for by Martin Luther King Jr.{{cite news |last=Powell |first=Kevin |date=May 14, 2020 |title=The Power of Stacey Abrams |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/05/14/stacey-abrams-political-power |access-date=January 3, 2025 |newspaper=The Washington Post}} While it does not transcend the political philosophy of modern liberalism, the progressive wing has fused tenets of cultural liberalism with the economic left-leaning traditions of the Progressive Era, as well as drawing more robustly from Keynesian economics, left-wing populism, and democratic socialism/social democracy, particularly through Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms.{{cite magazine |last=Vaughan |first=Sophie |title=How Bernie Sanders is Reviving the Promise of FDR's Economic Bill of Rights |url=https://progressive.org/latest/sanders-reviving-fdr-economic-rights-vaughan-200225/ |magazine=The Progressive |date=February 25, 2020 |access-date= January 9, 2022}}

File:Bernie Sanders.jpg, while an independent, caucuses with the Democratic Party and is often considered an influential figure in the modern progressive movement in the United States.]]

President Johnson and civil rights movement activists, such as King, were influential to progressives not only for their positions on race and identity but also on economics, for example Johnson for the Great Society, which has been called by some a "second Reconstruction",{{rp|page=91}}{{cite book |last=Woodman|first=Harold D.|chapter=Economic Reconstruction and the Rise of the New South, 1865–1900 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dthlQgAACAAJ |title=Interpreting Southern History: Historiographical Essays in Honor of Sanford W. Higginbotham |editor-last1=Boles |editor-first1=John B.|editor-last2=Nolen |editor-first2=Evelyn Thomas |year=1987 |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |pages=[https://www.google.com/books?id=dthlQgAACAAJ&pg=PA273 273]–[https://www.google.com/books?id=dthlQgAACAAJ&pg=PA274 274]|isbn=978-0-8071-1361-5 }} or King for his support of democratic socialism.{{cite book |last=King |first=Martin Luther Jr. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PHAOBAAAQBAJ |title=The Radical King |date=2015 |location=London |publisher=Beacon Press |isbn=978-0-8070-1282-6 |editor-last=West |editor-first=Cornel |page=ix}} While there are differences between them, both historical progressivism and the modern progressive movement share the belief that free markets lead to economic inequalities, and therefore that the free market must be aggressively monitored and regulated with broad economic and social rights to protect the working class.{{cite news|url=https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/06/01/progressives-history-227037/|title=Progressives Should Read Progressive History—So They Don't Blow It This Time|last=Zeitz|first=Joshua|date=June 1, 2019|work=Politico|access-date=June 2, 2022}}

