*UA-cam demonetized this* because of audio quoted in the video, so please consider supporting the channel by buying merch: teespring.com/stores/the-cynical-historian Or by donating to my Patreon: www.patreon.com/CynicalHistorian See following replies for corrections and additional info, but first, here are some related videos to check out: 4:10 - WILSOOOON! playlist: ua-cam.com/play/PLjnwpaclU4wXmCcEx0vfIim_jFMkgtLmS.html 4:25 - Lost Cause Myth: ua-cam.com/video/5EOhXF5lNgQ/v-deo.html 5:20 - 12 annoyances for historians: ua-cam.com/video/4J6IPhEkYmo/v-deo.html 6:50 - sectional crisis: ua-cam.com/video/Ff2AKILyi0o/v-deo.html 11:35 - Wilson pt.1: ua-cam.com/video/Hm0Gzz53YJo/v-deo.html 11:35 - Wilson pt.2: ua-cam.com/video/3hRd8B_vZiA/v-deo.html 11:50 - WILSOOOON! playlist: ua-cam.com/play/PLjnwpaclU4wXmCcEx0vfIim_jFMkgtLmS.html
*references* Jefferson Cowie, _The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics_ (Princeton, N.Jer.: Princeton University Press, 2016). amzn.to/35sJX4w Eric Foner, _Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877,_ new ed. (1988; New York: Perennial Classics, 2002). amzn.to/34lFOhq Lawrence Goodwyn, _The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America_ (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1975). amzn.to/2tcGsAR Ross Kennedy ed., _A Companion to Woodrow Wilson_ (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2013). amzn.to/2KXhGc1 Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer, _Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974_ (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2019). amzn.to/2Zh3pxe Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, _Getting Tough: Welfare and Imprisonment in 1970s America_ (Princeton, N.Jer.: Princeton University Press, 2017). amzn.to/2M2ol7j
While it would affect minorities more that Voter suppression would affect everyone, just goes to show how desperate these people (Repulicans like that) are that they basically shot themselves.
Next to only Henry Clay and possibly William Jennings Bryan, Barry Goldwater is the most influential presidential candidate to lose a presidential election in American history.
Glad to see an acknowledgement that this was a slow process. I hate when people look at the 1920 and 2016 electoral maps and are like “this is clearly just because of what happened in the 60s”.
Yeah, I always found it odd that Democrats love to talk about the party switch in the 60s, but claim FDR as a Democratic hero. Plus the two most free market presidents of the 20th century were Harding and Coolidge who were Republicans in the 20s. IMHO the parties are more different than they switched, but you can see the roots of the current bases of the parties even 100 years ago.
@@jimland4359 You can, but like it always does, the driving force behind major political change was race relations and the history of slavery. It didn't start in the 60's but that's when the current dynamic was cemented and the majority of change took place. I guess you're saying "most free market" like it's a good thing, but data shows that republicans pretty much always tank the economy, leaving it to their democrat successors to clean up their mess. Neither party is actually good for the nation if we want to move forward from the point we are at, but the Republicans actively want to move the US backwards. Before the party switch the roles were reversed, but that's because the Democrats used to be the conservative party. Point me to the conservative party of a nation and you'll be showing me which party is more racist and extreme.
@@LDIndustries Germany prior to unification saw its liberal elements so exceedingly radical that they unironically believed in the sort of lebensraum concept that hitler did later. That is a horrendous reading of history to just read conservatism as the dangerous and radical side when liberal ideologies historically have been some of the most radical and ----ed up movements out there. People quietly shove under the rug ---- like the reign of terror in france which was entirely based on enlightenment and liberal thought, the the german pan-nationalists before Bismarck that wanted greater germany, (a concept that would utterly destroy europe due to how sweeping its claims were) and situations like Spain where the liberals were the very reason Spain is such a hellhole today (they had a program of rampant centralization and forced cultural assimilation akin to the french) and how france was consistently the most unstable nation in europe, and still even today is exceedingly unstable, being on their FIFTH REPUBLIC. People like you point to things like tariffs and import taxes and say 'oh look this causes an economic downturn its terrible' ignoring that that is the *short term* result of tariffs, and is in no way indicative of their long term goals, which routinely see success when implimented. People forget that economic liberalism has at times completely ruined nations because they can't compete in global markets (the ottoman empire completely failed to industrialize as free trade made imported goods consistly cheaper than anything they produced, forcibly killing any home-grown businesses, and is one of the marked reasons the nation failed as a whole.) Liberalism and conservatism are two sides of the same coin, buddy. They can both be equally horrendous things to people. That doesnt mean one is inherently more evil or wrong than the other. Some of the best leaders in human history were die-hard conservatives, as were liberals.
@@maddoxlacy9072 Conservatives have been on the wrong side of history every single time. Crusades, slavery, civil rights, lgbt rights, etc. Conservatism is inherently a reactionary ideology as it doesn't exist without progressives. If no one ever wanted to advance society then there would never be anything to conserve. I'm not a liberal, but I'd take a liberal over a conservative any day. At least the liberal is less likely to say "you know that time in history where only white men had rights? yeah I want to go back to then." Every day forward in time is better than the day before because we advance socially and technologically. Wanting to conserve old traditions instead of advance forward or to go back to the past is the mindset of a scared piss baby. The only time where the future would get worse is if conservatives are allowed unfettered control, because the past and the values that conservatives want to hang onto never existed. They're myths they tell themselves to justify their victimhood complexes.
Additional complication: Until like the 60s, what candidates got nominated for president was limited by party machines. Now that primaries are binding, ideology is much more of a driver.
@@laharmo1501 yes but Caucasus are dumb, the staggered dates weigh certain states more than others with no real logic for it, and delegates don't make much sense, and Dems have Super Delegates which are straight trash
Technically the whole primary and convention history starts with the 1830s and such where parties were starting to hold conventions to meet up and decide their nominees. This was entirely party bosses though and very little popular input was used. But in 1912, due to progressive reformers the first primary systems started in which parties would hold mini state elections in a decent chunk of states around the country. Still not all states, usually only a dozen or less states held primaries each election year. On top of that party bosses still were the only ones with any real power. Than in 1972, caused by democratic protests and anti corruption groups springing up after Nixon's scandals, the system we have today was set up in which each state had to have a primary, and the convention delegates (mostly) had to match popular vote in the primaries. Today's primary systems for each party are still very corrupt and such, and often times have useless ceremonial parts to them, but it is better than before. Would be cool to get money out of politics finally though.
I’m glad he approached this more as polarization than a clear switch. “Liberal” and “Conservative” are just relative terms and it means a lot more to address the ideologies in their time than who was the more left or right party.
I always say that the two party system is the problem. With only two parties, it inherently creates an us vs them mentality. Especially with first past the post voting it makes it almost impossible for a 3rd party to become relevant
@@charlesingram2075 conservative idiots that listen to known propagandists like PragerU (funded by fracking billionaires Dan & Farris Wilks) do think it’s a hoax. Here ua-cam.com/video/g_a7dQXilCo/v-deo.html Carol Swain (known Candace-like grifter & discredited historian) shares with Republican morons the “inconvenient truth” about the Democratic Party 😂 No wonder these “poorly educated” would worship a morally bankrupt con man like Trump.
@@unsureprobablymaybe3527 you’re such an idiot you can’t even get a simple rebuttal right as there are, even by your standards, 2 genders 😂 good job proving my previous statement about the “poorly educated” right kid 😉 Now , how anyone chooses to identify themselves it’s not my business & that’s the difference between a democrat & a conservative bigot that thinks he has a saying about how people should live their lives 😉 Now, ask daddy Trump for some paper towels, find your safe space in your basement and cry your conservative tears there 🤡
Parties are meant to change ideology. Parties, in theory, serve the people and thus change and realign their policies to fit with the times. If parties didn't realign their policies, then it would mean the politicians in the party are immortal and characteristically or the issues of the day did not change at all. Both are terrible.
@@LuccianoBartolini Uh, no, if people's minds change and the issues of the day change, then parties either change or disappear. To say that a party should be advocating for the same things now as they did 100 years ago is the deny the march of time and, at least, technological progress.
Parties have to stick to their ideologies. It's when parties change to cater to the latest populist buzz-issue that is we get parties that are impossible to oust from governmental power. That is a much greater threat to the democratic system than a party that has stuck to a certain point of view for too long. The issues may shift, but if the parties just choose which side of the issue they are going to support according to what happens to be popular at the moment, rather than their ideological compass, that's when we get the disbelief in the representative democracy that's plaguing all the Western democracies right now, with Nationalist and Populist parties springing up all over Europe and candidates of that same ilk running for office in the United States. What we really need is politicians who dare to say what they believe in, but the way the current media landscape is set up, that is a recipe for political suicide.
@@johanrunfeldt7174 No, if parties were meant to stick to one ideology forever and ever then we would never see parties stay for more than a decade or so. To deny that existing structures and groups change with time is to deny that time passes and conditions change.
I think what really caused the parties to be able to change so much in America is that the names of the parties "Democrats" and "Republicans" are so vague and meaningless that you can pretty much attach whatever ideological meaning you want to the party name. If you go to Britain the Labor and Conservative parties will generally change very little or at the very least not swap, mainly due to the obvious and simplistic meaning of the names. Labour fights for workers more, and conservatives, are for more traditional values. The US citizens can say whatever meaning for the naming of their preferred party. White Southerners after the civil war voted Democrat primarily because the party name didn't violate any of it's principles, just as how the name of the Democratic party name nowadays doesn't ruffle the feathers of The youth and minority groups in general. The cause was the vagueness of the party names.
@@ErosFabbriGk2026 As they say "where there's hate there's love". I love this country but it is basically distracting itself w/ Culture War and the "Bread And Circuses" of the current Political Paradigm. What is to really say that is "American".
@@ErosFabbriGk2026 Think about it though: over the generations the American People - in their wealth and decadence - have become weak. Our people prefer numbing their minds with pain killers, entertainment and ultimately have grown to detest legitimate American things or even outlaw that which was normal. I will concede that this country - The US - is better than most places on earth. It's just that, unfortunately, the problems with our Government will never be changed because ultimately the American People, in their complacency, have ultimately accepted and allowed for our toxic politics and governance to grow. And I see nothing valuable about any of that - which is why I am just gonna re-enlist into The US Army and live my whole life there OR I am gonna go where people haven't grown complacent. I shall see to it when I get there.
@@rustym.shackelford5546 Yes we are not the world we are howver the superpower with enough nukes to destory any one we want if we ignore the consaqinces of mad and no we have stayed a solid qauter of the world gdp.
I'm going to say it this guy has gotten so much better with his deliveries and seems a lot more comfortable behind the camera. There is a marked difference between his presentation now and his older videos. 👍
@@gregoryf4186 i agree, "switch" doesn't really explain a process. "swap" doesn't do it either. sounds like just like two people trading places over an imaginary line.
I think it’s such a complicated topic because the terms ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ are extremely vague and dependent on the time period. There are times in history when progressivism was needed, and also times where progressing farther left pushes us further away from Constitutional freedom. For example, the revolutionary colonists in 1776 would at the time have been considered radically ‘liberal’, though supporting the same Constitutional principles today is considered ‘conservative’. I think the more important emphasis is to identify a set of political ideals you believe in, regardless of whether they’re considered ‘right’ or ‘left’ of where the bar currently sits in public society.
When did all that left right shit even start to matter so insanely much? I remember like 15 years ago "right" were literal racist and xenophobes and "left" were real punks and socialists. Now it seems like everyone is either right or left no center allowed. I mean gosh US democrats are barely center right on a normal scale.
Thanks for covering this. After getting to the section on the Civil War and reconstruction in 'Lies My Teacher Taught Me', it become more and more evident to me that if the Republican party still stood for the same values as it did back in Lincoln's time, no self-respecting Republican today would EVER fly the confederate flag.
When you mention the lack of progressive policies among Republicans in the 20s I think you should mention calvin coolidges good record on civil rights. Outside of his personal views being very much in favor of civil rights for African Americans, from what I understand the klan lost a lot of influence under his presidency. If you are talking about his economic policies not being progressive compared to teddy that's certainly true but that was the appeal for many. He was liberal in the sense of both social beliefs and the market, meaning he supported a free market with little intervention. Feel free to tell me if I'm wrong I'm no historian lol.
I mean, our politics is interesting too in the sense that our labour and national parties tend to be so center it can be hard to tell them apart, meaning they can do weird shit like being a right wing party pushing "decent society", or our left wing party championing buisness (1990's lol)
*I don't like the term, "switch", because that incorrectly suggests a sudden reversal. But IDEOLOGICAL CHANGE between the parties most definitely took place.* The problem is too many people think because *today,* "liberal" or "left" is automatically perceived as Democratic and "conservative" or "right" is automatically perceived as Republican, that it's always been that way. That's patently false. Decades ago, your party affiliation did not identify your ideology. Depending on what region you lived in, a Democrat or Republican could be liberal, conservative or moderate. All combinations existed. That is an indisputable historical fact.
Yes, especially back then, there were conservative, moderate and liberal wings *IN BOTH PARTIES* So many people like to claim the Ku Klux Klan for example was "Democratic" because of southern rednecks, when there were also Republican members *at the same time*, especially in the mid-west.
Something that would be helpful to have, and that I can't find elsewhere is just a video of the time lapse of the way states voted over the last ~150 years. Love your stuff!
I'm conservative, but I appreciate and respect your time and effort of researching and giving your analysis even though your views differ from mine. Keep up the great work and hopefully you reach 1mil subs in the next few years!
