Donald Trump’s contempt for the US Constitution rightfully made the news this week. Still, another dimly-understood feature of that document offers a needed back story to the former president’s remarks.
Because the Founders deeply feared political factionalism, they did not even mention political parties in their new blueprint for governing. Yet before the ink was dry on their new Constitution, proponents of the document’s two most influential champions coalesced to form our “first political party system.”
In the years since, that system evolved, our parties assumed new names, and changed their visions multiple times. Still, the two-party system became a defining fixture of American politics. Most notably, our parties did not fuel the factionalism that the Founders feared — except when they did. Echoes of those exceptions can be heard today — making this matter relevant for us.
As the nation became more democratic than the Founders imagined, winning votes became the primary purpose of political parties. To win electoral victory, parties created coalitions — broad “big tent” organizations that brought disparate groups together in support of temporarily mutual goals or, more often, in opposition to common enemies — real and imagined.
Let’s consider two eras when significant coalitions dominated American politics with constructive — yet also divisive — consequences. In the Ante-bellum years (c. 1815-c. 1860), Democrats forged a “common men” coalition that joined southern yeomen (i.e. non-slave holding, white, property owners) and an emerging group of northern factory workers in support of the colorful Andrew Jackson and several less effective successors.
The opposing Whigs welcomed anyone who disliked the controversial Jackson, and formed yet another coalition that joined wealthy southern slave owners and increasingly-influential northern entrepreneurs.
In the middle years of the 19th century, the two cross-sectional coalitions temporarily held the nation together by largely evading sectional tensions. But by the mid-1850s, evasion backfired, and new sectional coalitions appeared.
As the South increasingly dominated both parties, the Whigs splintered. Many “cotton Whigs” became Democrats which furthered the South’s hold on that party. Conversely, many “conscience Whigs” merged with disgruntled northern Democrats and diverse “anti-slavery” groups. This new, purely-northern Republican coalition replaced the Whigs as the nation’s new “second party.”
In the pivotal election of 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln faced Southern and Northern Democratic opponents plus a “fourth party candidate.” With this four-way spit, Lincoln easily won an electoral college landslide without a single southern vote. This provoked secession and a bitter Civil War and validated the Founders’ fears about political parties.
A second example of coalition politics bore more positive initial results — yet those results eventually fueled factionalism that persists today. In response to widespread economic disparities and the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt forged a nearly invincible coalition. Like the ante-bellum parties — Roosevelt’s New Dealers transcended sectional lines. FDR drew from progressive ideals that called for government to reign in the excesses of industrial capitalism that won support from intellectuals. More significantly, the New Deal merged the Democrats’ ”solid south” with northern factory workers. Surrogates of FDR even reached out to Blacks and other racial minorities.
After World War II unexpectedly ended the Depression, the ever-agile FDR pivoted and sought bi-partisan, cross-sectional, and bi-racial support for the war. Once again unexpected consequences prevailed. The broadened Democratic coalition would dominate American politics for the next thirty years. Still their success sowed seeds for backlash.
Under the leadership of presidents who had previously championed segregation, Democrats cautiously embraced the burgeoning Black movement for civil rights. After Harry Truman insisted on a civil rights’ plank in the Democrats’ 1948 platform, angry southern “Dixiecrats” defected.
Sixteen years later, Texan Lyndon Johnson’s political prowess secured bi-partisan support for an unprecedented civil rights act and a host of other Great Society reforms. Conventional Republicans, who still proudly claimed to be the “party of Lincoln,” joined liberal Democrats in broadening our understanding of “We the People.”
But Johnson presciently recognized the considerable costs that accompanied his momentary coalition’s decision to place principle above political power.
Accelerated by the debacle in Vietnam, a host of cultural upheavals, and an overextended economy, the nation’s political parties fragmented and re-aligned. Conservative southern whites, the most reliable Democrats since the Civil War, challenged moderate northern Republicans for control of the GOP. Blacks, in turn, became the faltering Democratic coalition’s most reliable voters.
The Democrats’ New Deal / Great Society coalition was dead, and Republicans — with mixed degrees of success — forged a powerful coalition of their own. GOP presidents Nixon, Reagan, and the two Bushes deftly catered to more conservative (i.e. “traditional’) and southern voters.
While this satisfied more moderate Republicans, it left more extreme elements bitter. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks and GOP led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan proved too much like Vietnam, the Republican coalition spun out of control.
Meanwhile, Democrats briefly coalesced around the charismatic Barack Obama, whose race further infuriated GOP extremists. A combination of complicated, unprecedented demographic, economic and cultural changes that had been unfolding since the 1990s and polarization unseen since the Civil War undermined Obama’s reform efforts.
Obama’s and his predecessor’s “failures” offered an opening for unprincipled opportunists and Donald Trump. To be sure not all Republicans nor even all Trumpists were (or are) racists or conspiracy mongers. But, much like New Deal Democrats who conveniently welcomed racist extremists, today’s respectable Republican are stuck with Trump and his minions.
This backstory of coalitions gone awry and Trump’s ineffectiveness as president led voters to reject him in 2020. His refusal to accept that verdict culminated in last week’s call to “terminate articles of the Constitution.”
History is not repeating itself, but it may be “rhyming.” The GOP coalition in 2022 — like the Democratic and Whig coalitions of the 1850s and FDR’s New Deal coalition — brought diverse elements together. Yet they also fueled factionalism that our Founders feared.
In the former case, ties that bound Americans together snapped. On the other hand, the Democratic coalition in the 1950s and 60s distanced themselves from reactionary elements that had long been loyal Democrats — at considerable electoral cost.
How will the two parties respond to today’s challenges? Can they find common ground and minimize the factionalism our founders feared? Last month’s mid-year election offered encouragement.
But history teaches that each generation must address the challenges and opportunities that accompany our diversity. Stay tuned...and stay engaged!
