Evolution of Political Parties in America

Hello class. This video presentation is about the development of political parties in the United States. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to let it play on its own. You're looking at an electoral college map. It's an interactive map. And I guess what I should do at the beginning is just to explain to you what you're seeing. So this is a record of presidential elections, how each state. cast their electoral college votes during a presidential year. So a presidential election year. So we've got 1824, which was a presidential year. We can advance it to 1864. You can advance a little bit further, 1936, so on. So this is an interactive map that reflects how states voted during a presidential election year. And the color of the state would represent the party. that won that state. Okay, so what I'm going to do with this is I'm going to give you all a sense of how political parties in the United States have developed from 1824, really up until around 2016. I think this map only goes up that far, but 2016 is pretty close to what happened in 2020 and probably will occur as well. I want you to focus on on several things. I'm going to stop every now and then just at certain key points in American history and explain to you what the map is showing and what it's not showing. You can focus in on Texas. Notice Texas in this map you're looking at here doesn't even exist because Texas doesn't join the Union until 12 years later. So these are just states and we're going to look at not only important points of time, but we're also going to be looking at the coming and going of political parties. We're going to be looking at something called realignments during this module on political parties and elections, and I'll make note of those. So the first thing I'm going to do is simply let it play on its own. I'll run for about 60 seconds. I want you to see how the colors change. The colors, of course, represent the different parties. So what you're looking at here is 1824. Notice you don't see Democrats, which are blue, and Republicans, which are red. We don't have Democrats in 1824. We don't have Republicans in 1824 either. So the Democratic Party isn't born really officially until 1828. And then the Republican Party isn't born until 1854. So you're going to see some colors that you're not familiar with, some names, political parties you're not familiar with. So we'll be looking at minor parties in this module. We'll talk about those as well as we'll work our way through here. So let me push play and just let it walk. I'll walk your way through. I want you to notice what's happening as far as the changing of colors. In the 1860s, you're going to see the southern states disappear because they're in secession and rebellion. And then at certain points in time, you're going to see landslides by the Republicans, landslides by the Democrats. And then somewhere in between most of the states, a little bit of Republican, a little bit of Democrat strength. So here we go. Again, like I said, I'm just going to let it play. And I want you to notice Texas. It comes around 1848. And then you get to the 60s and you see that the southern states disappear. That's the Civil War era. You can let it play back here and comment on it. Important aspects of this here in just a moment. Now you're getting ready to see, I want you to compare 1928 to 1932, big contrast. So there's 28, Republican win, and then Democrat win, big time. Now we're getting into the World War II era, Vietnam era. Notice that Texas has turned red and it never goes back to blue. And if you notice, Texas during that long play was predominantly a Democrat Party stronghold. And if you were to take it to its next point, it'd take you all the way to 2016. I'm going to bring it back to the end here. And what I'm going to do is just kind of work our way through this. And I'm going to... Again, like I said, comment. So this is the Democrat Republican Party. This is the only time in this entire map that you're going to see only one party. This is the last time that happens. This is that era of good feelings when everybody's on the same page in the United States of America politically. Most everybody. And that's reflected in the fact that there's only one political party in existence that wins every state. But that's the last time that has happened. The United States of America is a two-party system, and as you work your way through this module on political parties and elections, you're going to learn a little bit more about what that means. So let me advance you to 1828. So 1828, notice that the Democrats are here. This is really the first year. This is the official birth date of the Democrat Party. You have Andrew Jackson, the first Democratic Party president. And I want you to see that you also have the National Republican Party. That is not the Republican Party of today, but that's another party, National Republican Party. So the Democrats are born in this year. As you work your way through, let's go a little bit further. You can see you have an Independent Democrat Party here in South Carolina, the purple one. And you have some other parties up here as well. But let's move along here to 1820. Let's go to 1832, 1836. Now the Whig Party. The Whig Party. What you have here are your two major parties, the Democrats and the Whigs. Those other parties that I mentioned, those came and they went. The Whig Party is going to stay here for a few years. Eventually, the Whig Party was split in two, and a lot of the people who are Whigs leave the Whig Party in the 1840s, 1850s. Abraham Lincoln was one of them. But this is your two-party system here. There's always been... Two dominant parties, really since 1828 on up to the current period of time. It's not as if other parties don't exist. They do. But there's always two dominant parties. That's why we call it a two-party system. 