Just reading through the comments board during the outro... Holy Crap, where do these people find you? Also, that guy that said "son" I'm pretty sure is a young college student.
In my opinion it was more of a sort than a swap - the Republican party before the 1960s, or at least before the 1930s, was *on average* more progressive than the Democrats, but there were progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans then as well. Both parties were 'big tent' parties. Conservative southern whites went from Democrat to Republican, minorities went from Republican to Democrat, but in other groups there were plenty who remained where they were.
It's a favorite topic of mine that numerous channels have touched on. Knowing better did an excellent video on this as well. I look forward to watching this at a more reasonable hour.
@@Spongebrain97 because she's a black female conservative. She's a living dog whistle. And most conservatives view her as an unchallengable force, lest the challengers be called racists, backing their theory of hypocritical "demonrats".
@@ElectricBuckeye sounds like a load of strawman. you are 100% wrong. What Candance Owens is more like is an attempt of conservatives to show a black woman as proof of how progressives they are. your claims are false she is simply the Republican party virtue signaling. What the fuck do you mean by "living dog whistle"?
The “fine folks” at the daily wire haven’t embraced Candace Owens because they want to appear progressive. She’s valuable to them because she echoes the same rhetoric. Institutional racism doesn’t exist, BLM is a Marxist radical organization, George Floyd had drug priors and broke the law, making him undeserving of empathy and so on. They believe having a black woman sharing their views, validates them.
"... there is no cause that justifies a resort to violence." - Ronald Reagan Tell that to the DC protestors on Jan 6th! Let's see that call for order brought to bear on the boogaloos and bigots of modern domestic violence, who carry "Back the Blue" flags while killing cops!
Beatings cause strokes. Stroke is a result of blood clot blocking the blood vessels that feed oxygen to the brain. Without oxygen, brain cells die. The body responds to physical trauma with blood clots to stop the blood loss. Sometimes a piece of the clot breaks off and follows the bloodstream somewhere and gets stuck. The more physical trauma the patient endures, the more likely it is for a piece of the clot to break off and get stuck. Blows to the head increase the odds of stroke as a result of physical trauma, because it's the vessels nearest the brain being broken. What physical trauma did the autopsy document?
#*scratches head*# Look, I'm conservative, republican leaning and all, but why the frik don't these people know about the party switch? I get you had more in depth insight into it, but even without all that, it's WELL documented.
It's about the moral high ground and culture war. Most of them, I suspect, do know about the party switch. But it is very convenient to, for instance, claim Lincoln, one of the American Saints, for "us". Or to claim that "they" are the actual racists because they formerly represented the South. Acknowledging the party switch disturbs that useful narrative.
@@varana So basically, people associate their moral grounds with their political parties instead of their ideologies which have no correlation to all of this? I mean it's what I expected but I was hoping I might've actually found a reason to take Republicans seriously for once.
3:33 Bipartisanship, in my opinion, should only be done if both parties involved, can both agree on the thing they are working together on is the right thing to do, in and of itself; not just to compromise their values to an olive-branch, that the other side probably won't reciprocate.
Great video! Thank you for your commitment to presenting factual information about US history! Hope this videos gets millions of views. Your video should be mandatory viewing for all Americans.
I mean the polarization is worse now I think than ever because of the internet and media constantly putting wedges between us. Partisanship is worse now than ever.
You should follow the advent of the media. The printing press changed the political and social landscapes. It was incredibly simple and inexpensive to communicate to a mass of people. The American Revolution was stoked by printed treatises on "rights". Many politicians, including Abraham Lincoln owned newspapers. At the time, these things were novel. With the advent of radio, motion pictures, and television we noted some major changes in our nation and their influences on politics: fireside chats, the 1960 televised presidential debates, etc. The internet is the latest change and advent in media.
An ex-high school classmate (and now a school teacher) claims the party switch never happened as only one Democratic congressman became a Republican post civil rights movement: Storm Thormond. He didn’t seem to get by saying one of the most racist congressmen switching parties probably hurt his point. And speaking of Storm Thormond is another example of the switch. Establishment Republicans in the 1960s wanted him out and by 2000 he had the Republican leadership wishing him a happy 100th birthday and calling him the greatest senator of all time.
Goldwater in 1964 at an Atlanta press conference: “We're not going to get the Negro vote as a bloc in 1964 or 1968, so we ought to go hunting where the ducks are.”
I find this kind of history so useful to understand my own country which is a very young democracy that is still in its early twenties lol. I'm from South Africa. I have a major in history and this video really helps in providing a framework that one can use to understand things that happen in this sphere of the human condition in a democratic society. Just to illustrate, the Apartheid government used to control the media to justify the fucked up things they used to do, fast forward 20 years and the ANC under the worst president in democratic South Africa, Jacob Zuma, is using the same tactics to undermine our constitutional democracy. What changed? Hopefully using the framework this video has provided I'll be able to answer this one day XD. Thanks Cypher!!!!!!
Both of these groups are similar, in that they institute policies that benefit a tiny group of elites by taking away from the majority of the population, the only difference is the change of those elites, back in the day the elites were the whites, now the elites are the corrupt officials in power
Recently found this channel cause a comment bumped it into my algorithm. This is my 6th 7th video I’ve watched. So I’m passing it along to the algorithm. It’s a demonetized video but definitely has information more people should be privy to. 😊
Here in Germany we have 6 parties and each party getting 5% of the votes gets into parliament, but in the UK they have a first parse the post system like the US and they also have more than 2 parties, so it should be possible even if unlikely.
When he said Johnson vetoed the civil rights act in the 60s, I was so confused and was trying to look it up only to remember that we've had multiple president Johnson in the 60s
Thank you. I'm not American and the party switch always seemed weird to me; it obviously happened, and denialism is mind-blowing, but I never really got how and why (and to a lesser extent when) it happened, so I hope this series will help me see through that complex phenomenon.
Its very complex and I've seen completely reasonable takes on both sides. I think calling it a flip is disingenuous as they didn't completely reverse positions on issues but slid around on a few scales over time.
I think it boils down to both sides being called racist by each other and then trying to prove they’re not because of (insert historical reason why here), when in reality neither side is legitimately racist and all they’re trying to do is get votes and since neither side is racist people vote for whichever party (in their eyes) proved to not be bigots better. It’s ridiculous people should be voting on the merit of the candidate in question rather than the party because as we see in the video the candidates of whichever party they’re apart of can change the image of their party during their presidency (i.e. like Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt).
@@Plainsburner I think liberals just have to tell themselves a flip happened so that they can separate themselves from the racists in the past, not realizing that a lot of people in both (and the other) political parties were racist at the time as well.
One thing I should mention is that, the politicians don't change, the voters do. In general, the politicians don't care who votes for them, they just want votes. So even though when the party switch happened, very few politicians actually changed parties. Instead, the voters changed parties. It started on the national level, and over time, went to the state and local levels. That's why so few politicians changed parties, instead the people voting changed the party they voted for.
The really strange thing about the talk of left and right wing in US politics is that the so-called left wing liberal democrats/social democrats are pretty much centrist when compared to the left-right divide in other democratic countries. The US political spectrum is very right leaning overall and to say that there is a socialist movement in the US today is just laughable.
Yeah lmao. This is what happens when centrist like Bernie Sanders and AOC run around calling themselves democratic socialists when they are in fact social democrats. The true meaning of socialism is watered down to where "building roads and giving healthcare" is socialism.
@@oklanime that's not the issue, the issue is calling everyone left of the republican party communist. (It makes even moderates appear radical cause people don't listen to what they are fighting for or assume those things are radical)
2:07 What's with the gaps in the dates for the party systems? I guess they're all election years, so do we not count the actual presidential term while the parties reconfigure?
I’m fascinated by him as well. Which party do you think William Jennings Bryan would belong today? Economically left wing populist while socially very conservative.
There is an instinct to trace political evolution backward from now rather than to start at the beginning. That’s how notions like Conservatism being innately about small government and Liberalism a big one arise. The associations were reversed in fact at the Founding. The Hamiltonian Federalists represented a kind of Classical Conservatism which saw a strong national government as essential to preserving order. The Jeffersonian Republicans espoused a rigorous Classical Liberalism which perceived it to be an oppressive tool of the elite. As liberal teachings had informed the American Revolution, both camps were influenced by them. They reached consensus on recognizing natural rights, constraining government power, abandoning hereditary titles of nobility as well as the separation of church and state. The Hamiltonians, however, maintained conservative attitudes on central banking, protectionism, restricting immigration and property requirements for the vote. The Jeffersonians championed the liberal ideals of laissez-faire, free trade, open immigration and extending political suffrage to the common man. A nationalist versus internationalist divide emerged which shaped a lot of their disagreements. Perhaps the fiercest ensued when looming conflict around England and France aggravated tensions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the federal over state position was used for conservative purposes when Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Efforts to thwart radicalism that involved putting foreigners under scrutiny. And the anti-federalist stance, albeit complicated by later battles, was applied for liberal ends when Republicans retaliated with the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Decrying them as violations of civil liberties, they asserted that the states could declare federal laws that they deemed unconstitutional void. A big deal in an age of centralized empires. Though the sectional question of slavery shook up the political landscape in a variety of ways, those concepts carried on in essence as the guiding orthodoxies for the modern Republican and Democratic leaderships. But the distinction has been obscured in memory. Take two icons for limited government types who embodied the competing intellectual traditions. Hamiltonianism in the Republican Calvin Coolidge and Jeffersonianism in the Democrat Grover Cleveland. Cleveland vetoed an immigration bill which featured a literacy test as a barrier in 1897 while Coolidge signed into law such a proposal in 1924. Cleveland ran on reducing tariffs while Coolidge kept tariff rates high. Cleveland opposed national banks while Coolidge let the Federal Reserve be. Cleveland set in motion the landmark antitrust lawsuit known as the Sugar Trust Case while Coolidge ended a string of administrations that had launched many of them. Cleveland put into place the Interstate Commerce Commission to protect consumers by overseeing trade while Coolidge appointed to it and the subsequent Federal Trade Commission hands-off commissioners to facilitate economic growth. It is their shared commitment to individualism, low taxes, sound money, balanced budgets and fiscal restraint that attracts the overlapping fans. Increasing demand for government intervention ignited during the Progressive Era blurred the line between the old-fashioned conservatives and liberals weary of it. Their ideas, regardless of the historical rivalry, now tend to get lumped together in the conservative category and pit against Progressivism. It also treated as one thing, usually under the name Liberalism, despite the initial disharmony there as well. The Republican Theodore Roosevelt and Democrat Woodrow Wilson were the first progressive presidents from their parties. Though it was their successors who coined the terms Progressive Conservatism and Progressive Liberalism for their ideologies, each described himself with the pair of labels. Both differed from their classical counterparts with respect to the scope of government, but there are parallels in how they contrasted each other. Comparing Roosevelt and Wilson helps in differentiating between them. Roosevelt akin to Coolidge signed off on measures to curb immigration which included a literacy test in 1903 while Wilson like Cleveland before him rejected legislation of that sort in 1917. As expressed in his 1902 State of the Union Address, Roosevelt advocated protectionism. Wilson, on the other hand, favored free trade. A goal propounded in his Fourteen Points. Both pursued economic regulation. But though dubbed the Trustbuster, Roosevelt was not hostile to monopolies on principle. Approving of what he called good trusts like U.S. Steel. Wilson pushed for the Clayton Antitrust Act in a bid to level the playing field by breaking them all up. The argument between nationalism and internationalism gained a new dimension with their foreign policy opinions. TR believed in the superiority of Anglo-Saxon societies and, as affirmed by his Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, their duty to police the world. Conversely, Wilson claimed that no nation was fit to sit in judgement of another. His ultimate aim was global governance through the League of Nations. Much like Classical Liberalism, Progressive Conservatism is largely overlooked in these discussions. Observing them can illuminate trends which go back to the First Party System. Conditions created by the Second Industrial Revolution prompted the re-examination of accepted conservative and liberal precepts. Elements of both parties became convinced that government action was needed to remedy escalating unrest. Especially after the rise of the Populist Movement which fought for agrarian and industrial labor interests. The Populists coalesced into the People’s Party until rallying to the Democrat William Jennings Bryan to defy the rich and aid the poor. Republicans such as Roosevelt concluded that reform was necessary to prevent the country from descending into chaos. The key difference was that Bryan’s party selected him as its presidential candidate three times while Roosevelt’s gave him the vice presidency because it was thought that he couldn’t rock the boat there. Only taking office by chance after the assassination of William McKinley. And a greater number of delegates lent their support to the moderate William Howard Taft instead when he attempted to go for a third term. Admirers of Cleveland left to form the National Democratic Party when Bryan came out on top in 1896. Likewise, Roosevelt and his followers walked out to organize the original Progressive Party after Taft received the nomination in 1912. Each split benefited the other major party and they quickly declined. Internal debates persisted, but precedents were set. Though Bryan never won, Wilson acted on several of his causes. And Franklin Roosevelt actually endorsed Wilson, not Teddy, in 1912. He built on his prototypical administrative state with the New Deal. An agenda of then unmatched government activism. In keeping with Warren G. Harding and Coolidge’s Post-Wilson Return to Normalcy, Republicans led by Robert Taft worked at rolling it back. The election of Dwight Eisenhower marked a truce. His philosophy of Dynamic Conservatism made peace with the New Deal zeitgeist, but he sought to rein in any excesses. The further turns within the Democratic and Republican parties are clear-cut. The New Left and New Right adopted by George McGovern and Ronald Reagan both challenged the popular assumptions of their day. Focusing on social issues and government control. The Third Way and Compassionate Conservatism advanced by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both moved toward the center. Reflecting upon the free market and social justice. Each establishment now confronts a populist wave. Democratic Socialism and National Conservatism are embraced by those that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have emboldened. Fed up with the ruling class, both aspire to tilt the balance of power. Granted, each from early on housed factions that spanned the political spectrum. Of note are those epitomized by the Democrat John C. Calhoun and Republican Horace Greeley. Calhoun defended the status quo for Southern planters while Greeley promoted Utopian Socialism. The two served as prominent party figures up until they, alongside other dissidents, were faced with critical disputes which drove them apart. Calhoun set up the Nullifier Party after a bitter falling-out with Andrew Jackson due to him standing by the federal government in a mounting crisis with South Carolina over the Tariff of 1828. Greeley ran as the Liberal Republican Party nominee against Ulysses S. Grant in the election of 1872 in protest of scandals in his administration tied to big business. But not even allying with their partisan adversaries, the Nullifiers with the Whigs and the Liberal Republicans with the Democrats, was enough to defeat Jackson or Grant. Most of their members soon dispersed among them both. Friction lingered between right-leaning Republican and left-leaning Democratic national parties and the left-wing Republicans and right-wing Democrats holding considerable sway at the state level with whom they compromised. The La Follette Wisconsin Republican and Talmadge Georgia Democratic machines were examples which came to blows with the Coolidge Campaign and FDR Administration. More infrastructure development coupled with gradual modernization led to the regions converging economically and culturally. That resulted in Republicans and Democrats amassing vast majorities of conservatives and liberals. Broadly speaking, along small town and big city lines. Both have indeed changed with time, quibbled over details and contained shifting coalitions. But their values remain fundamentally rooted in Hamiltonian pro-business conservative nationalism and Jeffersonian anti-elitist liberal internationalism.