The Congressional Progressive Caucus is a caucus of progressive House Democrats in the United States Congress, along with one independent in the Senate (Bernie Sanders),{{cite news |last=Baio |first=Ariana |date=December 12, 2024 |title=Progressive war horse Bernie Sanders says his next term is 'probably' his last |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/bernie-sanders-last-term-b2663004.html |access-date=January 4, 2025 |work=The Independent}} a progressive who identifies as a democratic socialist,{{cite news |last=Gambino |first=Lauren |date=December 28, 2016 |title=Progressives see a leader in Bernie Sanders as they prepare to fight back |url=https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/28/bernie-sanders-progressive-movement-2017 |work=The Guardian|access-date=January 3, 2025}} and ran in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential primaries.{{cite news |last=Inskeep |first=Steve |date=November 6, 2015 |title=Bernie Sanders On Being Jewish And A Democratic Socialist |url=https://www.npr.org/2015/11/06/454970584/bernie-sanders-on-being-jewish-and-a-democratic-socialist |url-status=live |archive-url=https://archive.today/20230223103602/https://www.npr.org/2015/11/06/454970584/bernie-sanders-on-being-jewish-and-a-democratic-socialist |archive-date=February 23, 2023 |publisher=NPR |access-date=January 4, 2024}}{{cite web |last=Williams |first=Claire |date=February 19, 2020 |title=How the Democratic Socialist Label Is Playing in the 2020 Presidential Race |url=https://pro.morningconsult.com/articles/bernie-sanders-democratic-socialist-polling |access-date=January 4, 2025 |website=Morning Consult Pro}}{{cite news |last=Gambino |first=Lauren |date=April 12, 2020 |title=The Democratic primary was a wild, unpredictable ride – except the result |url=https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/12/democratic-primary-joe-biden-bernie-sanders-2020 |access-date=January 4, 2025 |work=The Guardian}} Sanders is credited, alongside the Democratic Party's broader progressive wing,{{cite news |last1=Kurtzleben |first1=Danielle |last2=Malone |first2=Kenny |date=July 26, 2018 |title=What You Need To Know About The Democratic Socialists Of America |url=https://www.npr.org/2018/07/26/630960719/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-democratic-socialists-of-america |access-date=January 4, 2025 |publisher=NPR}} with influencing a leftward shift in the party,{{cite news |last=Lee |first=M. J. |date=May 9, 2016 |title=How Bernie Sanders changed the Democrats |url=https://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/09/politics/bernie-sanders-democratic-party/index.html |access-date=January 4, 2025 |work=CNN Politics}}{{cite web |last=Rosenfeld |first=Sam |date=June 22, 2018 |title=Democrats are moving steadily leftward. Why does the left still distrust the party? |url=https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/6/22/17490410/democratic-party-sanders-left-liberal-interparty-fights-sanders-socialism-clintonism |access-date=January 4, 2025 |website=Vox}}{{cite news |last=Smith |first=David |date=February 27, 2023 |title=Has Bernie Sanders really helped Joe Biden move further left? |url=https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/27/bernie-sanders-biden-influence-progressives |access-date=January 4, 2025 |work=The Guardian}} as well as for the election of several democratic socialists within the Democratic Party.{{cite news |last=Blake |first=Aaron |date=March 10, 2021 |title=The extraordinary rise of the democratic socialists in Nevada |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/10/extraordinary-rise-democratic-socialists-nevada/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210311063046/https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/10/extraordinary-rise-democratic-socialists-nevada/ |archive-date=March 11, 2021 |access-date=January 4, 2025 |newspaper=The Washington Post}} In 2016, the Blue Collar Caucus, a pro-labor and anti-outsourcing caucus, was formed by representatives Marc Veasey and Brendan Boyle.{{cite news |last=Dovere |first=Edward-Isaac |date=February 6, 2017 |title=Democrats start a new caucus to reach Trump voters |url=https://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/off-message-democrats-start-a-new-caucus-to-reach-trump-voters-234694 |access-date=August 3, 2022 |work=Politico}}{{cite news |last=Daugherty |first=Alex |date=February 17, 2017 |title=Can Democrats win back the blue-collar voters that flipped to Trump? |url=http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article133401934.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180418032440/http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article133401934.html |archive-date=April 18, 2018 |access-date=August 3, 2022 |work=Charlotte Observer}}

