A mixed hope, but what we've got

From a contemporary perspective, the history of the Democratic Party in the United States is too often the story of a political organization that was on the wrong side of inclusive human freedom and also, though perhaps not so morally culpably, on the "wrong side" of history. Michael Kazin has done the job in What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party. I found the book interesting, sometimes a little off-kilter, and informative.

Here's my slightly idiosyncratic take on this history: before and during the Civil War, the Dems were the slavery-affirming empire builders who invaded Mexico to expand potential unfree territory. Their governing philosophy of "states rights" was the mantra of the enslavers. By comparison, the emerging Republican Party stood against slavery, if not broadly for the equal rights of Black people. But Republicans did produce Abraham Lincoln, probably the best president we ever had, who navigated the contradictions of his own coalition to military victory over the secessionist traitors, understood that slaves must be freed, and was assassinated for his pains.

For the next 80 years or so, both parties look pretty awful. The Dems were the party of white rule in the South and of anachronistic rural populism elsewhere. The Republicans were the party of kleptocratic railroad barons and industrialists. The GOP was "on the side of history" but that era looks simply corrupt and cruel in modern perspective. Early 20th century Progressivism, a sometimes bipartisan current, reined in some abuses of human dignity and of "free" white labor in an emerging capitalist world superpower.

It took the Great Depression of the 1930s for Democrats to become the party that decisively turned to using the power of the state to increase the well-being of the majority of the people. And yet, in order to keep a legislative majority in the national government, Democrats remained dependent on the white supremacists of the old Confederacy. Contradictions abounded.

These contradictions were heightened and partially resolved after the Vietnam war and the Civil Rights movement made straddling opposites impossible. The ensuing Democratic collapse in the 1970s led to Ronald Reagan and to thirty or maybe more years, mostly Republican-dominated, when Dems were dimly scrabbling toward a majority vision which includes all of us -- people of color, women, newcomers, queers, and young people staring down climate catastrophe. (Jesse Jackson knew by 1988, but that's another story.) 

Is the Party there yet? I'd say closer. In this regard I think I agree with Democratic pundit and organizer Simon Rosenberg in the Hopium Chronicles:

Republicans have given us a big opportunity. We need to seize it, together. Friends this is a good time to be a Democrat.

• • •

The skeletal, less-than-celebratory, survey of the Democratic Party trajectory I've just written above is not Michael Kazin's fault or his story. His book covers the same ground in the mode of respectable history. Most of it is solid stuff, though I could argue with some emphases. I found it a useful survey, absolutely worth reading.

Given all the campaigns I've worked, I especially appreciated Kazin's attention to the mechanics of campaigns in different eras. Here's how the New York State Democratic Central Committee in 1842 laid out its midterm strategy:

William L. Marcy and his fellow leaders instructed town and district committees to correct their voter lists, "procure speakers to address the people," and check off the names of good Democrats "as they arrive and vote." Activists were urged to bring such voters "to the polls in the early part of the day," knowing the Whigs were doing the same. The committee emphasized that, while the prospects for victory were "cheering," vigilance was mandatory. "Let us not, we beseech you, in a contest on which so much depends, be caught napping," it concluded.

By the 1890s, Democratic urban bosses had developed a formula for delivering the vote. They had won a competition for mass loyalty with both the political idealists who adhered to Henry George's single tax notion and fledgling labor unions which exacerbated rather than managed class conflict. New York City's Tammany Hall ran a system of clubhouses which "mixed politics with wholesome pleasure" and served to tie families to the machine.

... Tammany commanded a white working class army of modest size that helped itself to the spoils of the city and passed some along to the civilians who harbored them. The machine operated as a welfare state in embryo, albeit one dependent on the protean political calculations of its leaders and the men they lifted into office and limited to efforts that aided individuals one by one instead of a class in need. ...

It was only in the mid-1930s that a Democratic Party, based in a fighting labor movement, turned toward mass social improvement.

Under Samuel Gompers the old AFL ... had donated little money to ... campaigns and never undertook a major effort to convince unionists to vote Democratic.

In contrast, the [CIO unions, through the confusingly named Non-Partisan League] embarked on an ambitious campaign of publicity and fundraising. The league produced dozens of radio speeches that framed the election in starkly class-conscious terms. ... The League held thousands of rallies -- including 344 in Ohio alone -- and contributed 10 percent of the funds the Democrats collected during the entire campaign.

Kazin concludes with a rapturous description of the Democratic victory in Nevada in 2018 being celebrated by members of the Culinary Union in Las Vegas chanting, "We Vote! We Win!" In his telling, organized labor is still central to Democratic Party successes -- and I agree (naturally, having been part of that one.)

Can Democrats extend their trajectory toward solidifying a majority in 2024? Once again, it's hard not to feel we must -- or too many hopes perish.