1840, you see the Whigs here are very, very strong. And they're spread across. The Democrats are still there, but they're not as strong as the Whigs. 1844, the Democrats come back strong. 1848. It's pretty equal and you can see that Texas is a Democrat Party state. You notice Texas is not shaped here like it is now. That's another story altogether, but you've got part of New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas. I think it even goes up to part of Wyoming. That was all eventually sold to the federal government to help pay debts that Texas had when it entered the Union. That's another story altogether, but I want you to notice that Texas really... enters the Union in 1845. It's a strong Democrat Party state. 1852, and you can see California shows up, and you see Texas is now its regular shape, and the country is moving west, right? So this is Manifest Destiny. The country's moving west. Those with wandering spirits are moving from the east coast over toward eventually the west coast. And of course, this is a few years after that war with Mexico. And these are just states here. We do have some territories at this point in time. And I will say something going on here is historically is that the question of slavery, it becomes a major, major point of contention between the two parties and even within the Democrat Party, which in 1852, really through the end of the Civil War, is the pro-slavery party. So the Democrat Party is strong in the South. It is the pro-slavery party. It is the pro-secession party. Let's take you to 1856, and you can see the Republicans now come, and they're here to stay. So these are your two major parties, and they're here to stay. So the Republican Party was born in 1854, actually born in Wisconsin, and the Republican Party gained strength. The Republican Party comes onto the existence. It's an abolitionist party. Notice you don't see the Whig Party here anymore. The Whig Party split in two, and one of the reasons it split was because of its position on slavery. So the Southern states, the Democrat Party-controlled states, they're, for the most part, pro-slavery. But the Republican Party starts off as an abolitionist party, which is surprising to a lot of my students. But the Whig Party split over the question of slavery. A lot of the Whigs left the Whig Party and joined this upstart Republican Party, which was an abolitionist party. So those members of the Whig Party who were strong anti-slavery and strong abolitionists, they leave the Whigs. and they move over to the Republican Party. And as I said earlier, one of those whose names you'll recognize is a man by the name of Abraham Lincoln. So Abraham Lincoln is a loyal Whig, but when the Whigs begin to dissolve and the Republican Party is born, he moves over to the Republican Party, along with many other Whigs. Here's 1860. Now this is the year that, this is a key year, so I'm going to park on this. This particular election year, you have Abraham Lincoln elected. the first Republican Party president. And I want you to notice what's going on here in the southern states. So the question here is, is secession and slavery? Because you've got this anti-slave Republican Party president elected. And Abraham Lincoln understands that the country is on the verge of war. He gets that and so does everybody else. The southern states They're threatening that if you don't let us have slavery at the state level, if you don't let states make that decision themselves, instead of sort of imposing some national law to prohibit slavery, we're just going to break off. We're just going to break off from you. And so what you're seeing in these light colored shades or these colored shades of purple are really Democrat Party states, but they are breaking off from the Democrat Party. What you see in. Blue, that's the Southern Democrats, and they are pro-secession and they are pro-slavery. The break-offs, the splinter parties, so you've got one here, the Union Democrat Party, just as an example here where Missouri is. They don't want to secede from the Union. And then you have the Constitutional Party here in the dark purple. They don't want to secede from the Union either. But the reason that the Republican Party... wins this election is because the Democrats are in shambles and they're about to divide. So we'll bring you to 1864. You're going to see the southern states have disappeared. What that means is that they didn't participate in the election for president of the United States