Since 2019, there have been at least six democratic socialists in the House of Representatives as members of the Democratic Party, and in doing so some of them defeated notable New Democrats incumbents, such as Joe Crowley and Eliot Engel, in the primaries.{{cite magazine |date=October 24, 2019 |title=If You Want to Call Me a Socialist Then Call Me a Socialist |url=https://jacobinmag.com/2019/10/jamaal-bowman-eliot-engel-democratic-party |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200615071950/https://jacobinmag.com/2019/10/jamaal-bowman-eliot-engel-democratic-party |archive-date=June 15, 2020 |magazine=Jacobin |access-date=January 4, 2024}} As of 2024, at least thirteen of socialist Democratic representatives had at some point been affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,{{cite magazine |last=Isserman |first=Maurice |date=November 8, 2018 |title=Socialists in the House: A 100-Year History from Victor Berger to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez |url=https://inthesetimes.com/article/socialists-house-midterms-victor-berger-ocasio-cortez-tlaib |url-status=live |magazine=In These Times |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200907133801/https://inthesetimes.com/article/socialists-house-midterms-victor-berger-ocasio-cortez-tlaib |archive-date=September 7, 2020 |access-date=January 4, 2024}} Rashida Tlaib, and Greg Casar, who was elected in 2024 to lead the progressive caucus.{{cite news |last=Bidgood |first=Jess |date=December 13, 2024 |title=The Texas Millennial Trying to Rebrand the Democrats |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/us/politics/democrats-texas-greg-casar.html |access-date=January 4, 2025 |work=The New York Times}}{{cite magazine |last=Ramirez |first=Nikki McCann |date=December 14, 2024 |title=Dems' New Progressive Leader: 'Diet' Republicanism Won't Work |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/greg-casar-progressive-caucus-chair-democrats-future-1235205448/ |access-date=January 4, 2025 |magazine=Rolling Stone}} Former Democratic representatives, such as Ron Dellums, David Bonior, Major Owens, John Conyers, Jerry Nadler, Danny K. Davis, Shri Thanedar, Summer Lee,{{cite web |date=November 9, 2022 |title=Democratic Socialist Summer Lee's Victory in Penn. Gives Progressives a Boost in House |website=Democracy Now! |url=https://www.democracynow.org/2022/11/9/summer_lee_women_of_color_pennsylvania |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221109160934/https://www.democracynow.org/2022/11/9/summer_lee_women_of_color_pennsylvania |archive-date=November 9, 2022|access-date=November 9, 2022}} Cori Bush,{{cite magazine |last=Isserman |first=Maurice |date=January 11, 2021 |title=Congress Now Has More Socialists Than Ever Before in U.S. History |url=https://inthesetimes.com/article/democratic-socialism-dsa-aoc-bernie-sanders-congress |access-date=January 4, 2025 |magazine=In These Times}} and Jamaal Bowman,{{cite magazine |last=Taylor |first=Astra |date=June 17, 2020 |title=A New Group of Leftist Primary Challengers Campaign Through Protests and the Coronavirus |url=https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/a-new-group-of-leftist-primary-challengers-campaign-through-protests-and-the-coronavirus |url-status=live |magazine=The New Yorker |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201114164145/https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/a-new-group-of-leftist-primary-challengers-campaign-through-protests-and-the-coronavirus |archive-date=November 14, 2020 }} were also affiliated with the DSA.

The Squad and specifically Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,{{cite web |title=Ocasio-Cortez faces uncertain political future |url=https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5051451-ocasio-cortez-house-defeat-future/ |website=The Hill |access-date=24 January 2025}}{{cite web |title=How the Squad and Like-Minded Progressives Have Changed Their Party |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/opinion/progressives-democratic-party-aoc.html |website=The New York Times |access-date=24 January 2025}} elevated progressive politics, and influenced the country and party.{{cite web |title=After 4 decades pushing for progressive change, Bernie Sanders now holds the gavel |url=https://vtdigger.org/2023/02/02/after-four-decades-pushing-for-progressive-change-bernie-sanders-now-holds-the-gavel/ |website=vtdigger.org |publisher=vtdigger |access-date=24 January 2025}} The progressive wing has voiced support for legislation such as the Green New Deal and Medicare for All.{{cite web |title=Progressives reintroduce 'Medicare for All' bill |url=https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payers/progressives-reintroduce-medicare-all-bill |website=fiercehealthcare.com |publisher=Fierce Healthcare |access-date=24 January 2025}}{{cite web |title=Progressives Gear Up For Broad New Push On Climate Action |url=https://www.npr.org/2021/01/13/956192132/progressives-gear-up-for-broad-new-push-on-climate-action |website=NPR |access-date=24 January 2025}}

{{main|Congressional caucus}}

The following table lists coalitions' electoral results for the House of Representatives.