The fact that in 1972 Nixon had a bloc of supporters called "Democrats for Nixon" which were mostly from the South shows that the parties were indeed changing
like I tend to think: America changes constantly, Europe has been changing ever since humanity has been in the continent, politics changes by the hour, and people aren't what they started out as originally.
Are you that incompetent to understand there are ALOT of liberal progressives in the south? They still want the same thing the Democratic party wants, they just happen to live on the gulf coast, even back then.
@@ccLA08 of course they existed such as Lyndon Johnson but they werent as widespread. Today they are still there as seen with how Georiga and Florida are swing states. My point is how southern conservative Democrats began rooting for Republicans with Goldwater and Nixon and eventually got won over
@@ccLA08 well you do know that the modern day bulk of the Democratic vote is from minorities right? Especially in places like Atlanta and Miami. They've just been the driving force for the Democrats in that region especially because the Republican party basically dog whistles racism
The comments were turned off in the myths about slavery video. So I’m commenting on here. Good video. I think a lot of contention can be avoided if we dig deep to learn the truth about the past and about ourselves now. I was upset when I heard Abraham Lincolns quote, but not surprised. I also think his mindset was correct and allowed for greater things to happen throughout the history of the world. I hope Dr. King’s dream will one day come to pass.
Hey, did you make the musical part that sounds like South Park- the episode with selling gold? That is such an outstanding musical line up tracks of voices layered over themselves, if you made it, which you could have.. cuz I’ve seen the electronic drum pieces in the back of your video 😉… you must have a, natural musical bone or three in that head 🧠!!!
"You can't even point at one political party and blame them. That's what political hacks do." Yeeeeeooouch, haha! I appreciate that I learn so much here, and the shade you throw makes it so much better, especially when it's at "Wilsoooooon!"
I honestly didn't know the democrats were conservative. I already didn't like Candace Owens, but that sure makes the whole "get off the democratic plantation" thing just that much more detestable.
My theory is the party switch happened because the Republicans created a bunch of new states in the 1890s that had different values from its Northeastern base. The GOP then became the frontier party and picked up the anti-Native policies of the Jacksonians. This lead naturally to the rise of TR - a wealthy New Yorker with Dakota roots
There was actually an existing Jacksonian current within the GOP from their early days. Their premiere presidential candidate John C. Fremont and Abraham Lincoln’s first vice president Hannibal Hamlin serve as two prominent examples of Democrats turned Republican. Fremont went so far as to run claiming to be the legitimate heir to the legacy of Andrew Jackson and even Lincoln, despite his background as an old Clayite Whig, invoked him on the campaign trail.
Rank Choice voting will only help in places where stuff is close(ie 49-48), people who win in districts that are 7-30 or 80-20 will still win. All that being said yeah maybe Trump would have lost in 2016 if every state enacted rank choice voting
@@viviancooper5892 Look at the amount of 3rd party votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, in each state if all the Green Party votes went for Hillary she would have won, but beyond that even Gary Johnson voters said they would more likely vote Clinton if given only 2 options(by like a 2 to 1 margin)
Excellent video. I would just add a commentary about characterising the GOP as ‘liberal’ during the late XIXth century. According to everything I’ve read, they have always been conservatives, the difference is that conservatism in that time was more *reformist* than what the democrats were proposing. The burkean ideology integrated the Republican (whig or Federalist) platform with Alexander Hamilton, while populism in a more jacobinistic approach has always been a trademark of the democratic party (e.g. Henry Jennings Bryan, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson) The switch seems to be more related to which demographic the parties were aiming to achieve electorally. That is, when Democrats were seeking southern votes, they’d reinforce their opposition to big government in DC ‘telling the good old southern folk what to do’ but when that sort of discourse was no longer needed, they quietly abandoned it in favour of the New Deal and redistributive populism. Meanwhile the GOP loved conservative opposition to slavery when that debate was central in American politics (something you can attest for yourself by reading Burke and Hamilton). However, when the democrats pushed northern sympathetic elements into their agenda, the republicans focused on the ‘slow and steady’ aspect of conservatism which is ‘cautious with change and respects traditions’.
You're getting at the main distinction which is that in class conflict terms the Republican and Democratic lineages have largely held to the same positions in their rhetoric. Albeit with a pretty murky period after the Mexican-American War into Reconstruction. Even the civil rights reforms handled under the Republican administrations was largely done in a more paternalistic way than a populist one like how the Democrats do today. While they did take significant steps in helping the freed slaves their legislation was rooted in the protection of rights outlined in the Founding documents and they were simultaneously supporting the rise of the Gilded Age industrial capitalist class through economic nationalism that's greatest challenger was the Democrat William Jennings Bryan. From Lyndon Johnson afterward civil rights under the Democrats has taken on a decidedly more populist dimension in the sense that now it’s been expanded to being about correcting for economic imbalances on the basis they’re rooted in historic discrimination. The socialists attracting attention in the party now going so far as to say that the American capitalist system, the one essentially built up by the Republicans after the Civil War, is itself the problem that perpetuates oppression. The Republicans with the most populist tenor who rose to real prominence rather than being put on the sideline, prior to Donald Trump anyway, were probably Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Though in the case of the latter it was a populism oriented against government bureaucracy itself being an overbearing force in people’s lives as opposed to the holders of concentrated wealth who gain too much influence over the government. Such as were the cases with the populisms of Jefferson, Jackson, Bryan, FDR and the crop of Democratic Socialists today. The sort of populism appealed to by Barry Goldwater before him and the Tea Party afterward. TR is trickier to read, but whatever way you put him he’s still not as radical as many people suggest. Some trying to frame him as practically the Bernie Sanders of his day. But that’s usually done by stripping away the context of the time. The Populists had already become a fairly mainstream political force, the bourgeoning Socialist movement was on the rise and the Anarchists on the fringes were violently lashing out. A few carrying out the infamous Haymarket Affair with bombings in Chicago and one assassinating his predecessor William McKinley. Theodore Roosevelt came to believe in much the same fashion that European leaders like Britain’s Benjamin Disraeli and Germany’s Otto von Bismarck before him that moderate social reform was necessary to maintain the health of society and prevent the working class from being debased to the point of becoming prone to violent revolution from the growing pains of industrialization. Also like them he sought to carry that out in tandem with printing traditional social values and increasing America’s strength on the world stage through imperial ventures. Coining his philosophy as Progressive Conservatism. Teddy generally frames his reforms about applying equal protections to capital and labor while holding both up to ethical standards. As opposed to taking a clear side against big business which saw wealth disparity and monopolies themselves rather than bad behavior on the part of some corporations as the main problem like say Bryan did. That’s why he was opposed to the Populist movement’s push for the Free Silver currency reform as well as trying to make a distinction between good trusts and bad trusts. He was actually favorable towards well functioning monopolies as an efficient means to give people products they wanted on a large scale. That’s why he actually left Standard Oil alone as president and was livid when his in some ways more conservative chosen successor William Howard Taft, who to the surprise of many busted twice as many trusts in his one term than Roosevelt did in both of his, went after them. This attitude towards trusts was used against him during the election of 1912 after he refused to put the strengthening of antitrust laws on his platform. Woodrow Wilson who planned on doing so and carried it out in the form of the Clayton Antitrust Act, legislation that leveled the remaining Gilded Age monopolies, and accused Teddy of simply being a paternalist who wasn’t truly solving the problem they caused. While a lot of people like to use the Roosevelts as a symbol of a baton pass between the parties Franklin actually supported Wilson during that election over his distant cousin. Later brining Wilson administration alumni like Hugh Johnson and Rex Tugwell into his own. On the other hand his later rival Herbert Hoover, a self-described Republican Progressive, had a committed supporter of TR including during his Progressive Party run. And when you compare Hoover’s famous speech about Rugged Individualism to Teddy’s about living the Strenuous Life there are indeed a lot of parallels. Teddy’s influence arguably goes even farther than many people think. Influencing a strand of the Republican tradition that runs through the Compassionate Capitalism of Thomas Dewey, the Dynamic Conservatism of Dwight Eisenhower and the Compassionate Conservatism of the Bush presidents. Wow, that tangent on Theodore Roosevelt went way longer than I expected. But the point was to address how even the Republican president where the left-wing case is asserted perhaps there is a real debate to be had about the veracity. The last thing I will say though is that you’re right in how both parties have shifted on some rhetorical points based upon who they’re trying to appeal to. Though ironically one that isn’t completely true is the idea that the South was uniformly opposed to big government. They not only strongly backed William Jennings Bryan’s presidential bids but provided some of the most reliable support for FDR’s elections. And so long as civil rights issues didn’t get in the way not all but most Southern politicians were willing to back the New Deal programs. Heck, it took a majority of them voting with Northern Democrats against Republican opposition to get Johnson’s War on Poverty measures through. Indeed I’ve often said and have a whole bit about how socio-economic development plays a big role in how regions voting patterns have changed and subsequently what the parties decide to focus on. In this case it would be Northern cities that lost their old industrial jobs which makes it tough for a pro-business party but prime for an anti-elitist party and the South modernizing to the point that it arguably just converged with standard voting patterns across the country. With the big cities voting Democrat, the small towns going Republican and the suburbs as the tipping point. Some rhetoric will change to become more appealing to a region where that kind of substantial change happens.
@@johnweber4577 thank you for that very detailed answer. I believe what you said does proceed and elucidates very well the argument I was making, with far more depth of knowledge included. I am aware that southern voters have been inclined for big government positions in the past. However, my central point - which I think you have validated - was that the party switch was more geographically motivated than ideological, having the parties adapted their political discourse in order to accommodate possible voters under the circumstances of each era - without necessarily dropping fundamental ideological beliefs. Your remarks about Teddy Roosevelt were particularly interesting and well developed. I haven’t studied TR’s party system very thoroughly but I always questioned this idea of a Sanders-like Roosevelt narrative that people unfortunately try to push sometimes. Maybe employing the term “progressivism” as the sort of political philosophy of social justice the we find in modern American politics is anachronistic when talking about XIXth century and early XXtg century politics. In that time it could very well mean “to strive for the *progress* of the nation” in a more imperialistic way rather than the social liberal progressivism that is popular nowadays. The interpretation of “progress” as “imperial national development” seems more appropriate to me because it allows convergence with Roosevelt’s and McKinley’s foreign policy. Regarding your last suggestion about supposed new rhetorical changes to be incorporated into the GOP platform - notably related to a more populist or anti-elitist oriented electorate - it does seem to correlate with a global tendency amongst developed nations. On that sense, Ronald Inglehart’s new book ‘cultural backlash’ is quite interesting, also Matthew Goodwin’s ‘National Populism’. Thank you for your comment, do you have a reading suggestion on American Political History?