of America because they had formed their own country. They formed the Confederate States of America and they're voting. This is right in the middle of the Civil War. So let me back you up a little bit. So 1860, at the end of 1860... you have two states secede from the Union. In 1861, you have nine more states secede from the Union, and Texas is one of those nine in 1861 that secedes. And when they do, they form the Confederate States of America. I don't want you to see, but the Confederate States of America was made predominantly of Democrats, loyal Democrats, the pro-slavery, the pro-secession movement. You did have a couple of states that are Democrat here on the East Coast. stay loyal to the United States of America, but you can see most of the war was, I guess, prosecuted in the North by states that are controlled by the Republican Party. Let me say something else about parties. I want you to notice that one way to look at the Civil War, and this is getting close to the end of the Civil War, the Civil War is really a war between two political parties. the Democrat Party in the South and the Republican Party in the North. Both of those parties maintain control of the governments within their respective states. And one way I think that you can perceive the Civil War is not just a war between states, although that's true, but it's also a war between two political parties. So when political parties get firmly entrenched in the regions and they stay there like the Democrats here, going against other parties that are strongly entrenched in other areas of the country, that leads to some serious, serious conflict. Okay, let's move along here. I'm going to fast forward so you can see that in 1864, 1868, you start seeing some of these southern states come in. So we're in this era called Reconstruction. Up until 1872, the South is in Reconstruction. And there are a couple of things I want you to keep in mind. And we're trying to get the southern states back into the Union. And we're trying to deal with the abolition of slavery. So slavery was ended in 1865. That's the 13th Amendment. In 1868, that's the 14th Amendment. And then in 1870, you have the 15th Amendment. But this is the tail end of that Reconstruction era. And you may say to yourself, well, isn't it interesting that that at the end of Reconstruction, you have some states that have turned red here. But the reality is that during Reconstruction, a lot of the southern... a lot of the Confederate sympathizers, they had lost their right to vote. And so a lot of these elections that you see in Florida, and Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, and North Carolina, Virginia, understand that you have a lot of Republican vote here. That's true. But that's only because proportionately, the Democrats weren't allowed to vote yet. Okay. So when by the time you get here, you can see that some of those states are beginning to go back to where they were. When you get to 1880, you can see we're right back where the southern states are controlled by the Democrat Party and the Republicans in the North. So let's just fast forward this. Notice again, we're getting new states coming in. So Oregon all the way over here. You got Colorado in. You got Kansas. You got Nebraska and the country's moving. You even got Nevada here. So let's move along here. I'm going to go. I'm going to fast forward this. There's a lot of things going on in the country. We're moving from industry to away from agrarian-based society. We just went through World War I right there. And now we're going to get up here. The reason I'm parking here is I want you to see it's a Republican Party landslide. This is Herbert Hoover. But check yourself here. What's about to happen? In 1929, you're going to have the stock market crash. And nationally, it's fair to say that. that Americans lost their confidence in the Republican Party to be able to handle the Great Depression. So the Great Depression is about to happen. The Great Depression is a worldwide phenomenon. It's just not in the U.S. But the stock market crash occurs on Herbert Hoover's watch. Herbert Hoover is the Republican Party president. And I want you to notice that Texas actually voted a writ here. It's going to be the last time for a while when they do. But when you get to 1932... You can see that now we're really into the Great Depression. This is the beginning of it. It's going to last for a few more years. But you can see the United States of America have lost their confidence in the Republican Party and the Republican Party's ability to handle the Great Depression, to handle economic policy. This is the period of time, by the way, when we see Americans willing to let the national government control. things like the economy. So you see the growth of the federal government during this point in time on forward. And then when you get to 1936, you can see it even looks worse for Republicans. So you only have two states here voting Republican, right? We still don't have Hawaiian Alaska yet. They're going to come later on. But this is the, now we're getting toward the end of the Great Depression. We're getting there. Notice again that the Democrats, this is that New Deal era. This