Jeffersonians, named after founding father Thomas Jefferson, was a political movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. While it dominated the First Party System which predates the Democratic Party, many of its beliefs influenced the party throughout the 19th century. These beliefs were concentrated around the beliefs of republicanism and agrarianism. Other than Jefferson, who is considered the father of the Democratic Party, early notable Jeffersonians included Virginia dynasty U.S. Presidents James Madison and James Monroe.{{rp|pages=88–89}}

File:Andrew jackson head.jpg, namesake of the Jacksonian Democrats]]

Jacksonianism was the foundational ideology of the Democratic Party with the election of Andrew Jackson as president in 1828, and it was the predominant faction of the party until the 1840s. It represented the politics of Jackson, which were a modified form of Jeffersonianism.{{rp|pages=89–90}} Other than Jackson, notable Jacksonian Democrats include presidents Martin Van Buren and James K. Polk. Jacksonians supported a small federal government and stronger state governments, and promoted territorial expansionism, following Jefferson with his 1803 purchase of Louisiana. They were also opponents of central banking, which represented an early factional division in the Democratic Party when Jacksonians competed against pro-bank Democrats.{{cite book |last=Eyal |first=Yonatan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JMC5QzUnX98C |title=The Young America Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, 1828–1861 |date= 2007 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-139-46669-1 }}{{rp|pages=19–20}}

Opponents of the Jacksonian faction, such as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and William Henry Harrison, left the Democratic Party to found the Whig Party, which served as the main opposition to Jacksonian Democrats until the rise of the Republican Party.{{rp|page=89}} The Democrats led by the Jacksonian faction won all presidential elections but two (1840 and 1848), and dominated national politics until the early 1860s.{{rp|page=89}} Jacksonians supported the Southern United States on several issues, including slavery, arguing that it was permissible on the grounds of states' rights, and protective tariffs, opposing them on the grounds that they disproportionately benefited the North.{{rp|pages=23–25}} Despite their national success, the early Democrats ultimately crumbled over the issue of slavery and secession, with Northern Democrats more favorable to the stop or end of slavery and Southern Democrats overwhelmingly supportive of it. Even if the Democrats were united in 1860, it is doubtful they would have defeated Abraham Lincoln.{{rp|pages=89–90}}

The Young America movement was a political movement in the 1830s throughout the 1850s. While not an explicit political faction, it impacted many Democratic party ideals though its promotion of capitalism and manifest destiny, and broke with the agrarian and strict constructionist orthodoxies of the past; it embraced commerce, technology, regulation, reform, and internationalism. Notable promoters included President Franklin Pierce and 1860 presidential nominee Stephen A. Douglas.{{rp|page=144}} Pierce became the first elected president who had his renomination denied by his own party. This happened because he had aliened fellow Northern Democrats when he signed the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which was drafted by Douglas, that effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allowed slavery into the Kansas Territory.{{rp|page=89}}

File:Martin Van Buren.jpg, an early Democrat who became presidential nominee of the short-lived Free Soil Party.]]

The Free Soil Party had many former members of the Democratic Party, most notably their 1848 presidential candidate and former President Martin Van Buren. The party's main platform was opposition to the expansion of slavery into new territories acquired from the Mexican–American War.{{cite book |last=Woodward |first=Colin |url=https://www.google.com/books?id=Sb40EosBr90C |title=American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America |date=2011 |location=New York|publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=978-1-101-54445-7}}{{page needed|date=January 2025}} Many anti-slavery Northern Democrats voted for Van Buren in 1848, and paved the way for the win of the Whig Party and the election of Zachary Taylor.{{rp|page=89}}

During the American Civil War, the Democratic Party split into several factions: the Fire Eaters, the Copperheads or Peace Democrats, and War Democrats. The Fire-Eaters were Southern Democrats who promoted the idea of Southern secession prior to the Civil War. They sought to preserve slavery throughout the United States. The Copperheads were a faction of Northern Democrats during the Civil War that sought an immediate end to the war. Many Copperheads sympathized with the Confederacy, with members accused by Republicans as treasonous. They promoted the ideas of agrarianism inspired from Jacksonian thought that appealed to many poor farmers in border states. The War Democrats were a group of Democrats that opposed the Copperheads and supported President Abraham Lincoln's stance towards the South and bring it back in the Union; however, they objected to Lincoln's emancipation policies and after 1863 were increasingly less enthusiastic about the war and its goals.{{rp|page=90}} Despite this, the War Democrats allied with Republicans under the National Union ticket to compete in the 1864 United States elections.{{cite book |last=Richardson |first=Heather Cox |url=https://www.google.com/books/id?=EY_UDwAAQBAJ |title=How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America |date= 2020 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-090091-5 |location=New York}}{{page needed|date=January 2025}} Redeemers were Southern Democrats that after the end of the Civil War sought to return white supremacists to power in the South. They were opposed to the expansion of rights given to Black Americans and were associated with groups like the White League, Red Shirts, and the Ku Klux Klan.{{cite book |last=Lemann |first=Nicholas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nnl_RySqdl8C |title=Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War |date= 2007 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |isbn=978-1-4299-2361-3 }}{{page needed|date=January 2025}}

