Show notes
IntroductionThe Republican party is completely and utterly dominated by a small faction of political and religious extremists with policies that are incredibly unpopular, such as privatizing social security or criminalizing birth control.And yet, in spite of this fact, Republicans are still able to win many elections, even outside of their stronghold of the old confederacy. Sometimes, as in the case of Donald Trump, they can even win the presidency.Some of this reality is due to the extraordinary professionalism of the Republican political class, which has been consistently spinning straw into gold for decades through gerrymandering and voter restriction laws.The Democrats are the cause of many of their own problems as well, as we'll be discussing in the next several episodes here at Theory of Change. Our guest in the first episode of this series is Michael Kazin. He is a professor of history at Georgetown University and the author of What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party, it’s a look at the party from its very beginning up until the 2020 presidential election.TranscriptThis episode is available in video as well as audio. The transcript of the audio follows. It is automatically generated and is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Thanks for being here today, Michael. Welcome to Theory of Change.MICHAEL KAZIN: Thanks for asking me, Matthew.SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, so, there's your book is a very long one with a very meaty subject, obviously. Why did you decide to focus on this topic?KAZIN: Well, I've been a Democrat, capital D, small d, for a long, long time since I stopped being a self-proclaimed revolutionary about 50 years ago or so. And I also, I thought that there's really no serious study of the Democrats as an [00:02:00] institution throughout their history, looking at the kind of coalitions that were built, looking at continuities and discontinuities in the ideology of the of the party.And as a Democrat with a capital D, I also wanted to figure out, what has done wrong, what has done right and how it can do better. Also I should say that my son is a Democratic party operative, has been for a long time since he was in college 15 years ago 16 years ago, and so I've learned a lot from him about how the party works internally and that kind of inspired me to learn more about that. So I think, as a historian, I'm always trying to answer questions about the present by using the past and question about the present is, sort of, piggybacking you off your introduction. What have the Democrats done, right?What have they done wrong? And what are the roots of that? How do we understand that evolution?SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it's, it is interesting that a lot of people have begun considering this question, very recently.A spate of new books advising DemocratsSHEFFIELD: Your book is one of several that have come out in the past year or two that kind of looking at well, what's what [00:03:00] is the left need to be doing? How are they doing things wrong or right?Which is interesting because there weren't a lot of those books for a number of years, as you were saying. And now one of the, the sort of Intentions of a lot of these books that have come out and we'll be talking to some of the other authors, so I don't, I won't make you have to respond to them unless you want to,KAZIN: But one of the, I just, I just reviewed a book by, two friends of mine called where have all the Democrats gone, which is one of the books you might be talking about by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, it's well, and the thesis of a number of these books has been that the Democratic party needs to focus more on economic issues and, and go away from social issues and yours, your approach is, is different than that. And I think that's why I actually wanted to start this series on the [00:04:00] show here with your book because I think you understand that because you're yours is a more historical focus one than some of these other ones that are more poll-driven or data-driven.I think you realize that that's not necessarily going to work this idea. So why? In brief, why, why do you say that wouldn't work?KAZIN: Well, yes and no. I mean, on the one hand, I do think Democrats, in order to become a majority party again, do need sort of economic populist message. They need to, uh, make very clear what they want to do for people and link up with, Movements like labor unions and other movements, which want to, help people across lines of identity, and of course lines of race and gender preference.I think that's really important. So I do agree with, with some of the popularists, if you can call them that, about that. On the other hand I don't think you can escape what the party already is which is a coalition of. Young leftists[00:05:00] who care very deeply about, about cultural issues and unions, which are struggling to revive and they haven't really revived very much yet.So, one can't just say, aha, this is what Democrats should do and why don't they do it? One of the, one of the things about being a historian that's useful, I think to this, uh, argument, to this discussion is. Is that you can't like leap beyond what the party is. You have to figure out how to convince people in the party to do things differently to stop attacking one another for what are, basically very small differences.And you also have to do that within a context of what might be declining empire context where of course Americans more and more are they might be strong partisans, but they don't like parties. And so if you're going to be in the, you're going to be one of the two major parties, you'd have to understand how to deal with that fact, how to get people engaged with a party as a party again.If you can't do that, then you end up competing with the likes of Donald Trump for media time. And for attention and [00:06:00] for, for glitz, so to speak. So, I mean, that's a, a long answer to your question, but that's sort of more my, my impulses than my answers, if you will.How the Democratic party got startedSHEFFIELD: Your point about people not being interested in, in the Democratic party as a party or parties generally is, is an important one and. That's why I, I thought it was I think it's, it's relevant the first part of the book where you talk about, the, the origins of the Democratic party as a party because you rightfully note that the Democratic Party is the oldest political party in the world. And those days in the early days of the Democratic Party are, I think, really relevant. Especially now when people are so interested or disinterested in political parties. Can you tell us a little bit about those early days and how the Democratic Party came to be?KAZIN: Well, it really arose at a time when for the first time in world history the United States was a nation which enfranchised [00:07:00] all, all white men.Who were, of course, white people, the majority of the population at the time. And that was unusual, because that wasn't true in any other nation, even nations that were somewhat democratic, like Great Britain at the time. We had a very small, number of men actually be able to vote.And on the, on the heels of that Martin Van Buren who is doesn't get enough respect, I think from, from historians began to put together a party based on working class men in the North and planters in the South slaveholders for the most part in the South behind the candidacy of Andrew Jackson, who they saw as this and was this sort of charismatic figure, military hero And originally the party was called the Jackson party, not the Democratic party because it was put together in order to boost the candidacy of, of Andrew Jackson in the 1820 election.As, as Tocqueville wrote, in his great book, Democracy in America, this was the golden age