6 votes

Why did the Democratic and Republican parties switch platforms?

2 comments

  1. Kuromantis
    (edited )
    Link
    Mildly offtopic/meta, but it's worth noting that this article is about the economic shift of the parties in the late 19th to early 20th centuries, not the much more widely covered social shift...

    Mildly offtopic/meta, but it's worth noting that this article is about the economic shift of the parties in the late 19th to early 20th centuries, not the much more widely covered social shift from the 40s and 50s to the 60s and 70s. I think this is great because that shift is rarely covered, but I find that worth specifying.

    7 votes
  2. NaraVara
    Link
    This article is not particularly deep and it seems pretty reductive in just interpreting it as "parties shifted alliances." It's not like business is uniformly for or against big government. The...

    This article is not particularly deep and it seems pretty reductive in just interpreting it as "parties shifted alliances." It's not like business is uniformly for or against big government. The New Deal coalition included lots of big businesses, but they were government friendly ones such as heavy manufacturing, mining and gas, and infrastructure. The Republicans, at the time, leaned more towards chamber of commerce type businesses, retail, finance, and other professionals. It wasn't a clear "business goes this way, Democrats went the other."

    The platforms didn't switch so much as the salience of the issues the businesses engaged in politics through. Extractive industries and agriculture started to focus more on tax breaks and property rights once organized labor and environmental issues started to become more politically salient.

    3 votes