is the New Deal coalition. This is a lot of people leaving the Republican Party, moving over to the Democrat Party, because even some Republicans think that the Democrats can handle the Great Depression better than the Republican Party. But I want you to keep this in mind. This strength of the Democrat Party is economy-based. It's economic-based. Once we get out of the Great Depression, you're going to see states go back to Republicans. Now, we got, when you get to 1940, you have Republicans starting to gain some control back. We're getting toward the end of the Great Depression here. World War I is about to crank up. Remember, there's a war going on, and the Nazi party is rising in Germany and Europe. And by the time you get to 1944, we are well into World War II, and America's industrial machine is cranked up. So once... people get back to work and particularly producing things that European nations can use, like machines and cars and weaponry for the Europeans to prosecute World War II. That puts Americans back to work, and that's essentially the end of the Great Depression. So by the time you get, notice that Texas is back under control. By the time you get to 1948, you can see some southern states beginning to secede. Now, I'm not going to park on this a lot. Notice this is a break within the Democrat Party here. These are splinter parties, and there's a rebellion within the Democratic Party. It has a lot to do with the growth of the national government during the New Deal era, during the Great Depression. These states here, we're looking at South Carolina and Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, they start pushing back against Democratic Party leadership as far as the direction the Democrats are moving. moving the Democrat Party in a way from the rights of states to govern themselves. toward the direction of the right of the power of the national government growing. Now, that happens predominantly on the Democrat Party watch. Now, I will say this. This is a question about states'rights. How autonomous are states going to be? That's what's being discovered, debated here within the Democrat Party. And that's a debate today. And if you think about, for instance, the questions of abortion, versus the and the questions of how do you handle a pandemic like like COVID-19. But if you take a good look at what was going on during the pandemic and recent cases related to abortion, you can see that the the Democrat Party leans in 2023 more toward state policy being regulated at the national level. Republican Party, on the on the other hand, goes the other direction. And that's that's very true. And the. relation to abortion and how we're going to handle the pandemic, so on and so forth. Give that some thought, but I know what I'm saying is accurate. And so you're seeing some pushback within the Democratic Party itself. These purple states are looking at what is going on in the Democratic Party, the national party leadership, trying to move the country in the direction of more national power that the national government versus the state governments need to increase. The Republicans are also... anti-growth of the national government's power. So by the time you get to 1952, this is really when you start seeing Texas begin to move toward the Republican Party. So Texas kind of goes back and forth. This is Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. And again, Dwight Eisenhower, by the way, a war hero and a Texan, born a native Texan. 1960, this is going to be Kennedy's election. Of course, he's assassinated. This is Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy's vice president. This is his election. And then you get to Richard Nixon and then Richard Nixon again. And then we go to Jimmy Carter. And I'm looking at Texas. And then we go to Ronald Reagan. And this is the last time. Jimmy Carter, 1976, is the last time that Texas voted Democrat. So from this point on, Texas in the South. is Republican. Now, this is important, you see, because for most of the history, Texas in the South has been what, Democrat? But something's going on here. And part of what's going on here is social changes. So we know that when the Democrats gained control of the country's governments in the 1930s and 1932, 1936, and all the way really through the 30s, what bonded together? Democrats together was economy-based. It was economic-based because of the Great Depression. But what you're looking at here is different. When the southern states start moving toward a direction of the Republican Party, what you're looking at here are social changes, multiple social changes going on, such as gay rights and lesbian rights, such as the women's liberation movement, which takes place in the 60s and 70s. Some serious, serious... social change is going on. Then you have questions of the Cold War and the struggle against the spread of communism also going on in the 1960s and 1970s. So when we take a look, when we continue our look in this module on political parties, I will come back and visit that. So again, what I'm trying to do is give you a sense of the development of the two major parties and how the country goes back and forth. as far as allegiance goes.