File:TRUMAN 58-766-06 (cropped).jpg continued the New Deal era with his Fair Deal, and propelled civil rights issues in the Democratic Party with Executive Order 9981 in 1948.]]

Following the end of the Civil War, several factions emerged in the Democratic Party during the Third Party System, such as the Bourbon Democrats (1872–1912) and Silverites (1870s–1890s). During the Gilded Age, or from around 1877 to 1896, the only Democratic president to win both the Electoral College and popular vote was the Bourbon Democrat Grover Cleveland (1885–1889 and 1893–1897).{{rp|page=90}} During the Fourth and Fifth Party Systems in the 20th century, new factions like the Progressives (1890s–1910s) and the New Deal coalition (1930s–1970s) arose.{{rp|pages=91–92}} From 1897 to 1932, the only Democratic president was Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921). Although he enacted a series of progressive reforms that came to define modern liberalism, Wilson de facto imposed racial segregation in the federal government.{{rp|page=90}}{{cite web |last=Little |first=Becky |title=How Woodrow Wilson Tried to Reverse Black American Progress |website=History |date=July 14, 2020 |url=https://www.history.com/news/woodrow-wilson-racial-segregation-jim-crow-ku-klux-klan |access-date=March 17, 2021}}

The New Deal coalition began after election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 during the Great Depression.{{rp|pages=91–92}} The conservative coalition was an unofficial coalition in the United States Congress bringing together a conservative majority of the Republican Party and the conservative, mostly Southern wing of the Democratic Party. It was dominant in Congress from 1937 to 1963, until President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.{{rp|pages=91–92}}{{cite book |first=Robert |last=Dallek |year=2004 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pOgzGGRKJToC|title=Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President |page=[https://www.google.com/books?id=pOgzGGRKJToC&pg=PA 169]|location=New York|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-515920-2 }} It was only until after World War II that the Democratic Party began to support civil rights towards racial equality, starting with President Harry S. Truman desegregating the United States Armed Forces (Executive Order 9981) in 1948.{{cite book |last=Mickey |first=Robert |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yqDwG2MBoNwC |title=Paths Out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in America's Deep South, 1944–1972 |date= 2015 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-1-4008-3878-3|jstor=j.ctt7t1q8}}{{page needed|date=January 2025}} That same year, Truman's civil rights policies of his Fair Deal led to conservative Democrats to leave the party and form the Dixiecrats. There was also a split with the progressive wing, as Henry A. Wallace founded the Progressive Party. Despite the splits, Truman won the 1948 United States presidential election.{{rp|page=91}} Harold D. Woodman summarizes the explanation that external forces caused the disintegration of the Jim Crow South from the 1920s to the 1970s:{{cite book |last=Woodman|first=Harold D.|year=1987|chapter=Economic Reconstruction and the Rise of the New South, 1865–1900 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dthlQgAACAAJ |title=Interpreting Southern History: Historiographical Essays in Honor of Sanford W. Higginbotham |editor-last1=Boles |editor-first1=John B.|editor-last2=Nolen |editor-first2=Evelyn Thomas |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |pages=[https://www.google.com/books?id=Interpreting_Southern_History/dthlQgAACAAJ&pg=PA254 254]–[https://www.google.com/books?id=Interpreting_Southern_History/dthlQgAACAAJ&pg=PA307 307]|isbn=978-0-8071-1361-5 }} See also {{cite journal |last=Degler |first=Carl N. |year=1988 |title=Review of Interpreting Southern History: Historiographical Essays in Honor of Sanford W. Higginbotham. |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2209403 |journal=The Journal of Southern History |volume=54 |issue=2 |pages=305–309 |doi=10.2307/2209403 |jstor=2209403 |issn=0022-4642}}