of, of, of associational life in America, of [00:08:00] community organizations of various kinds, fraternity groups drinking societies immigrant, immigrant groups as well. Tammany Hall gets going at that point which was, the most powerful democratic machine in 19th century, early 20th century in America, in New York City.And so, the party originally was really an association of, of white men across regions who wanted who agreed on opposition to what they considered to be the most powerful elite in the country at the time. Which were bankers in Philadelphia and New York which were Wall Street investors, Wall Street just beginning to be organized as a powerful institution at the time.And in some ways, this goes back to the, the famous debate between Jefferson and Hamilton about how much power the central government should have. Democrats originally actually believed very different from now that the central government was run by an elite and the less government power, federal government power that is, the better because they thought that the federal government would always be in the hands of an economic elite.And so the less power it had, [00:09:00] the better. But I think when you have universal white manhood suffrage you have the environment that's really ready for a mass party to, to form. And we can talk about how that happened. The Democrats did not create a universal white manhood suffrage, but they actually obviously supported it.And they were very active in signing up immigrants who came to the, to the country almost as soon as they got off the boat from, from Europe, even before they were citizens, they found ways to sign them up. So. Democrats really were responsible, you might argue, not just for building the first mass party in American history, but for really for creating popular American politics the way people understood that in the 19th century.And really the, the opposition party was formed in opposition to the Democrats specifically called the Whig Party. It's called the Whig Party because the Whigs were the anti-monarchy party in, in England. And the rigs opposed King Jackson the power of so called monarchical tyrannical president Andrew Jackson.So in that sense Democrats were really created their [00:10:00] own opposition.Media was integral to early Democratic party organizingSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, one of the other things that they did the early Democrats did that you document very well, is that they created the idea of partisan newspapers as a way of spreading awareness of the party's message and awareness of the candidates.Can you talk a little bit more about that?KAZIN: Yeah. Well, most newspapers were partisan. In the 19th century, really up until the early 20th century, believe it or not. I mean, there's still papers around the country with Republican and Democrat in their names, even though they try to show at least that they're not partisan anymore.And yeah, I mean, one of the things that Van Buren understood very early on when he was actually a power in. A sort of what was called the Republican Party in New York State, which is the biggest state in the country, was, he said, in order to convince people to support our party and to support our policies, we have to start our own newspaper.It's called the Albany Argus in the capital of New York and Albany. And that became the, the model for Jacksonian slash Democratic [00:11:00] newspapers in every major city in the country. And those newspapers were often supported unofficially by money from the Democratic Party. And some of the editors of those papers went on to be in the Jackson administration and then in the Van Buren administration as well.So, of course, these newspapers were the media of the day. There was nothing else that would spread it. And, and because congressmen had the right the franking. Privilege to, to send out materials from their office for free some Jacksonian Democrats would send out these newspapers around the country.So it was really a national machine in that sense.SHEFFIELD: It was. Yeah. And you mentioned it briefly just a minute ago about the idea of the Democratic party was anti-national government, anti-federal government, um, for a long time or from the very beginning of it. But it's, it's also that, there was this kind of the, the, what has emerged in the present day is kind of the ideological [00:12:00] divisions between the, the parties.It didn't really exist in the early, in, the first 150 years or so roughly of the United States, you could perhaps say. Roughly. And so there was this, this constant. Interplay between people who had what might be now termed as more, right wing beliefs and more left wing beliefs, but they were always in both of the parties and, and, and that's something that those tensions, especially within the Democratic Party, they kind of, really kind of, I mean, you talk extensively about that, how various factions within the party, we're kind of, we're pushing for really in many ways opposite ideas.Do you want to expound on that a little bit more?KAZIN: Certainly there are many factions. I think to be a successful party in a two-party system, you have to have a diverse group at least demographically, if not ideologically. Otherwise you're not going to win the electoral college, [00:13:00] and not going to take over them.Not going to win the Senate, especially. And of course the house as well. Or control state governments to any great extent. But the Democrats did have an ethos, if not an ideology, which, which bound them together for a long time. And again, it was, opposition to what they saw as governing elites, financial elites especially in the Northeast.And later on also industrially and so, in some ways they're united by their enemies, I think, it's fair to say, and that's one of the things which, which kept them together until, until the Civil War, and then, of course, slavery made it impossible for Southern Democrats and Northern Democrats to get together, because Northern Democrats were very concerned with the rights of white workers in the North and the working class was growing with immigrants from England excuse me, from Ireland and from Germany, especially in the 1830s, 40s and 50s.And so the Democrats, of course, even, even those who didn't have slaves didn't own people, nevertheless, often wanted to be able to own people. And rising in, in the world if you're a Southern Democrat meant, be able to have in order to own, own, [00:14:00] own slaves at a certain point.So. That was, that difference was too great in the party to compromise. And so 1860 you have two Democratic tickets. One the vice president of the United States named Breckenridge, running as a Southern Democrat. And Stephen Douglas Senator from Illinois, who famously campaigned against Lincoln earlier for Senate.As a Northern Democrat and but then it's quite remarkable. If you think about it, that the party stayed together, uh, after that it stayed together. Of course the Northern Democrats stayed in in Congress and we're able to elect governors in places like New York state during the civil war.They opposed the draft, for example, they wanted the north to win militarily, but they, they opposed the emancipation of slavery. They opposed giving black people the vote. And then they stayed together as also in the late 19th century opposing tariffs helping the big industries for example that was a big, a big issue for, for Democrats.So, so in some ways the, the Democrats began as the party for the ordinary white man. They expanded [00:15:00] as the party for. The not so ordinary white man, white men who had, who had a lot of property in the South. But then they, they, they kept calling themselves the democracy, in fact, capital T, capital D, because they really believed, I think all Democrats did, that they were…
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