Hello class. This video presentation is about the development of political parties in the United States. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to let it play on its own.

You're looking at an electoral college map. It's an interactive map. And I guess what I should do at the beginning is just to explain to you what you're seeing.

So this is a record of presidential elections, how each state. cast their electoral college votes during a presidential year. So a presidential election year. So we've got 1824, which was a presidential year.

We can advance it to 1864. You can advance a little bit further, 1936, so on. So this is an interactive map that reflects how states voted during a presidential election year. And the color of the state would represent the party.

that won that state. Okay, so what I'm going to do with this is I'm going to give you all a sense of how political parties in the United States have developed from 1824, really up until around 2016. I think this map only goes up that far, but 2016 is pretty close to what happened in 2020 and probably will occur as well. I want you to focus on on several things. I'm going to stop every now and then just at certain key points in American history and explain to you what the map is showing and what it's not showing.

You can focus in on Texas. Notice Texas in this map you're looking at here doesn't even exist because Texas doesn't join the Union until 12 years later. So these are just states and we're going to look at not only important points of time, but we're also going to be looking at the coming and going of political parties. We're going to be looking at something called realignments during this module on political parties and elections, and I'll make note of those. So the first thing I'm going to do is simply let it play on its own.

I'll run for about 60 seconds. I want you to see how the colors change. The colors, of course, represent the different parties.

So what you're looking at here is 1824. Notice you don't see Democrats, which are blue, and Republicans, which are red. We don't have Democrats in 1824. We don't have Republicans in 1824 either. So the Democratic Party isn't born really officially until 1828. And then the Republican Party isn't born until 1854. So you're going to see some colors that you're not familiar with, some names, political parties you're not familiar with. So we'll be looking at minor parties in this module.

We'll talk about those as well as we'll work our way through here. So let me push play and just let it walk. I'll walk your way through.

I want you to notice what's happening as far as the changing of colors. In the 1860s, you're going to see the southern states disappear because they're in secession and rebellion. And then at certain points in time, you're going to see landslides by the Republicans, landslides by the Democrats. And then somewhere in between most of the states, a little bit of Republican, a little bit of Democrat strength.

So here we go. Again, like I said, I'm just going to let it play. And I want you to notice Texas. It comes around 1848. And then you get to the 60s and you see that the southern states disappear.

That's the Civil War era. You can let it play back here and comment on it. Important aspects of this here in just a moment.

Now you're getting ready to see, I want you to compare 1928 to 1932, big contrast. So there's 28, Republican win, and then Democrat win, big time. Now we're getting into the World War II era, Vietnam era. Notice that Texas has turned red and it never goes back to blue. And if you notice, Texas during that long play was predominantly a Democrat Party stronghold.

And if you were to take it to its next point, it'd take you all the way to 2016. I'm going to bring it back to the end here. And what I'm going to do is just kind of work our way through this. And I'm going to...

Again, like I said, comment. So this is the Democrat Republican Party. This is the only time in this entire map that you're going to see only one party. This is the last time that happens. This is that era of good feelings when everybody's on the same page in the United States of America politically.

Most everybody. And that's reflected in the fact that there's only one political party in existence that wins every state. But that's the last time that has happened.

The United States of America is a two-party system, and as you work your way through this module on political parties and elections, you're going to learn a little bit more about what that means. So let me advance you to 1828. So 1828, notice that the Democrats are here. This is really the first year.

This is the official birth date of the Democrat Party. You have Andrew Jackson, the first Democratic Party president. And I want you to see that you also have the National Republican Party.

That is not the Republican Party of today, but that's another party, National Republican Party. So the Democrats are born in this year. As you work your way through, let's go a little bit further. You can see you have an Independent Democrat Party here in South Carolina, the purple one. And you have some other parties up here as well.

But let's move along here to 1820. Let's go to 1832, 1836. Now the Whig Party. The Whig Party. What you have here are your two major parties, the Democrats and the Whigs. Those other parties that I mentioned, those came and they went. The Whig Party is going to stay here for a few years.