When a significant change finally occurred, its impetus came from outside the South. Depression-bred New Deal reforms, war-induced demand for labor in the North, perfection of cotton-picking machinery, and civil rights legislation and court decisions finally ... destroyed the plantation system, undermined landlord or merchant hegemony, diversified agriculture and transformed it from a labor- to a capital-intensive industry, and ended the legal and extra-legal support for racism. The discontinuity that war, invasion, military occupation, the confiscation of slave property, and state and national legislation failed to bring in the mid-19th century, finally arrived in the second third of the 20th century. A "second reconstruction" created a real New South.

After the Republican presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Democrats narrowly won the 1960 United States presidential election and John F. Kennedy became the first Roman Catholic to be elected U.S. president. Through the New Frontier, his domestic policies mirrored that of traditional liberalism (Wilson's New Freedom, Roosevelt's New Deal, and Truman's Fair Deal), continued the foreign policies of liberal internationalism, and made further civil rights advances. He was cautious about civil rights due to the power of Southern Democrats, which was only dealt with by President Johnson thanks to his skills as a former Senate majority leader.{{rp|page=91}} As a result, the Solid South was no longer Democratic.{{rp|pages=91–92}}

Throughout the 20th century, Southern factions within the Democratic Party emerged and held significant power around the issue of civil rights, segregation, and other issues. These included the conservative coalition (1930s–1960s), the Solid South (1870s–1960s), Dixiecrats (1940s), and the boll weevils (1980s). In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson's policies in Vietnam were unpopular and divided the party, eventually leading to his withdrawal from the presidential race. His Vice President Hubert Humphrey was nominated the presidential nominee without a competitive primary. These factors, coupled with competition from the American Independent Party candidate George Wallace, a conservative Southern Democrat and former governor of Alabama, contributed to his narrow defeat to Richard Nixon.{{rp|page=92}}

File:JimmyCarterPortrait2.jpg was a Southern Democrat from Georgia and the longest-lived president in U.S. history at age 100.]]

During the 1970s, the Democratic Party significantly reformed their selection of delegates and presidential nomination rules. Changes included minority representation, an equal delegations division between men and women, and delegates being awarded on a proportional basis. The progressive George McGovern lost in a landslide to Nixon in 1972. Jimmy Carter, a Southern Democrat, was elected to the presidency of 1976, also thanks to Gerald Ford's unpopularity and his pardon of Nixon for his criminal activities in the Watergate scandal; however, inflation and foreign issues doomed Carter's re-election bid in 1980. With the worldwide rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s and the dismantling of the Keynesian post-war consensus amid a stagflation and an energy crisis, the New Deal era came to an end and was followed by the Reagan era, with Republicans dominating the 1980s.{{rp|page=92}}

After twelve years of Republican presidencies, Democrats returned to the White House in 1992 with another Southern Democrat, Bill Clinton, who ran as a moderate ("The era of big government is over") and with the strategy "It's the economy, stupid". Clinton became the first Democrat to win the presidency without winning Texas, and his ticket with Al Gore, another Southern Democrat, was the first successful all-South ticket since that of Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun in 1828. Clinton and Gore were successful in regaining the support of Reagan Democrats.{{rp|page=92}} Until the "Republican Revolution" of 1994, when voters returned a Republican Congress despite peace, an improved economy, and high approval job ratings of the Clinton presidency,{{rp|page=92}} most Southern members of the House of Representatives were Democrats.{{cite book |last1=Maxwell |first1=Angie |last2=Shields |first2=Todd |date= 2019 |url=https://www.google.com/books?id=jieeDwAAQBAJ |title=The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-026598-4 |location=New York}}{{page needed|date=January 2025}}

The conservative coalition remained a political force until the mid-1980s, eventually dying out in the 1990s. In terms of congressional roll call votes, it primarily appeared on votes affecting labor unions. The conservative coalition did not operate on civil rights bills, for the two wings had opposing viewpoints.