@@leotrnt You’re welcome and gotcha. I think I got where I misread you. As for reading suggestions it kind of depends on which part of this long timeframe you’re specifically curious about. If we’re talking the roots of the American Party systems you’ve got The Life of the Parties by A. James Reichley as a primer with a general overview or even Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by Gordon Wood does a pretty good job parsing out what conservatism and liberalism meant during the First Party System by exploring the dynamics and disagreements between the titular figures. Broadly speaking I do think the work of Arthur Schlesinger Jr. while considerably older still does a good job. Particularly The Age of Jackson is of particular interest if interested in a take touching on the arc of Jacksonian Democracy to New Deal Liberalism. Bits of interpretation could be quibbled in any of them like any historical work, but in the whole do a really job to my mind. Here’s a place where I want to add a bit more information to what I wash saying before and in a way make something of a caveat to the other side of the Party Switch debate. At least going by their presiding presidents as useful markers between James Polk and Grover Cleveland I’d probably concede that the general dynamic was put on hold as the country went into a kind of detour where the Right and Left labels become difficult to apply concretely. The Whigs and the Democrats each had wings in both the North and South but there as a significant realignment by region after the Mexican-American War as slavery became more prominent in the national debate. Droves of Northern Democrats leaving to form the Free Soil Party before joining the Republicans. The Cotton Whigs who were conservatives of a Southern variety, and tended to be the most hardline on the issue going into the Democratic Party and gaining disproportionate influence in the party with which they put up candidates like Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan to represent their peculiar interests before Stephen Douglas wrestled control of the party from them going into the election of 1860. Pushing them into breaking off to form the Southern Democratic Party with which to run a candidate, John C. Breckenridge, against Lincoln and Douglas. It is also true that before the Civil War, during and after there were left-wing, some extremely so, within the big tent Republican Party coalition. Including the likes of the utopian socialist Horace Greeley who carried over from the Whigs, though interestingly if we’re talking about the roots of the country’s political traditions he actually named his first magazine The Jeffersonian despite the Democratic Party being more identified with his legacy, and Charles Sumner. Most of them along would join the breakaway Liberal Republican Party that was formed to challenge Ulysses S. Grant’s re-election campaign in 1872 along with other dissident Republican strands like the hardline Classical Liberals. Their issues involving concerns about corruption in Grant’s previous administration that also tied into its comic policies that benefited big business. Despite also receiving the official backing of the Democratic Party Greeley who was put up as their candidate lost. Some of them returned to the Republicans, others joined the Democrats and more went out into the wilderness. But in any case what hard Left influence there had been and remained in the party afterward was largely getting sidelined. Especially on the national level. Basically after the uniting issue of slavery had been settled the cracks in what was a very eclectic coalition started to show. With the rise of Grover Cleveland’s leadership in the Democratic Party an emphasis on Classical Liberalism became clear again as the traditional dynamic reasserted itself. Though then conditions had changed with the Second Industrial Revolution to the point that mainstream Liberalism was at a crossroads. Some like Cleveland and later the breakaway National Democratic Party believed in holding to the Classical Liberal doctrine. While many accuse Cleveland of being simply a pawn of big business it’s often forgotten that his administration actually passed the act that established the Interstate Commerce Commission and initiated the first major antirust case against the American Sugar Refining Company even if it did not quite go the way he hoped. But they were anchored in Classical Liberalism which tried to stay out of economic intervention as much as possible. Cleveland also showed his Classical Liberal credo by his advocacy of free trade, vetoing a 1897 bill that would establish a literacy test meant to limit immigration and was outspoken critic of imperialism as shown the crisis of the Spanish-American War. Interestingly enough as a point of comparison on the flip-side Theodore Roosevelt believed in protectionism, as president signed into law the Immigration Act of 1903 which did restrict immigration with a literacy test and supported imperial adventures including that very war which in the context of that time were seen as conservative stances. Though left-wing People’s Party Populists tended to hold to the contemporary Liberal doctrines on free trade and anti-imperialism many would start to reconsider mass immigration themselves. Several for economic and others for cultural reasons. Some things to shift around some over time and there is variety in any coalition past or present of course. It’s also worth noting that the relationship between imperialism, expansionism and foreign intervention along with how they manifest in both parties can also be pretty murky and in some ways shift depending upon the time like other issues. But a new breed of Modern Liberalism was forming which thought the old doctrines were not enough to carry out the intended goals of Classical Liberalism. Both Grover Cleveland and the Democratic populist William Jennings Bryan saw themselves as carrying on the tradition of Jefferson and Jackson but disagreed on the limits to the means by which their egalitarian goals could be carried out. Liberalism had initially been averse to the expression of government power because they feared it trending to the benefit of the elites while with the rise of new massive corporations the nascent Modern Liberals saw those as the coercive forces taking away people’s freedom rather than the state which was now to their mind the only tool that could deal with the problem. Particularly because of how it had been more thoroughly democratized in the interim. Parallel phenomenon emerged in the USA and UK where working class movements discontent with the new status quo represented by the People’s Party and the Labour Representation League that would work to collaborate with the Democratic and Liberal parties to put up joint candidates to the dismay of the orthodox Liberals. While many see men like Warren G. Hardin and Calvin Coolidge later as throwbacks to that kind of Liberalism but they maintained conservative positions on issues like the aforementioned support for protectionism and immigration restrictions. And of course they inherited their general big business friendly attitudes. In several respects they weren’t all that different from mainline Republicans historically but by virtue of following upon the Progressive Era and Wilson’s wartime command economy in particular, which did not have any fixed stop dates, their efforts in the Return to Normalcy to go back to something closer to the way Republicans had set it up before due at first glance seem to break with Republican tradition that had not focused on rolling back government prior. And that turned out to be another long discussion tangentially related to your point, but believed in any case you might find it interesting. Grover Cleveland so to speak is kind of the other side of the same coin with Theodore Roosevelt. Both being figures representing philosophies that are rare on the political stage these days, Classical Liberalism and Progressive Conservatism, and derived from that are eclectic sets of beliefs that are hard to place in the modern understanding. But perhaps most prevalently they are ones people are very prone to misconstruing. I guess it just felt like good extra information to add some understanding the dynamics between conservatism and liberalism as well as how they were understood at that time. Haha
@@johnweber4577 what an interesting read. most people don't have as thorough analysis on our history and like to let their political partisanship cloud their views and distort history. this was a refreshing read.
@@Crusader677 Thank you! Always glad to hear from another person more interested in historical analysis for its own sake rather than seeing it as a tool to grind a their political axe on. I’ve been working to hone, expand on and better organize my thoughts on the subject which I think is still somewhere near the top if you go to the recent comments section if you’re curious to see something like that. Haha. But in any case, thanks again for the comment and take care.
Correction? At 11:12, shouldn't "an eight hour work WEEK" be an eight hour work DAY? BTW, love this series, excellent work, well worth multiple viewings.
More nuance than I expected. So thanks for that. I don't think a Majority of Either party (or even a significant minority) are racist, especially not openly.b
I think the two parties were most similar in the 1920s, especially in 1924. In 1924 the GOP incumbents POTUS Calvin Coolidge and the Democratic challenger John Davis were both conservatives and had similar platforms. The progressive left-wingers rallied behind the third-party progressive candidate Sen. Robert La Follette, a progressive Republican who left the party.
Yeah they’re also pretty similar if you look at the 1940 presidential nominees, with FDR and Wendell Wilkie, Wilkie supported things like expansion of the welfare state, Breaking up monopolies, increasing taxation on the wealthy, eliminating child labor laws, in regulating free markets. And on top of that he also supported sole racial integration in public schools and was an outspoken advocate for civil rights. The main reason why he join the Republican party, had less to do with policy and more to deal with his distain for FDR and the direction that he was taking the country, and didn’t like the way that he was implementing the new deal policies which he largely supported. And even after he lost him and FDR actually chatted about creating a third-party called the liberal party that wasn’t his official name but that’s what rumors say, but he died pretty soon after. So it’s pretty crazy to think how the republican party would’ve changed if he were elected president. On the opposite end what if someone like Taft got the nomination instead and won the presidency, he got pretty close to getting the nomination in 1952. Yeah political parties for the longest time in American history had more to do with demographics than they did with policies. There’s a lot less political polarization at the state level as well in a lot of cases then at the federal level. Like for instance Vermont has a pretty popular Republican governor and he got elected overwhelmingly in a state that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden in 2020 won overwhelmingly.
@@FernandoMartinez-pv1id What segregation is there on college campuses? Fun fact there literally is no segregation in college campuses, unless you're talking about segregation via degree major.
@@Blownkingg I have not been in college yet, but I have yet to hear a word about that "segregation" in college campuses! Based on my experiences with these sort of claims (which, more often than not, are designed not to inform, but to associate the other party with as many historical villains as possible), I don't think I will ever get any further details on these claims, since that's not the purpose!
Franklin Roosevelt did not become a Democrat to distinguish himself from Teddy. The two branches of the Roosevelt family that Franklin and Teddy belonged to had been politically divided between Democrats and Republicans for several generations. They are somewhat distant cousins. Franklin's wife Eleanor was actually more closely related to Teddy, she was Teddy's niece.
Ironically, Franklin actually supported Wilson over Teddy in the election of 1912 while Hoover himself supported his Bill Moose campaign. And that was not just a matter of the man being unwilling to break ranks with his party given how he had previously supported Teddy rather than the Democrat Alton Parker in 1904. Later, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. even campaigned on behalf of Hoover against FDR.
*UA-cam demonetized this* because of audio quoted in the video, so please consider supporting the channel by buying merch: teespring.com/stores/the-cynical-historian
Or by donating to my Patreon: www.patreon.com/CynicalHistorian
See following replies for corrections and additional info, but first, here are some related videos to check out:
4:10 - WILSOOOON! playlist: ua-cam.com/play/PLjnwpaclU4wXmCcEx0vfIim_jFMkgtLmS.html
4:25 - Lost Cause Myth: ua-cam.com/video/5EOhXF5lNgQ/v-deo.html
5:20 - 12 annoyances for historians: ua-cam.com/video/4J6IPhEkYmo/v-deo.html
6:50 - sectional crisis: ua-cam.com/video/Ff2AKILyi0o/v-deo.html
11:35 - Wilson pt.1: ua-cam.com/video/Hm0Gzz53YJo/v-deo.html
11:35 - Wilson pt.2: ua-cam.com/video/3hRd8B_vZiA/v-deo.html
11:50 - WILSOOOON! playlist: ua-cam.com/play/PLjnwpaclU4wXmCcEx0vfIim_jFMkgtLmS.html
*errata*
11:10 - workday not week (thx Liam O'Toole)
*references*
Jefferson Cowie, _The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics_ (Princeton, N.Jer.: Princeton University Press, 2016). amzn.to/35sJX4w
Eric Foner, _Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877,_ new ed. (1988; New York: Perennial Classics, 2002). amzn.to/34lFOhq
Lawrence Goodwyn, _The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America_ (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1975). amzn.to/2tcGsAR
Ross Kennedy ed., _A Companion to Woodrow Wilson_ (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2013). amzn.to/2KXhGc1
Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer, _Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974_ (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2019). amzn.to/2Zh3pxe
Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, _Getting Tough: Welfare and Imprisonment in 1970s America_ (Princeton, N.Jer.: Princeton University Press, 2017). amzn.to/2M2ol7j
While it would affect minorities more that Voter suppression would affect everyone, just goes to show how desperate these people (Repulicans like that) are that they basically shot themselves.
Do you think people who vote 3rd party waste there vote or should 3rd parties be given more to make the elections more than 2 party only
@@forickgrimaldus8301 claiming that being against mail in ballots is the equivalent to voter suppression is a stretch.
Next to only Henry Clay and possibly William Jennings Bryan, Barry Goldwater is the most influential presidential candidate to lose a presidential election in American history.
I'd argue Bernie is the Barry Goldwater of the Dems...or will be considered such
@Egg T Did you ignore the comment I was replying to or do you think Barry Goldwater was elected president
Id argue Eugene Debs is up there
mr. breasts give me money
You should do a top 10 presidential election losers video!
Glad to see an acknowledgement that this was a slow process. I hate when people look at the 1920 and 2016 electoral maps and are like “this is clearly just because of what happened in the 60s”.
That's the most basic explanation one can give to people who believe that they've never switched tbh
Yeah, I always found it odd that Democrats love to talk about the party switch in the 60s, but claim FDR as a Democratic hero. Plus the two most free market presidents of the 20th century were Harding and Coolidge who were Republicans in the 20s. IMHO the parties are more different than they switched, but you can see the roots of the current bases of the parties even 100 years ago.
@@jimland4359 You can, but like it always does, the driving force behind major political change was race relations and the history of slavery. It didn't start in the 60's but that's when the current dynamic was cemented and the majority of change took place.
I guess you're saying "most free market" like it's a good thing, but data shows that republicans pretty much always tank the economy, leaving it to their democrat successors to clean up their mess.
Neither party is actually good for the nation if we want to move forward from the point we are at, but the Republicans actively want to move the US backwards. Before the party switch the roles were reversed, but that's because the Democrats used to be the conservative party.
Point me to the conservative party of a nation and you'll be showing me which party is more racist and extreme.
@@LDIndustries
Germany prior to unification saw its liberal elements so exceedingly radical that they unironically believed in the sort of lebensraum concept that hitler did later. That is a horrendous reading of history to just read conservatism as the dangerous and radical side when liberal ideologies historically have been some of the most radical and ----ed up movements out there. People quietly shove under the rug ---- like the reign of terror in france which was entirely based on enlightenment and liberal thought, the the german pan-nationalists before Bismarck that wanted greater germany, (a concept that would utterly destroy europe due to how sweeping its claims were) and situations like Spain where the liberals were the very reason Spain is such a hellhole today (they had a program of rampant centralization and forced cultural assimilation akin to the french) and how france was consistently the most unstable nation in europe, and still even today is exceedingly unstable, being on their FIFTH REPUBLIC.
People like you point to things like tariffs and import taxes and say 'oh look this causes an economic downturn its terrible' ignoring that that is the *short term* result of tariffs, and is in no way indicative of their long term goals, which routinely see success when implimented. People forget that economic liberalism has at times completely ruined nations because they can't compete in global markets (the ottoman empire completely failed to industrialize as free trade made imported goods consistly cheaper than anything they produced, forcibly killing any home-grown businesses, and is one of the marked reasons the nation failed as a whole.)