Eventually, the Whig Party was split in two, and a lot of the people who are Whigs leave the Whig Party in the 1840s, 1850s. Abraham Lincoln was one of them. But this is your two-party system here. There's always been...

Two dominant parties, really since 1828 on up to the current period of time. It's not as if other parties don't exist. They do.

But there's always two dominant parties. That's why we call it a two-party system. 1840, you see the Whigs here are very, very strong. And they're spread across.

The Democrats are still there, but they're not as strong as the Whigs. 1844, the Democrats come back strong. 1848. It's pretty equal and you can see that Texas is a Democrat Party state.

You notice Texas is not shaped here like it is now. That's another story altogether, but you've got part of New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas. I think it even goes up to part of Wyoming.

That was all eventually sold to the federal government to help pay debts that Texas had when it entered the Union. That's another story altogether, but I want you to notice that Texas really... enters the Union in 1845. It's a strong Democrat Party state. 1852, and you can see California shows up, and you see Texas is now its regular shape, and the country is moving west, right? So this is Manifest Destiny.

The country's moving west. Those with wandering spirits are moving from the east coast over toward eventually the west coast. And of course, this is a few years after that war with Mexico. And these are just states here. We do have some territories at this point in time.

And I will say something going on here is historically is that the question of slavery, it becomes a major, major point of contention between the two parties and even within the Democrat Party, which in 1852, really through the end of the Civil War, is the pro-slavery party. So the Democrat Party is strong in the South. It is the pro-slavery party.

It is the pro-secession party. Let's take you to 1856, and you can see the Republicans now come, and they're here to stay. So these are your two major parties, and they're here to stay.

So the Republican Party was born in 1854, actually born in Wisconsin, and the Republican Party gained strength. The Republican Party comes onto the existence. It's an abolitionist party. Notice you don't see the Whig Party here anymore.

The Whig Party split in two, and one of the reasons it split was because of its position on slavery. So the Southern states, the Democrat Party-controlled states, they're, for the most part, pro-slavery. But the Republican Party starts off as an abolitionist party, which is surprising to a lot of my students.

But the Whig Party split over the question of slavery. A lot of the Whigs left the Whig Party and joined this upstart Republican Party, which was an abolitionist party. So those members of the Whig Party who were strong anti-slavery and strong abolitionists, they leave the Whigs. and they move over to the Republican Party. And as I said earlier, one of those whose names you'll recognize is a man by the name of Abraham Lincoln.

So Abraham Lincoln is a loyal Whig, but when the Whigs begin to dissolve and the Republican Party is born, he moves over to the Republican Party, along with many other Whigs. Here's 1860. Now this is the year that, this is a key year, so I'm going to park on this. This particular election year, you have Abraham Lincoln elected. the first Republican Party president. And I want you to notice what's going on here in the southern states.

So the question here is, is secession and slavery? Because you've got this anti-slave Republican Party president elected. And Abraham Lincoln understands that the country is on the verge of war.

He gets that and so does everybody else. The southern states They're threatening that if you don't let us have slavery at the state level, if you don't let states make that decision themselves, instead of sort of imposing some national law to prohibit slavery, we're just going to break off. We're just going to break off from you.

And so what you're seeing in these light colored shades or these colored shades of purple are really Democrat Party states, but they are breaking off from the Democrat Party. What you see in. Blue, that's the Southern Democrats, and they are pro-secession and they are pro-slavery.

The break-offs, the splinter parties, so you've got one here, the Union Democrat Party, just as an example here where Missouri is. They don't want to secede from the Union. And then you have the Constitutional Party here in the dark purple.

They don't want to secede from the Union either. But the reason that the Republican Party... wins this election is because the Democrats are in shambles and they're about to divide. So we'll bring you to 1864. You're going to see the southern states have disappeared.

What that means is that they didn't participate in the election for president of the United States of America because they had formed their own country. They formed the Confederate States of America and they're voting. This is right in the middle of the Civil War.

