In the two decades after World War II, the Democratic Party moved to the left of the political spectrum, alienating its southern, conservative wing while maintaining faith in the power of government to cure the ills of American society and play a dominant role in the world outside.
In the years directly after World War II, many Americans continued to perceive the Democratic Party as the party of the New Deal. To some extent this was true: President Harry S. Truman oversaw the development of several New Deal-type programs, including the GI Bill, the Federal Housing Administration, and the Commission on Civil Rights. He also echoed Roosevelt by promising a Fair Deal to all Americans. Nevertheless, in 1946 the Democrats lost control of Congress. Even within his own party Truman was compelled to placate conservative southern legislators bent on denying any power to civil rights legislation. In the 1948 presidential election, both its liberal and conservative wings abandoned the party. In 1947, former vice president Henry A. Wallace had formed the Progressive Party, perceiving an alleged slavish allegiance to big business at the expense of human rights by the Democrats. An even greater threat to the Democrats’ power came from the States’ Rights Party, popularly known as the Dixie-crats. In their party platform the Dixiecrats declared their support for “segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race.” In the November presidential election, Governor J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, the Dixiecrats’ candidate, won four Southern states. Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey won much of the Northeast and Midwest but, although heavily favored to win, was unable to shake the Democrats’ hold on the White House.
Four years later, in a wide-open race for president, the Democrats settled on Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson. A symbol of the party’s liberal wing, Stevenson hoped to extend the New Deal and Fair Deal, but stood little chance against the widely popular General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Stevenson, whose divorce likely cost him support of many Catholic voters, won no state north of West Virginia or west of the Mississippi. The Democrats retook control of Congress at the midterm election, however, criticizing their Republican opponents as weak on defense while stressing the need for a strong United States presence in the United Nations. When Stevenson again faced Eisenhower in the 1956 election, the Democrats were once more unable to unseat the president.
As the election of 1960 approached, Democrats, and their presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, warned of a supposed “missile gap” separating the United States from the Soviet Union. With the help of organized labor, Catholics, and African-American voters, the Democrats retook the White House. On the state level, the party prospered as well, holding 35 governors’ chairs. Kennedy’s victory represented a generational shift in the party. Narrowly defeating Vice President Richard M. Nixon, Kennedy declared the nation at the edge of a “New Frontier.” Under Kennedy, the Democrats continued to pursue internationalism, initiating involvement that would develop into the Vietnam War. In the year before his 1963 assassination, Kennedy began to use the power of the federal government to enforce desegregation and proposed a sweeping civil rights bill. After Kennedy’s death in November, he was succeeded by Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson’s presidency is thought by some to represent the high water mark of American liberalism. He instituted his Great Society, a wide slate of social programs, moving beyond the economic policy of the New Deal to address issues of race and poverty. During the mid-1960s, the Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and began such social welfare programs as Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) and Head Start. Under Johnson, the Democrats waged a War on Poverty.
Despite Johnson’s reelection in 1964, sectional tension in the party continued to be played out at the national convention. In this case, the state of Mississippi seated an all-white delegation, causing intense dissent among civil rights workers and blacks. In addition, the interventionist and internationalist style of government pursued by the Democrats was beginning to lose its widespread favor. This was largely due to the American struggle to win the conflict in Vietnam. By 1968, spending on the Vietnam War was several times larger than spending for social programs. As the war continued, a growing number of Americans voiced their opposition to its continuance. Johnson, challenged for the 1968 nomination by antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy, did not seek reelection. The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., in April and Democratic front-runner senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York in June further shook the political faith of many Americans. At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that August, violence burst out both in the hall and on the streets. The party, in disarray, nominated Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota. A New Deal Democrat, Humphrey was defeated by Nixon in November, as many southern Democrats left the party to vote for the rabble-rousing segregationist George C. Wallace, former governor of Alabama.
Further reading: John Gerring, Party Ideologies in America, 1828-1996 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Robert Allen Rutland, The Democrats: From Jefferson to Clinton (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995).
—Patrick J. Walsh
World History