Liberalism and conservatism are two sides of the same coin, buddy. They can both be equally horrendous things to people. That doesnt mean one is inherently more evil or wrong than the other. Some of the best leaders in human history were die-hard conservatives, as were liberals.
@@maddoxlacy9072 Conservatives have been on the wrong side of history every single time. Crusades, slavery, civil rights, lgbt rights, etc. Conservatism is inherently a reactionary ideology as it doesn't exist without progressives. If no one ever wanted to advance society then there would never be anything to conserve. I'm not a liberal, but I'd take a liberal over a conservative any day. At least the liberal is less likely to say "you know that time in history where only white men had rights? yeah I want to go back to then."
Every day forward in time is better than the day before because we advance socially and technologically. Wanting to conserve old traditions instead of advance forward or to go back to the past is the mindset of a scared piss baby. The only time where the future would get worse is if conservatives are allowed unfettered control, because the past and the values that conservatives want to hang onto never existed. They're myths they tell themselves to justify their victimhood complexes.
Additional complication: Until like the 60s, what candidates got nominated for president was limited by party machines. Now that primaries are binding, ideology is much more of a driver.
Money is the real driver in US politics
Primaries still aren't Democratic tho
@@MajorMlgNoob They are way more democratic now than before
@@laharmo1501 yes but Caucasus are dumb, the staggered dates weigh certain states more than others with no real logic for it, and delegates don't make much sense, and Dems have Super Delegates which are straight trash
Technically the whole primary and convention history starts with the 1830s and such where parties were starting to hold conventions to meet up and decide their nominees. This was entirely party bosses though and very little popular input was used.
But in 1912, due to progressive reformers the first primary systems started in which parties would hold mini state elections in a decent chunk of states around the country. Still not all states, usually only a dozen or less states held primaries each election year. On top of that party bosses still were the only ones with any real power.
Than in 1972, caused by democratic protests and anti corruption groups springing up after Nixon's scandals, the system we have today was set up in which each state had to have a primary, and the convention delegates (mostly) had to match popular vote in the primaries.
Today's primary systems for each party are still very corrupt and such, and often times have useless ceremonial parts to them, but it is better than before. Would be cool to get money out of politics finally though.
I’m glad he approached this more as polarization than a clear switch. “Liberal” and “Conservative” are just relative terms and it means a lot more to address the ideologies in their time than who was the more left or right party.
This is true
I tend to be more liberal on issues but I am a republican/libertarian
I always say that the two party system is the problem. With only two parties, it inherently creates an us vs them mentality. Especially with first past the post voting it makes it almost impossible for a 3rd party to become relevant
Ranked choice voting should absolutely be a thing. commenting belated for algorithm
The party realignment is definitely one of the most fascinating topic of US history.
It's kinda maddening to think about
I find it fascinating that there are U.S. citizens who believe party realignment is a hoax.
@@charlesingram2075 conservative idiots that listen to known propagandists like PragerU (funded by fracking billionaires Dan & Farris Wilks) do think it’s a hoax.
Here ua-cam.com/video/g_a7dQXilCo/v-deo.html Carol Swain (known Candace-like grifter & discredited historian) shares with Republican morons the “inconvenient truth” about the Democratic Party 😂
No wonder these “poorly educated” would worship a morally bankrupt con man like Trump.
@@unsureprobablymaybe3527 you’re such an idiot you can’t even get a simple rebuttal right as there are, even by your standards, 2 genders 😂 good job proving my previous statement about the “poorly educated” right kid 😉
Now , how anyone chooses to identify themselves it’s not my business & that’s the difference between a democrat & a conservative bigot that thinks he has a saying about how people should live their lives 😉
Now, ask daddy Trump for some paper towels, find your safe space in your basement and cry your conservative tears there 🤡
Nice pfp
Parties are meant to change ideology. Parties, in theory, serve the people and thus change and realign their policies to fit with the times. If parties didn't realign their policies, then it would mean the politicians in the party are immortal and characteristically or the issues of the day did not change at all. Both are terrible.
"characteristically static" should be in place of "characteristically."
@@LuccianoBartolini Uh, no, if people's minds change and the issues of the day change, then parties either change or disappear. To say that a party should be advocating for the same things now as they did 100 years ago is the deny the march of time and, at least, technological progress.
Parties have to stick to their ideologies. It's when parties change to cater to the latest populist buzz-issue that is we get parties that are impossible to oust from governmental power. That is a much greater threat to the democratic system than a party that has stuck to a certain point of view for too long. The issues may shift, but if the parties just choose which side of the issue they are going to support according to what happens to be popular at the moment, rather than their ideological compass, that's when we get the disbelief in the representative democracy that's plaguing all the Western democracies right now, with Nationalist and Populist parties springing up all over Europe and candidates of that same ilk running for office in the United States.
What we really need is politicians who dare to say what they believe in, but the way the current media landscape is set up, that is a recipe for political suicide.
@@johanrunfeldt7174 No, if parties were meant to stick to one ideology forever and ever then we would never see parties stay for more than a decade or so. To deny that existing structures and groups change with time is to deny that time passes and conditions change.
I think what really caused the parties to be able to change so much in America is that the names of the parties "Democrats" and "Republicans" are so vague and meaningless that you can pretty much attach whatever ideological meaning you want to the party name. If you go to Britain the Labor and Conservative parties will generally change very little or at the very least not swap, mainly due to the obvious and simplistic meaning of the names. Labour fights for workers more, and conservatives, are for more traditional values. The US citizens can say whatever meaning for the naming of their preferred party. White Southerners after the civil war voted Democrat primarily because the party name didn't violate any of it's principles, just as how the name of the Democratic party name nowadays doesn't ruffle the feathers of The youth and minority groups in general. The cause was the vagueness of the party names.
I was very confused when I first heard that Johnson was impeached. Then he said Andrew Jonhson and it clicked.
@Egg T what? No Andrew JOHNSON
@@anoon-, yes.
Oh hey! It’s you!
Joke: The party switch never happened
Broke: The party switch happened recently
Woke: The party switch began in the (18)50s
Coke: The party switch is always happening.
Bloke: The two party system practiced today is broken.
The MOST annoying thing people can say is that 1800s gop and today are identical
The parties were always the same
Poke: Party Switches Bitches!
I’ve been waiting on this one for MONTHS! Thank you! :)
At 11:10 you say Teddy wanted an 8-hour workweek, did you mean to say 8-hour workday?
hah, good catch
I concur with an 8-hour workweek! Make it happen, right meow!
Yeah I caught the same. I had to listen to it twice
I thought it was the radical socialist party from France who pioneered the 8-hour work day with the Matignon Agreements.
@@TroyWilson adding no decrease in pay from a 40 hour work week and you got a deal, heck I'll be a single issue voter for that if it exists.
Cypher:"The U.S isn't the entire world"
Americans:*spits out water*
🇺🇸 = 💩
@@ErosFabbriGk2026 As they say "where there's hate there's love". I love this country but it is basically distracting itself w/ Culture War and the "Bread And Circuses" of the current Political Paradigm. What is to really say that is "American".
@@ErosFabbriGk2026 Think about it though: over the generations the American People - in their wealth and decadence - have become weak. Our people prefer numbing their minds with pain killers, entertainment and ultimately have grown to detest legitimate American things or even outlaw that which was normal.
I will concede that this country - The US - is better than most places on earth. It's just that, unfortunately, the problems with our Government will never be changed because ultimately the American People, in their complacency, have ultimately accepted and allowed for our toxic politics and governance to grow. And I see nothing valuable about any of that - which is why I am just gonna re-enlist into The US Army and live my whole life there OR I am gonna go where people haven't grown complacent. I shall see to it when I get there.
@@rustym.shackelford5546 Yes we are not the world we are howver the superpower with enough nukes to destory any one we want if we ignore the consaqinces of mad and no we have stayed a solid qauter of the world gdp.
I am a simple man. I see Cynical Historian, I watch his video...
I see this meme a lot
@@professorcube5104 Still relevant though.
@@alexruddies1718 nah
@@professorcube5104 Relevant in meaning, not culturally was what I meant.
@@alexruddies1718 bruh i know
I think Teddy Roosevelt wanted an 8 hour work day, not week ;)
Yeah, I rewound and did a double take on that one. 😂
He just wasn't ambitious enough!
We should try that now!
LOL he did that on two different videos!
*Tf2 announcer voice*: teams are being scrambled
Spidermen pointing at each other
And the teams are BLUE and RED. Coincidence? I think not!
Hah! An obligatory "WILLLLLSONNNN!"
Luv that!
Great video dude! I love that you are talking about this very subject!
I'm going to say it this guy has gotten so much better with his deliveries and seems a lot more comfortable behind the camera. There is a marked difference between his presentation now and his older videos. 👍
Funny thing is, this was recorded a year ago
@@CynicalHistorian Ha didn't see that coming:)
11:12 “crazy progressive policies like an 8 hour work week”. Idk, I think and 8 hour work week is pretty radical 🤣.
My God Teddy is a god amongst men lol
I think the Ancient Greek citizens only worked 3 days a week under the rational that you work harder if you're we'll rested.
@CoMPoSt MeNDeZ Yeah, Ancient Greeks had slaves. Lots of them.
Thanks for the premier so that I can get my popcorn ready for the impending comment war. And also I can look at on the sources beforehand...
I honestly just hate the name party switch, I like demographics change better but whatever
@@gregoryf4186 i agree, "switch" doesn't really explain a process. "swap" doesn't do it either. sounds like just like two people trading places over an imaginary line.
I'll grab my popcorn
@@redzoomer483 hold on.... You mean the cat books?
@@MrSthotwhelz more like switching platforms...
I think it’s such a complicated topic because the terms ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ are extremely vague and dependent on the time period. There are times in history when progressivism was needed, and also times where progressing farther left pushes us further away from Constitutional freedom. For example, the revolutionary colonists in 1776 would at the time have been considered radically ‘liberal’, though supporting the same Constitutional principles today is considered ‘conservative’. I think the more important emphasis is to identify a set of political ideals you believe in, regardless of whether they’re considered ‘right’ or ‘left’ of where the bar currently sits in public society.
Christ I thought I was the only one saying this. Glad I'm not alone.
When did all that left right shit even start to matter so insanely much? I remember like 15 years ago "right" were literal racist and xenophobes and "left" were real punks and socialists. Now it seems like everyone is either right or left no center allowed. I mean gosh US democrats are barely center right on a normal scale.
2005 was a rather interesting year for politics
I mean they owned slaves lmao
@@DanimoroZ yawn
Thanks for covering this. After getting to the section on the Civil War and reconstruction in 'Lies My Teacher Taught Me', it become more and more evident to me that if the Republican party still stood for the same values as it did back in Lincoln's time, no self-respecting Republican today would EVER fly the confederate flag.
6:15 it’s worth mentioning that Martin van Buren was not only a Northerner but also an abolitionist
Everyone in my generation will say modern day problems started with the death of Harambe.
Cypher is uniquely skilled in his ability to knit Hstory to Current Affairs and still remain an historian
When you mention the lack of progressive policies among Republicans in the 20s I think you should mention calvin coolidges good record on civil rights. Outside of his personal views being very much in favor of civil rights for African Americans, from what I understand the klan lost a lot of influence under his presidency. If you are talking about his economic policies not being progressive compared to teddy that's certainly true but that was the appeal for many. He was liberal in the sense of both social beliefs and the market, meaning he supported a free market with little intervention. Feel free to tell me if I'm wrong I'm no historian lol.
"...turnabout is fair play." Fantastic quote.
Awesome video, it’s a shame these get demonetized.
4:40 Never in my life did I think The Cynical Historian would make a Metal Gear Solid reference
Finally, a video that can properly condense this complex topic into a multi part video series, can’t wait for the rest. 👍 10/10
Good video. Looking forward to the entire series.
As a person from little ol NZ at the bottom of the world this is a fascinating topic. Our politics seem so simple compared
I mean, our politics is interesting too in the sense that our labour and national parties tend to be so center it can be hard to tell them apart, meaning they can do weird shit like being a right wing party pushing "decent society", or our left wing party championing buisness (1990's lol)
@@westenev thats sorta what i mean, you get the same thing with both so you sorta just pick ur favourite colour lmao
*I don't like the term, "switch", because that incorrectly suggests a sudden reversal. But IDEOLOGICAL CHANGE between the parties most definitely took place.* The problem is too many people think because *today,* "liberal" or "left" is automatically perceived as Democratic and "conservative" or "right" is automatically perceived as Republican, that it's always been that way. That's patently false. Decades ago, your party affiliation did not identify your ideology.
Depending on what region you lived in, a Democrat or Republican could be liberal, conservative or moderate. All combinations existed. That is an indisputable historical fact.
Yes, especially back then, there were conservative, moderate and liberal wings *IN BOTH PARTIES* So many people like to claim the Ku Klux Klan for example was "Democratic" because of southern rednecks, when there were also Republican members *at the same time*, especially in the mid-west.
Oh I have a bad feeling about the comments section
In the grim darkness of the comments section there is only war.
@Egg T War is Eternal, all will soon see the Emperor's light as we Crusade in his name.