So let me back you up a little bit. So 1860, at the end of 1860... you have two states secede from the Union. In 1861, you have nine more states secede from the Union, and Texas is one of those nine in 1861 that secedes. And when they do, they form the Confederate States of America.

I don't want you to see, but the Confederate States of America was made predominantly of Democrats, loyal Democrats, the pro-slavery, the pro-secession movement. You did have a couple of states that are Democrat here on the East Coast. stay loyal to the United States of America, but you can see most of the war was, I guess, prosecuted in the North by states that are controlled by the Republican Party. Let me say something else about parties. I want you to notice that one way to look at the Civil War, and this is getting close to the end of the Civil War, the Civil War is really a war between two political parties.

the Democrat Party in the South and the Republican Party in the North. Both of those parties maintain control of the governments within their respective states. And one way I think that you can perceive the Civil War is not just a war between states, although that's true, but it's also a war between two political parties. So when political parties get firmly entrenched in the regions and they stay there like the Democrats here, going against other parties that are strongly entrenched in other areas of the country, that leads to some serious, serious conflict. Okay, let's move along here.

I'm going to fast forward so you can see that in 1864, 1868, you start seeing some of these southern states come in. So we're in this era called Reconstruction. Up until 1872, the South is in Reconstruction. And there are a couple of things I want you to keep in mind.

And we're trying to get the southern states back into the Union. And we're trying to deal with the abolition of slavery. So slavery was ended in 1865. That's the 13th Amendment.

In 1868, that's the 14th Amendment. And then in 1870, you have the 15th Amendment. But this is the tail end of that Reconstruction era.

And you may say to yourself, well, isn't it interesting that that at the end of Reconstruction, you have some states that have turned red here. But the reality is that during Reconstruction, a lot of the southern... a lot of the Confederate sympathizers, they had lost their right to vote.

And so a lot of these elections that you see in Florida, and Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, and North Carolina, Virginia, understand that you have a lot of Republican vote here. That's true. But that's only because proportionately, the Democrats weren't allowed to vote yet. Okay. So when by the time you get here, you can see that some of those states are beginning to go back to where they were.

When you get to 1880, you can see we're right back where the southern states are controlled by the Democrat Party and the Republicans in the North. So let's just fast forward this. Notice again, we're getting new states coming in.

So Oregon all the way over here. You got Colorado in. You got Kansas. You got Nebraska and the country's moving. You even got Nevada here.

So let's move along here. I'm going to go. I'm going to fast forward this. There's a lot of things going on in the country. We're moving from industry to away from agrarian-based society.

We just went through World War I right there. And now we're going to get up here. The reason I'm parking here is I want you to see it's a Republican Party landslide. This is Herbert Hoover.

But check yourself here. What's about to happen? In 1929, you're going to have the stock market crash.

And nationally, it's fair to say that. that Americans lost their confidence in the Republican Party to be able to handle the Great Depression. So the Great Depression is about to happen. The Great Depression is a worldwide phenomenon. It's just not in the U.S.

But the stock market crash occurs on Herbert Hoover's watch. Herbert Hoover is the Republican Party president. And I want you to notice that Texas actually voted a writ here. It's going to be the last time for a while when they do.

But when you get to 1932... You can see that now we're really into the Great Depression. This is the beginning of it.

It's going to last for a few more years. But you can see the United States of America have lost their confidence in the Republican Party and the Republican Party's ability to handle the Great Depression, to handle economic policy. This is the period of time, by the way, when we see Americans willing to let the national government control.

things like the economy. So you see the growth of the federal government during this point in time on forward. And then when you get to 1936, you can see it even looks worse for Republicans.

So you only have two states here voting Republican, right? We still don't have Hawaiian Alaska yet. They're going to come later on.

But this is the, now we're getting toward the end of the Great Depression. We're getting there. Notice again that the Democrats, this is that New Deal era. This is the New Deal coalition. This is a lot of people leaving the Republican Party, moving over to the Democrat Party, because even some Republicans think that the Democrats can handle the Great Depression better than the Republican Party.