{{cite book|chapter-url=https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/file.php?path=Conservative%20Coalition%20Tables%2Fcqal69_1969_Conservative_Coalition.pdf|chapter=Conservative coalition remains potent in Congress|title=1969 CQ Almanac|pages=1052–1059|location=Washington, D.C.|publisher=CQ Press|year=1969|access-date=January 29, 2022|archive-date=January 29, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220129191205/https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/file.php?path=Conservative%20Coalition%20Tables%2Fcqal69_1969_Conservative_Coalition.pdf|url-status=live}}

The conservative coalition had the power to prevent unwanted bills from even coming to a vote. The coalition included many committee chairmen from the South who blocked bills by not reporting them from their committees. Furthermore, Howard W. Smith, chairman of the United States House Committee on Rules,{{cite book |last=Goldman |first=Ralph Morris |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4QE7AAAAMAAJ |title=The Democratic Party in American Politics |publisher=Macmillan |year=1966 |location=New York |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=4QE7AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA106 106] }} often could kill a bill simply by not reporting it out with a favorable rule, although he lost some of that power in 1961. During the presidency of Harry S. Truman, who was more worried about the Democratic Party's veering to the right, Smith once stated that union leaders were threatening to establish a labor chieftains-run plutocracy.{{cite book |last=Rutland |first=Robert |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YPviAwAAQBAJ |title=The Democrats: From Jefferson to Clinton |date=1995 |publisher=University of Missouri Press |isbn=978-0-8262-6154-0 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=YPviAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA205 205]}} For further context about Howard W. Smith's political career, see {{cite book|last= Dierenfield|first=Bruce J.|year= 1987|title=Keeper of the Rules: Congressman Howard W. Smith of Virginia|publisher=University of Virginia Press|isbn=978-0-813-91068-0}}{{page needed|date=January 2025}} The traditional conservative Democratic faction lost much of its influence in the 21st century as the South politically realigned towards the Republican Party.{{cite news|url=https://www.economist.com/united-states/2010/11/11/the-long-goodbye|title=The long goodbye|newspaper=The Economist|date=November 11, 2010|access-date=April 29, 2019}} Starting in the late 2010s to the early 2020s, a new set of moderate to conservative college-educated voters disillusioned with Trumpism began voting for Democrats.{{cite news |last=Arnsdorf |first=Isaac |title=How the 'Never Trump' movement became 'Never Trumpism' |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/never-trump-midterms/ |access-date=June 13, 2023 |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=October 18, 2022}}{{cite news |last=Manchester |first=Julia |title=GOP watches as Trump's problems with suburban women go on display |url=https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4002482-gop-fears-trumps-problems-with-suburban-women-will-only-get-worse/ |access-date=June 13, 2023 |work=The Hill |date=May 15, 2023 }}

• Democratic Party (United States) organizations
• Demographics of the Democratic Party (United States)
• Factions in the Libertarian Party (United States)
• Factions in the Republican Party (United States)
• Libertarian Democrat
• List of socialist members of the United States Congress
• Political positions of the Democratic Party (United States)

{{reflist|30em}}

• [http://www.21stcenturydems.org/ 21st Century Democrats]
• [http://www.aflcio.org/ AFL-CIO]
• [http://www.bluedogdems.com/ Blue Dog Coalition]
• [http://www.changetowin.org Change to Win Federation]
• [http://www.democracyforamerica.com/ Democracy for America]
• [http://www.democratsforlife.org/ Democrats for Life of America]
• [http://www.nea.org National Education Association]
• [http://www.pdamerica.org/ Progressive Democrats of America]

{{Democratic Party (United States)}}

{{ideological caucuses in the U.S. Congress}}

Category:Democratic Party (United States)