I haven’t seen those comments yet
@@lamaripiazza5226 I am currently talking to one
@@rb032682 damn that's crazy, but I ain't reading all that
Something that would be helpful to have, and that I can't find elsewhere is just a video of the time lapse of the way states voted over the last ~150 years. Love your stuff!
That Atwater's interview summarizes it all. Great job man! On point and extremely efficient.
That was really good. Looking forward to part 2.
Left or Right, We all hate Wilson.
The objective worst
I'm conservative, but I appreciate and respect your time and effort of researching and giving your analysis even though your views differ from mine. Keep up the great work and hopefully you reach 1mil subs in the next few years!
He’s losing subscribers.
Yeah but that probably has a lot more to do with the youtube algorithm then the Cynical historian himself
It wouldn’t be a Cypher video without a WILSOOON!
Who's Winson?
Who indeed.
Just reading through the comments board during the outro...
Holy Crap, where do these people find you?
Also, that guy that said "son" I'm pretty sure is a young college student.
Which quote was it that got this demonetized?
Hint: you hear it a lot in rap
Just found another A1 channel. Ready to binge, thank you!
In my opinion it was more of a sort than a swap - the Republican party before the 1960s, or at least before the 1930s, was *on average* more progressive than the Democrats, but there were progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans then as well. Both parties were 'big tent' parties. Conservative southern whites went from Democrat to Republican, minorities went from Republican to Democrat, but in other groups there were plenty who remained where they were.
Cypher, the reference to conservation, does that make Teddy Roosevelt an early environmentalist?
Yeah he was lol
heck yeah he was
@@CynicalHistorian So was Nixon, but for some reason modern conservatives seem to want nothing to do with that.
@@CynicalHistorian if so than Teddy is the Manliest Hippie to ever live 😂
It's a favorite topic of mine that numerous channels have touched on. Knowing better did an excellent video on this as well. I look forward to watching this at a more reasonable hour.
I love that you still explode when Wilson comes up
5:20 Owens, derpedy derp derp, OMFG LOL
Id laugh but the fact that people take her seriously its triggering to me
@@Spongebrain97 because she's a black female conservative. She's a living dog whistle. And most conservatives view her as an unchallengable force, lest the challengers be called racists, backing their theory of hypocritical "demonrats".
@@ElectricBuckeye sounds like a load of strawman. you are 100% wrong. What Candance Owens is more like is an attempt of conservatives to show a black woman as proof of how progressives they are. your claims are false she is simply the Republican party virtue signaling.
What the fuck do you mean by "living dog whistle"?
@@williamt.sherman9841 I think you guys are saying more or less the same thing
The “fine folks” at the daily wire haven’t embraced Candace Owens because they want to appear progressive.
She’s valuable to them because she echoes the same rhetoric.
Institutional racism doesn’t exist, BLM is a Marxist radical organization, George Floyd had drug priors and broke the law, making him undeserving of empathy and so on.
They believe having a black woman sharing their views, validates them.
‘Tis a great episode
I just read a biography of Coolidge and was excited to hear how he for in... and he didn't even warrant a mention. =[
And then the ad is a Republican vindictive against HR1. =(
"... there is no cause that justifies a resort to violence."
- Ronald Reagan
Tell that to the DC protestors on Jan 6th!
Let's see that call for order brought to bear on the boogaloos and bigots of modern domestic violence, who carry "Back the Blue" flags while killing cops!
Beatings cause strokes.
Stroke is a result of blood clot blocking the blood vessels that feed oxygen to the brain. Without oxygen, brain cells die.
The body responds to physical trauma with blood clots to stop the blood loss. Sometimes a piece of the clot breaks off and follows the bloodstream somewhere and gets stuck.
The more physical trauma the patient endures, the more likely it is for a piece of the clot to break off and get stuck. Blows to the head increase the odds of stroke as a result of physical trauma, because it's the vessels nearest the brain being broken.
What physical trauma did the autopsy document?
@@petebondurant58 That being the case, about 140 officers at the Jan 6th DC riot were injured but none of them fatally so.
@@petebondurant58 yeah i'm sure he would have just happened to have a stroke on that day no matter what lmao
Great timing, I was just reading about this in my american government class
#*scratches head*#
Look, I'm conservative, republican leaning and all, but why the frik don't these people know about the party switch?
I get you had more in depth insight into it, but even without all that, it's WELL documented.
People who deny things often have something to gain/keep by sustaining the lie.
We need more people like you.
@@phoenixshadow6633 The question is what exactly are they gaining through this lie?
It's about the moral high ground and culture war.
Most of them, I suspect, do know about the party switch.
But it is very convenient to, for instance, claim Lincoln, one of the American Saints, for "us". Or to claim that "they" are the actual racists because they formerly represented the South. Acknowledging the party switch disturbs that useful narrative.
@@varana So basically, people associate their moral grounds with their political parties instead of their ideologies which have no correlation to all of this?
I mean it's what I expected but I was hoping I might've actually found a reason to take Republicans seriously for once.
3:33 Bipartisanship, in my opinion, should only be done if both parties involved, can both agree on the thing they are working together on is the right thing to do, in and of itself; not just to compromise their values to an olive-branch, that the other side probably won't reciprocate.
Your channel is awesome! Thanks for the great videos.
Great video! Thank you for your commitment to presenting factual information about US history! Hope this videos gets millions of views. Your video should be mandatory viewing for all Americans.
Thank you Cypher.
Greetings from Italy.
Huge new fan here; like your unpretentious approach! Looking forward to the rest of this 3-parter, and the rest of your back catalog. Thank you!
I mean the polarization is worse now I think than ever because of the internet and media constantly putting wedges between us. Partisanship is worse now than ever.
You should follow the advent of the media. The printing press changed the political and social landscapes. It was incredibly simple and inexpensive to communicate to a mass of people. The American Revolution was stoked by printed treatises on "rights". Many politicians, including Abraham Lincoln owned newspapers. At the time, these things were novel. With the advent of radio, motion pictures, and television we noted some major changes in our nation and their influences on politics: fireside chats, the 1960 televised presidential debates, etc. The internet is the latest change and advent in media.
An ex-high school classmate (and now a school teacher) claims the party switch never happened as only one Democratic congressman became a Republican post civil rights movement: Storm Thormond. He didn’t seem to get by saying one of the most racist congressmen switching parties probably hurt his point.
And speaking of Storm Thormond is another example of the switch. Establishment Republicans in the 1960s wanted him out and by 2000 he had the Republican leadership wishing him a happy 100th birthday and calling him the greatest senator of all time.
Goldwater in 1964 at an Atlanta press conference: “We're not going to get the
Negro vote as a bloc in 1964 or 1968,
so we ought to go hunting where the ducks are.”
I find this kind of history so useful to understand my own country which is a very young democracy that is still in its early twenties lol. I'm from South Africa. I have a major in history and this video really helps in providing a framework that one can use to understand things that happen in this sphere of the human condition in a democratic society. Just to illustrate, the Apartheid government used to control the media to justify the fucked up things they used to do, fast forward 20 years and the ANC under the worst president in democratic South Africa, Jacob Zuma, is using the same tactics to undermine our constitutional democracy. What changed? Hopefully using the framework this video has provided I'll be able to answer this one day XD. Thanks Cypher!!!!!!
Both of these groups are similar, in that they institute policies that benefit a tiny group of elites by taking away from the majority of the population, the only difference is the change of those elites, back in the day the elites were the whites, now the elites are the corrupt officials in power
Recently found this channel cause a comment bumped it into my algorithm. This is my 6th 7th video I’ve watched. So I’m passing it along to the algorithm.
It’s a demonetized video but definitely has information more people should be privy to. 😊
Do you think a new party will rise up to replace either of the current two main parties? Is the best party a pizza party? 🍕
TV party!
Cat party
Here in Germany we have 6 parties and each party getting 5% of the votes gets into parliament, but in the UK they have a first parse the post system like the US and they also have more than 2 parties, so it should be possible even if unlikely.
@@TBFSJjunior cgp grey made a great vid about it
@@professorcube5104
Yeah I think I've seen that one.
It's a great channel.
Watching this to prepare for thanksgiving this year 💪
When he said Johnson vetoed the civil rights act in the 60s, I was so confused and was trying to look it up only to remember that we've had multiple president Johnson in the 60s
Thank you for this!
Thank you. I'm not American and the party switch always seemed weird to me; it obviously happened, and denialism is mind-blowing, but I never really got how and why (and to a lesser extent when) it happened, so I hope this series will help me see through that complex phenomenon.
Its very complex and I've seen completely reasonable takes on both sides. I think calling it a flip is disingenuous as they didn't completely reverse positions on issues but slid around on a few scales over time.
@@Plainsburner Well civil rights is sure as he'll a big issue
I think it boils down to both sides being called racist by each other and then trying to prove they’re not because of (insert historical reason why here), when in reality neither side is legitimately racist and all they’re trying to do is get votes and since neither side is racist people vote for whichever party (in their eyes) proved to not be bigots better. It’s ridiculous people should be voting on the merit of the candidate in question rather than the party because as we see in the video the candidates of whichever party they’re apart of can change the image of their party during their presidency (i.e. like Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt).
@@Plainsburner I think liberals just have to tell themselves a flip happened so that they can separate themselves from the racists in the past, not realizing that a lot of people in both (and the other) political parties were racist at the time as well.
One thing I should mention is that, the politicians don't change, the voters do. In general, the politicians don't care who votes for them, they just want votes. So even though when the party switch happened, very few politicians actually changed parties. Instead, the voters changed parties. It started on the national level, and over time, went to the state and local levels. That's why so few politicians changed parties, instead the people voting changed the party they voted for.
The really strange thing about the talk of left and right wing in US politics is that the so-called left wing liberal democrats/social democrats are pretty much centrist when compared to the left-right divide in other democratic countries. The US political spectrum is very right leaning overall and to say that there is a socialist movement in the US today is just laughable.
Yeah lmao. This is what happens when centrist like Bernie Sanders and AOC run around calling themselves democratic socialists when they are in fact social democrats. The true meaning of socialism is watered down to where "building roads and giving healthcare" is socialism.
@@oklanime that's not the issue, the issue is calling everyone left of the republican party communist. (It makes even moderates appear radical cause people don't listen to what they are fighting for or assume those things are radical)
2:07 What's with the gaps in the dates for the party systems? I guess they're all election years, so do we not count the actual presidential term while the parties reconfigure?
It's more that we don't how to classify those years. They're transitional
Would you ever do a video on William Jennings Bryan? He is very fascinating to me and isnt much talked about.
I’m fascinated by him as well. Which party do you think William Jennings Bryan would belong today? Economically left wing populist while socially very conservative.
Does anyone know the particular version of _When Johnny Comes Marching Home_ that begins at 6:58
It's from Epidemic Sound
@@CynicalHistorian Eyy thanks mate
Here are some real party switches: 1896-1932, 1928-94
When will the green and libertarian parties switch
There is an instinct to trace political evolution backward from now rather than to start at the beginning. That’s how notions like Conservatism being innately about small government and Liberalism a big one arise. The associations were reversed in fact at the Founding. The Hamiltonian Federalists represented a kind of Classical Conservatism which saw a strong national government as essential to preserving order. The Jeffersonian Republicans espoused a rigorous Classical Liberalism which perceived it to be an oppressive tool of the elite. As liberal teachings had informed the American Revolution, both camps were influenced by them. They reached consensus on recognizing natural rights, constraining government power, abandoning hereditary titles of nobility as well as the separation of church and state.
The Hamiltonians, however, maintained conservative attitudes on central banking, protectionism, restricting immigration and property requirements for the vote. The Jeffersonians championed the liberal ideals of laissez-faire, free trade, open immigration and extending political suffrage to the common man. A nationalist versus internationalist divide emerged which shaped a lot of their disagreements. Perhaps the fiercest ensued when looming conflict around England and France aggravated tensions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the federal over state position was used for conservative purposes when Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Efforts to thwart radicalism that involved putting foreigners under scrutiny. And the anti-federalist stance, albeit complicated by later battles, was applied for liberal ends when Republicans retaliated with the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Decrying them as violations of civil liberties, they asserted that the states could declare federal laws that they deemed unconstitutional void. A big deal in an age of centralized empires.
Though the sectional question of slavery shook up the political landscape in a variety of ways, those concepts carried on in essence as the guiding orthodoxies for the modern Republican and Democratic leaderships. But the distinction has been obscured in memory. Take two icons for limited government types who embodied the competing intellectual traditions. Hamiltonianism in the Republican Calvin Coolidge and Jeffersonianism in the Democrat Grover Cleveland. Cleveland vetoed an immigration bill which featured a literacy test as a barrier in 1897 while Coolidge signed into law such a proposal in 1924. Cleveland ran on reducing tariffs while Coolidge kept tariff rates high. Cleveland opposed national banks while Coolidge let the Federal Reserve be. Cleveland set in motion the landmark antitrust lawsuit known as the Sugar Trust Case while Coolidge ended a string of administrations that had launched many of them.
Cleveland put into place the Interstate Commerce Commission to protect consumers by overseeing trade while Coolidge appointed to it and the subsequent Federal Trade Commission hands-off commissioners to facilitate economic growth. It is their shared commitment to individualism, low taxes, sound money, balanced budgets and fiscal restraint that attracts the overlapping fans. Increasing demand for government intervention ignited during the Progressive Era blurred the line between the old-fashioned conservatives and liberals weary of it. Their ideas, regardless of the historical rivalry, now tend to get lumped together in the conservative category and pit against Progressivism. It also treated as one thing, usually under the name Liberalism, despite the initial disharmony there as well.