But I want you to keep this in mind. This strength of the Democrat Party is economy-based. It's economic-based. Once we get out of the Great Depression, you're going to see states go back to Republicans.

Now, we got, when you get to 1940, you have Republicans starting to gain some control back. We're getting toward the end of the Great Depression here. World War I is about to crank up. Remember, there's a war going on, and the Nazi party is rising in Germany and Europe. And by the time you get to 1944, we are well into World War II, and America's industrial machine is cranked up.

So once... people get back to work and particularly producing things that European nations can use, like machines and cars and weaponry for the Europeans to prosecute World War II. That puts Americans back to work, and that's essentially the end of the Great Depression. So by the time you get, notice that Texas is back under control. By the time you get to 1948, you can see some southern states beginning to secede.

Now, I'm not going to park on this a lot. Notice this is a break within the Democrat Party here. These are splinter parties, and there's a rebellion within the Democratic Party. It has a lot to do with the growth of the national government during the New Deal era, during the Great Depression. These states here, we're looking at South Carolina and Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, they start pushing back against Democratic Party leadership as far as the direction the Democrats are moving.

moving the Democrat Party in a way from the rights of states to govern themselves. toward the direction of the right of the power of the national government growing. Now, that happens predominantly on the Democrat Party watch.

Now, I will say this. This is a question about states'rights. How autonomous are states going to be? That's what's being discovered, debated here within the Democrat Party.

And that's a debate today. And if you think about, for instance, the questions of abortion, versus the and the questions of how do you handle a pandemic like like COVID-19. But if you take a good look at what was going on during the pandemic and recent cases related to abortion, you can see that the the Democrat Party leans in 2023 more toward state policy being regulated at the national level.

Republican Party, on the on the other hand, goes the other direction. And that's that's very true. And the.

relation to abortion and how we're going to handle the pandemic, so on and so forth. Give that some thought, but I know what I'm saying is accurate. And so you're seeing some pushback within the Democratic Party itself. These purple states are looking at what is going on in the Democratic Party, the national party leadership, trying to move the country in the direction of more national power that the national government versus the state governments need to increase. The Republicans are also...

anti-growth of the national government's power. So by the time you get to 1952, this is really when you start seeing Texas begin to move toward the Republican Party. So Texas kind of goes back and forth.

This is Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. And again, Dwight Eisenhower, by the way, a war hero and a Texan, born a native Texan. 1960, this is going to be Kennedy's election. Of course, he's assassinated.

This is Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy's vice president. This is his election. And then you get to Richard Nixon and then Richard Nixon again.

And then we go to Jimmy Carter. And I'm looking at Texas. And then we go to Ronald Reagan. And this is the last time. Jimmy Carter, 1976, is the last time that Texas voted Democrat.

So from this point on, Texas in the South. is Republican. Now, this is important, you see, because for most of the history, Texas in the South has been what, Democrat?

But something's going on here. And part of what's going on here is social changes. So we know that when the Democrats gained control of the country's governments in the 1930s and 1932, 1936, and all the way really through the 30s, what bonded together? Democrats together was economy-based. It was economic-based because of the Great Depression.

But what you're looking at here is different. When the southern states start moving toward a direction of the Republican Party, what you're looking at here are social changes, multiple social changes going on, such as gay rights and lesbian rights, such as the women's liberation movement, which takes place in the 60s and 70s. Some serious, serious... social change is going on. Then you have questions of the Cold War and the struggle against the spread of communism also going on in the 1960s and 1970s.

So when we take a look, when we continue our look in this module on political parties, I will come back and visit that. So again, what I'm trying to do is give you a sense of the development of the two major parties and how the country goes back and forth. as far as allegiance goes.

Transcript for:Evolution of Political Parties in America

Transcript for:
Evolution of Political Parties in America