The Republican Theodore Roosevelt and Democrat Woodrow Wilson were the first progressive presidents from their parties. Though it was their successors who coined the terms Progressive Conservatism and Progressive Liberalism for their ideologies, each described himself with the pair of labels. Both differed from their classical counterparts with respect to the scope of government, but there are parallels in how they contrasted each other. Comparing Roosevelt and Wilson helps in differentiating between them. Roosevelt akin to Coolidge signed off on measures to curb immigration which included a literacy test in 1903 while Wilson like Cleveland before him rejected legislation of that sort in 1917. As expressed in his 1902 State of the Union Address, Roosevelt advocated protectionism. Wilson, on the other hand, favored free trade. A goal propounded in his Fourteen Points.
Both pursued economic regulation. But though dubbed the Trustbuster, Roosevelt was not hostile to monopolies on principle. Approving of what he called good trusts like U.S. Steel. Wilson pushed for the Clayton Antitrust Act in a bid to level the playing field by breaking them all up. The argument between nationalism and internationalism gained a new dimension with their foreign policy opinions. TR believed in the superiority of Anglo-Saxon societies and, as affirmed by his Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, their duty to police the world. Conversely, Wilson claimed that no nation was fit to sit in judgement of another. His ultimate aim was global governance through the League of Nations. Much like Classical Liberalism, Progressive Conservatism is largely overlooked in these discussions. Observing them can illuminate trends which go back to the First Party System.
Conditions created by the Second Industrial Revolution prompted the re-examination of accepted conservative and liberal precepts. Elements of both parties became convinced that government action was needed to remedy escalating unrest. Especially after the rise of the Populist Movement which fought for agrarian and industrial labor interests. The Populists coalesced into the People’s Party until rallying to the Democrat William Jennings Bryan to defy the rich and aid the poor. Republicans such as Roosevelt concluded that reform was necessary to prevent the country from descending into chaos. The key difference was that Bryan’s party selected him as its presidential candidate three times while Roosevelt’s gave him the vice presidency because it was thought that he couldn’t rock the boat there. Only taking office by chance after the assassination of William McKinley. And a greater number of delegates lent their support to the moderate William Howard Taft instead when he attempted to go for a third term.
Admirers of Cleveland left to form the National Democratic Party when Bryan came out on top in 1896. Likewise, Roosevelt and his followers walked out to organize the original Progressive Party after Taft received the nomination in 1912. Each split benefited the other major party and they quickly declined. Internal debates persisted, but precedents were set. Though Bryan never won, Wilson acted on several of his causes. And Franklin Roosevelt actually endorsed Wilson, not Teddy, in 1912. He built on his prototypical administrative state with the New Deal. An agenda of then unmatched government activism. In keeping with Warren G. Harding and Coolidge’s Post-Wilson Return to Normalcy, Republicans led by Robert Taft worked at rolling it back. The election of Dwight Eisenhower marked a truce. His philosophy of Dynamic Conservatism made peace with the New Deal zeitgeist, but he sought to rein in any excesses.
The further turns within the Democratic and Republican parties are clear-cut. The New Left and New Right adopted by George McGovern and Ronald Reagan both challenged the popular assumptions of their day. Focusing on social issues and government control. The Third Way and Compassionate Conservatism advanced by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both moved toward the center. Reflecting upon the free market and social justice. Each establishment now confronts a populist wave. Democratic Socialism and National Conservatism are embraced by those that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have emboldened. Fed up with the ruling class, both aspire to tilt the balance of power.
Granted, each from early on housed factions that spanned the political spectrum. Of note are those epitomized by the Democrat John C. Calhoun and Republican Horace Greeley. Calhoun defended the status quo for Southern planters while Greeley promoted Utopian Socialism. The two served as prominent party figures up until they, alongside other dissidents, were faced with critical disputes which drove them apart. Calhoun set up the Nullifier Party after a bitter falling-out with Andrew Jackson due to him standing by the federal government in a mounting crisis with South Carolina over the Tariff of 1828. Greeley ran as the Liberal Republican Party nominee against Ulysses S. Grant in the election of 1872 in protest of scandals in his administration tied to big business. But not even allying with their partisan adversaries, the Nullifiers with the Whigs and the Liberal Republicans with the Democrats, was enough to defeat Jackson or Grant. Most of their members soon dispersed among them both.
Friction lingered between right-leaning Republican and left-leaning Democratic national parties and the left-wing Republicans and right-wing Democrats holding considerable sway at the state level with whom they compromised. The La Follette Wisconsin Republican and Talmadge Georgia Democratic machines were examples which came to blows with the Coolidge Campaign and FDR Administration. More infrastructure development coupled with gradual modernization led to the regions converging economically and culturally. That resulted in Republicans and Democrats amassing vast majorities of conservatives and liberals. Broadly speaking, along small town and big city lines. Both have indeed changed with time, quibbled over details and contained shifting coalitions. But their values remain fundamentally rooted in Hamiltonian pro-business conservative nationalism and Jeffersonian anti-elitist liberal internationalism.
Great video man
The fact that in 1972 Nixon had a bloc of supporters called "Democrats for Nixon" which were mostly from the South shows that the parties were indeed changing
like I tend to think: America changes constantly, Europe has been changing ever since humanity has been in the continent, politics changes by the hour, and people aren't what they started out as originally.
Are you that incompetent to understand there are ALOT of liberal progressives in the south? They still want the same thing the Democratic party wants, they just happen to live on the gulf coast, even back then.
@@ccLA08 of course they existed such as Lyndon Johnson but they werent as widespread. Today they are still there as seen with how Georiga and Florida are swing states. My point is how southern conservative Democrats began rooting for Republicans with Goldwater and Nixon and eventually got won over
@@Spongebrain97 im saying its still like that to this day. Same party line as well. Its just masked under the guise of equality
@@ccLA08 well you do know that the modern day bulk of the Democratic vote is from minorities right? Especially in places like Atlanta and Miami. They've just been the driving force for the Democrats in that region especially because the Republican party basically dog whistles racism
As someone with a passing knowledge of the history of US politics, but not a ton of expertise, this was incredibly informative.
The comments were turned off in the myths about slavery video.
So I’m commenting on here.
Good video. I think a lot of contention can be avoided if we dig deep to learn the truth about the past and about ourselves now. I was upset when I heard Abraham Lincolns quote, but not surprised. I also think his mindset was correct and allowed for greater things to happen throughout the history of the world. I hope Dr. King’s dream will one day come to pass.
Hey, did you make the musical part that sounds like South Park- the episode with selling gold? That is such an outstanding musical line up tracks of voices layered over themselves, if you made it, which you could have.. cuz I’ve seen the electronic drum pieces in the back of your video 😉… you must have a, natural musical bone or three in that head 🧠!!!
"You can't even point at one political party and blame them. That's what political hacks do." Yeeeeeooouch, haha!
I appreciate that I learn so much here, and the shade you throw makes it so much better, especially when it's at "Wilsoooooon!"
I honestly didn't know the democrats were conservative. I already didn't like Candace Owens, but that sure makes the whole "get off the democratic plantation" thing just that much more detestable.
My theory is the party switch happened because the Republicans created a bunch of new states in the 1890s that had different values from its Northeastern base. The GOP then became the frontier party and picked up the anti-Native policies of the Jacksonians. This lead naturally to the rise of TR - a wealthy New Yorker with Dakota roots
There was actually an existing Jacksonian current within the GOP from their early days. Their premiere presidential candidate John C. Fremont and Abraham Lincoln’s first vice president Hannibal Hamlin serve as two prominent examples of Democrats turned Republican. Fremont went so far as to run claiming to be the legitimate heir to the legacy of Andrew Jackson and even Lincoln, despite his background as an old Clayite Whig, invoked him on the campaign trail.
Certainly the most polarized it’s been in my lifetime.
Party switch is what is flipped from OFF to ON when someone REALLY spikes the punch bowl.
Waiting for part 2 so I can fully understand where the hell we are now...
Candace Owens and Dinesh D'Souza made 10 accounts and disliked this video.
The Roosevelts were ahead oh their times, still arguing today over basic human rights
I bet ranked choice voting could fix it almost instantly.
Rank Choice voting will only help in places where stuff is close(ie 49-48), people who win in districts that are 7-30 or 80-20 will still win. All that being said yeah maybe Trump would have lost in 2016 if every state enacted rank choice voting
@@viviancooper5892 Look at the amount of 3rd party votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, in each state if all the Green Party votes went for Hillary she would have won, but beyond that even Gary Johnson voters said they would more likely vote Clinton if given only 2 options(by like a 2 to 1 margin)
Great unbiased video Cypher
@William Jefferson Colin yep accurate
Very informative, as always. Thanks.
Excellent video. I would just add a commentary about characterising the GOP as ‘liberal’ during the late XIXth century. According to everything I’ve read, they have always been conservatives, the difference is that conservatism in that time was more *reformist* than what the democrats were proposing. The burkean ideology integrated the Republican (whig or Federalist) platform with Alexander Hamilton, while populism in a more jacobinistic approach has always been a trademark of the democratic party (e.g. Henry Jennings Bryan, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson)
The switch seems to be more related to which demographic the parties were aiming to achieve electorally. That is, when Democrats were seeking southern votes, they’d reinforce their opposition to big government in DC ‘telling the good old southern folk what to do’ but when that sort of discourse was no longer needed, they quietly abandoned it in favour of the New Deal and redistributive populism. Meanwhile the GOP loved conservative opposition to slavery when that debate was central in American politics (something you can attest for yourself by reading Burke and Hamilton). However, when the democrats pushed northern sympathetic elements into their agenda, the republicans focused on the ‘slow and steady’ aspect of conservatism which is ‘cautious with change and respects traditions’.
You're getting at the main distinction which is that in class conflict terms the Republican and Democratic lineages have largely held to the same positions in their rhetoric. Albeit with a pretty murky period after the Mexican-American War into Reconstruction. Even the civil rights reforms handled under the Republican administrations was largely done in a more paternalistic way than a populist one like how the Democrats do today. While they did take significant steps in helping the freed slaves their legislation was rooted in the protection of rights outlined in the Founding documents and they were simultaneously supporting the rise of the Gilded Age industrial capitalist class through economic nationalism that's greatest challenger was the Democrat William Jennings Bryan. From Lyndon Johnson afterward civil rights under the Democrats has taken on a decidedly more populist dimension in the sense that now it’s been expanded to being about correcting for economic imbalances on the basis they’re rooted in historic discrimination. The socialists attracting attention in the party now going so far as to say that the American capitalist system, the one essentially built up by the Republicans after the Civil War, is itself the problem that perpetuates oppression.
The Republicans with the most populist tenor who rose to real prominence rather than being put on the sideline, prior to Donald Trump anyway, were probably Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Though in the case of the latter it was a populism oriented against government bureaucracy itself being an overbearing force in people’s lives as opposed to the holders of concentrated wealth who gain too much influence over the government. Such as were the cases with the populisms of Jefferson, Jackson, Bryan, FDR and the crop of Democratic Socialists today. The sort of populism appealed to by Barry Goldwater before him and the Tea Party afterward. TR is trickier to read, but whatever way you put him he’s still not as radical as many people suggest. Some trying to frame him as practically the Bernie Sanders of his day. But that’s usually done by stripping away the context of the time. The Populists had already become a fairly mainstream political force, the bourgeoning Socialist movement was on the rise and the Anarchists on the fringes were violently lashing out. A few carrying out the infamous Haymarket Affair with bombings in Chicago and one assassinating his predecessor William McKinley. Theodore Roosevelt came to believe in much the same fashion that European leaders like Britain’s Benjamin Disraeli and Germany’s Otto von Bismarck before him that moderate social reform was necessary to maintain the health of society and prevent the working class from being debased to the point of becoming prone to violent revolution from the growing pains of industrialization. Also like them he sought to carry that out in tandem with printing traditional social values and increasing America’s strength on the world stage through imperial ventures. Coining his philosophy as Progressive Conservatism.
Teddy generally frames his reforms about applying equal protections to capital and labor while holding both up to ethical standards. As opposed to taking a clear side against big business which saw wealth disparity and monopolies themselves rather than bad behavior on the part of some corporations as the main problem like say Bryan did. That’s why he was opposed to the Populist movement’s push for the Free Silver currency reform as well as trying to make a distinction between good trusts and bad trusts. He was actually favorable towards well functioning monopolies as an efficient means to give people products they wanted on a large scale. That’s why he actually left Standard Oil alone as president and was livid when his in some ways more conservative chosen successor William Howard Taft, who to the surprise of many busted twice as many trusts in his one term than Roosevelt did in both of his, went after them. This attitude towards trusts was used against him during the election of 1912 after he refused to put the strengthening of antitrust laws on his platform. Woodrow Wilson who planned on doing so and carried it out in the form of the Clayton Antitrust Act, legislation that leveled the remaining Gilded Age monopolies, and accused Teddy of simply being a paternalist who wasn’t truly solving the problem they caused. While a lot of people like to use the Roosevelts as a symbol of a baton pass between the parties Franklin actually supported Wilson during that election over his distant cousin. Later brining Wilson administration alumni like Hugh Johnson and Rex Tugwell into his own. On the other hand his later rival Herbert Hoover, a self-described Republican Progressive, had a committed supporter of TR including during his Progressive Party run. And when you compare Hoover’s famous speech about Rugged Individualism to Teddy’s about living the Strenuous Life there are indeed a lot of parallels. Teddy’s influence arguably goes even farther than many people think. Influencing a strand of the Republican tradition that runs through the Compassionate Capitalism of Thomas Dewey, the Dynamic Conservatism of Dwight Eisenhower and the Compassionate Conservatism of the Bush presidents.
Wow, that tangent on Theodore Roosevelt went way longer than I expected. But the point was to address how even the Republican president where the left-wing case is asserted perhaps there is a real debate to be had about the veracity. The last thing I will say though is that you’re right in how both parties have shifted on some rhetorical points based upon who they’re trying to appeal to. Though ironically one that isn’t completely true is the idea that the South was uniformly opposed to big government. They not only strongly backed William Jennings Bryan’s presidential bids but provided some of the most reliable support for FDR’s elections. And so long as civil rights issues didn’t get in the way not all but most Southern politicians were willing to back the New Deal programs. Heck, it took a majority of them voting with Northern Democrats against Republican opposition to get Johnson’s War on Poverty measures through. Indeed I’ve often said and have a whole bit about how socio-economic development plays a big role in how regions voting patterns have changed and subsequently what the parties decide to focus on. In this case it would be Northern cities that lost their old industrial jobs which makes it tough for a pro-business party but prime for an anti-elitist party and the South modernizing to the point that it arguably just converged with standard voting patterns across the country. With the big cities voting Democrat, the small towns going Republican and the suburbs as the tipping point. Some rhetoric will change to become more appealing to a region where that kind of substantial change happens.
@@johnweber4577 thank you for that very detailed answer. I believe what you said does proceed and elucidates very well the argument I was making, with far more depth of knowledge included.
I am aware that southern voters have been inclined for big government positions in the past. However, my central point - which I think you have validated - was that the party switch was more geographically motivated than ideological, having the parties adapted their political discourse in order to accommodate possible voters under the circumstances of each era - without necessarily dropping fundamental ideological beliefs.
Your remarks about Teddy Roosevelt were particularly interesting and well developed. I haven’t studied TR’s party system very thoroughly but I always questioned this idea of a Sanders-like Roosevelt narrative that people unfortunately try to push sometimes. Maybe employing the term “progressivism” as the sort of political philosophy of social justice the we find in modern American politics is anachronistic when talking about XIXth century and early XXtg century politics. In that time it could very well mean “to strive for the *progress* of the nation” in a more imperialistic way rather than the social liberal progressivism that is popular nowadays. The interpretation of “progress” as “imperial national development” seems more appropriate to me because it allows convergence with Roosevelt’s and McKinley’s foreign policy.
Regarding your last suggestion about supposed new rhetorical changes to be incorporated into the GOP platform - notably related to a more populist or anti-elitist oriented electorate - it does seem to correlate with a global tendency amongst developed nations. On that sense, Ronald Inglehart’s new book ‘cultural backlash’ is quite interesting, also Matthew Goodwin’s ‘National Populism’.
Thank you for your comment, do you have a reading suggestion on American Political History?
@@leotrnt You’re welcome and gotcha. I think I got where I misread you. As for reading suggestions it kind of depends on which part of this long timeframe you’re specifically curious about. If we’re talking the roots of the American Party systems you’ve got The Life of the Parties by A. James Reichley as a primer with a general overview or even Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by Gordon Wood does a pretty good job parsing out what conservatism and liberalism meant during the First Party System by exploring the dynamics and disagreements between the titular figures. Broadly speaking I do think the work of Arthur Schlesinger Jr. while considerably older still does a good job. Particularly The Age of Jackson is of particular interest if interested in a take touching on the arc of Jacksonian Democracy to New Deal Liberalism. Bits of interpretation could be quibbled in any of them like any historical work, but in the whole do a really job to my mind.
Here’s a place where I want to add a bit more information to what I wash saying before and in a way make something of a caveat to the other side of the Party Switch debate. At least going by their presiding presidents as useful markers between James Polk and Grover Cleveland I’d probably concede that the general dynamic was put on hold as the country went into a kind of detour where the Right and Left labels become difficult to apply concretely. The Whigs and the Democrats each had wings in both the North and South but there as a significant realignment by region after the Mexican-American War as slavery became more prominent in the national debate. Droves of Northern Democrats leaving to form the Free Soil Party before joining the Republicans. The Cotton Whigs who were conservatives of a Southern variety, and tended to be the most hardline on the issue going into the Democratic Party and gaining disproportionate influence in the party with which they put up candidates like Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan to represent their peculiar interests before Stephen Douglas wrestled control of the party from them going into the election of 1860. Pushing them into breaking off to form the Southern Democratic Party with which to run a candidate, John C. Breckenridge, against Lincoln and Douglas.
It is also true that before the Civil War, during and after there were left-wing, some extremely so, within the big tent Republican Party coalition. Including the likes of the utopian socialist Horace Greeley who carried over from the Whigs, though interestingly if we’re talking about the roots of the country’s political traditions he actually named his first magazine The Jeffersonian despite the Democratic Party being more identified with his legacy, and Charles Sumner. Most of them along would join the breakaway Liberal Republican Party that was formed to challenge Ulysses S. Grant’s re-election campaign in 1872 along with other dissident Republican strands like the hardline Classical Liberals. Their issues involving concerns about corruption in Grant’s previous administration that also tied into its comic policies that benefited big business. Despite also receiving the official backing of the Democratic Party Greeley who was put up as their candidate lost. Some of them returned to the Republicans, others joined the Democrats and more went out into the wilderness. But in any case what hard Left influence there had been and remained in the party afterward was largely getting sidelined. Especially on the national level. Basically after the uniting issue of slavery had been settled the cracks in what was a very eclectic coalition started to show.
With the rise of Grover Cleveland’s leadership in the Democratic Party an emphasis on Classical Liberalism became clear again as the traditional dynamic reasserted itself. Though then conditions had changed with the Second Industrial Revolution to the point that mainstream Liberalism was at a crossroads. Some like Cleveland and later the breakaway National Democratic Party believed in holding to the Classical Liberal doctrine. While many accuse Cleveland of being simply a pawn of big business it’s often forgotten that his administration actually passed the act that established the Interstate Commerce Commission and initiated the first major antirust case against the American Sugar Refining Company even if it did not quite go the way he hoped. But they were anchored in Classical Liberalism which tried to stay out of economic intervention as much as possible. Cleveland also showed his Classical Liberal credo by his advocacy of free trade, vetoing a 1897 bill that would establish a literacy test meant to limit immigration and was outspoken critic of imperialism as shown the crisis of the Spanish-American War. Interestingly enough as a point of comparison on the flip-side Theodore Roosevelt believed in protectionism, as president signed into law the Immigration Act of 1903 which did restrict immigration with a literacy test and supported imperial adventures including that very war which in the context of that time were seen as conservative stances. Though left-wing People’s Party Populists tended to hold to the contemporary Liberal doctrines on free trade and anti-imperialism many would start to reconsider mass immigration themselves. Several for economic and others for cultural reasons. Some things to shift around some over time and there is variety in any coalition past or present of course. It’s also worth noting that the relationship between imperialism, expansionism and foreign intervention along with how they manifest in both parties can also be pretty murky and in some ways shift depending upon the time like other issues.
But a new breed of Modern Liberalism was forming which thought the old doctrines were not enough to carry out the intended goals of Classical Liberalism. Both Grover Cleveland and the Democratic populist William Jennings Bryan saw themselves as carrying on the tradition of Jefferson and Jackson but disagreed on the limits to the means by which their egalitarian goals could be carried out. Liberalism had initially been averse to the expression of government power because they feared it trending to the benefit of the elites while with the rise of new massive corporations the nascent Modern Liberals saw those as the coercive forces taking away people’s freedom rather than the state which was now to their mind the only tool that could deal with the problem. Particularly because of how it had been more thoroughly democratized in the interim. Parallel phenomenon emerged in the USA and UK where working class movements discontent with the new status quo represented by the People’s Party and the Labour Representation League that would work to collaborate with the Democratic and Liberal parties to put up joint candidates to the dismay of the orthodox Liberals. While many see men like Warren G. Hardin and Calvin Coolidge later as throwbacks to that kind of Liberalism but they maintained conservative positions on issues like the aforementioned support for protectionism and immigration restrictions. And of course they inherited their general big business friendly attitudes. In several respects they weren’t all that different from mainline Republicans historically but by virtue of following upon the Progressive Era and Wilson’s wartime command economy in particular, which did not have any fixed stop dates, their efforts in the Return to Normalcy to go back to something closer to the way Republicans had set it up before due at first glance seem to break with Republican tradition that had not focused on rolling back government prior.
And that turned out to be another long discussion tangentially related to your point, but believed in any case you might find it interesting. Grover Cleveland so to speak is kind of the other side of the same coin with Theodore Roosevelt. Both being figures representing philosophies that are rare on the political stage these days, Classical Liberalism and Progressive Conservatism, and derived from that are eclectic sets of beliefs that are hard to place in the modern understanding. But perhaps most prevalently they are ones people are very prone to misconstruing. I guess it just felt like good extra information to add some understanding the dynamics between conservatism and liberalism as well as how they were understood at that time. Haha
@@johnweber4577 what an interesting read. most people don't have as thorough analysis on our history and like to let their political partisanship cloud their views and distort history. this was a refreshing read.
@@Crusader677 Thank you! Always glad to hear from another person more interested in historical analysis for its own sake rather than seeing it as a tool to grind a their political axe on. I’ve been working to hone, expand on and better organize my thoughts on the subject which I think is still somewhere near the top if you go to the recent comments section if you’re curious to see something like that. Haha. But in any case, thanks again for the comment and take care.
Correction? At 11:12, shouldn't "an eight hour work WEEK" be an eight hour work DAY?
BTW, love this series, excellent work, well worth multiple viewings.
So when are we going to get election reform like ranked choice voting?
Sadly I don't think a decent voting system will ever be instituted in America.
More nuance than I expected.
So thanks for that. I don't think a Majority of Either party (or even a significant minority) are racist, especially not openly.b
Except that College Campuses all over the Country are literally segregating their Dorms and Graduations. They identify as Progressives.
@@FernandoMartinez-pv1id They aren't though.
@@Blownkingg having separate graduations for minorities isnt segregation? Well if I'll be damned
@@unsureprobablymaybe3527 They don't though.
I think the two parties were most similar in the 1920s, especially in 1924.
In 1924 the GOP incumbents POTUS Calvin Coolidge and the Democratic challenger John Davis were both conservatives and had similar platforms. The progressive left-wingers rallied behind the third-party progressive candidate Sen. Robert La Follette, a progressive Republican who left the party.
Yeah they’re also pretty similar if you look at the 1940 presidential nominees, with FDR and Wendell Wilkie, Wilkie supported things like expansion of the welfare state, Breaking up monopolies, increasing taxation on the wealthy, eliminating child labor laws, in regulating free markets. And on top of that he also supported sole racial integration in public schools and was an outspoken advocate for civil rights. The main reason why he join the Republican party, had less to do with policy and more to deal with his distain for FDR and the direction that he was taking the country, and didn’t like the way that he was implementing the new deal policies which he largely supported. And even after he lost him and FDR actually chatted about creating a third-party called the liberal party that wasn’t his official name but that’s what rumors say, but he died pretty soon after. So it’s pretty crazy to think how the republican party would’ve changed if he were elected president. On the opposite end what if someone like Taft got the nomination instead and won the presidency, he got pretty close to getting the nomination in 1952.
Yeah political parties for the longest time in American history had more to do with demographics than they did with policies. There’s a lot less political polarization at the state level as well in a lot of cases then at the federal level. Like for instance Vermont has a pretty popular Republican governor and he got elected overwhelmingly in a state that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden in 2020 won overwhelmingly.
but PragerU says that Party Switch is a Myth LOL
PragerU also says they’re a University, they have a tenuous relationship with reality.
And Cynical Histroian says no Party is calling for Segreagtion openly yet fails to mention the Segregation in College Campuses by the "Progressives."
@@FernandoMartinez-pv1id What segregation is there on college campuses? Fun fact there literally is no segregation in college campuses, unless you're talking about segregation via degree major.
@@Blownkingg I have not been in college yet, but I have yet to hear a word about that "segregation" in college campuses! Based on my experiences with these sort of claims (which, more often than not, are designed not to inform, but to associate the other party with as many historical villains as possible), I don't think I will ever get any further details on these claims, since that's not the purpose!
@@Hand-in-Shot_Productions I agree. I am in college and can confirm there is no segregation on college campuses.
This video is the best explanation of the us party switch on UA-cam, well done.
Absolutely excellent piece of work sir! You’re willing to discuss things that non Americans need to know to understand wtf is going on over there! 👏
Franklin Roosevelt did not become a Democrat to distinguish himself from Teddy. The two branches of the Roosevelt family that Franklin and Teddy belonged to had been politically divided between Democrats and Republicans for several generations. They are somewhat distant cousins. Franklin's wife Eleanor was actually more closely related to Teddy, she was Teddy's niece.
Ironically, Franklin actually supported Wilson over Teddy in the election of 1912 while Hoover himself supported his Bill Moose campaign. And that was not just a matter of the man being unwilling to break ranks with his party given how he had previously supported Teddy rather than the Democrat Alton Parker in 1904. Later, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. even campaigned on behalf of Hoover against FDR.
How have I gone for so long without realizing that American politics had different, distinct eras
We spen to much outside and not enough indoors is all I got to say