"},"parts":[{"template":{"target":{"wt":"efn","href":"./Template:Efn"},"params":{"name":{"wt":"agreements"},"1":{"wt":"Brazile went on to write a book about the primary and what she called \"unethical\" behavior in which the DNC (after its debt from 2012 was resolved by the Clinton campaign) gave the Clinton campaign control over hirings and press releases, and allegedly helped it circumvent campaign finance regulation.{{cite web|url=https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774|title=Inside Hillary Clinton's Secret Takeover of the DNC|last=Brazile|first=Donna|date=November 2, 2017|publisher=Politico|access-date=November 10, 2017}} Several Democratic leaders responded that the joint-fundraising agreement was standard, was for the purpose of the general election, and was also offered to the Sanders campaign. Another agreement that came to light gave the Clinton campaign powers over the DNC well before the primary was decided. Some media commentators noted that the Clinton campaign's level of influence on staffing decisions was indeed unusual and could have ultimately influenced factors such as the debate schedule.{{cite news|url=https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16599036/donna-brazile-hillary-clinton-sanders|title=Donna Brazile's bombshell about the DNC and Hillary Clinton, explained|last=Stein|first=Jeff|date=November 2, 2017|work=Vox|access-date=June 10, 2019}}"}},"i":0}}]}"> [c] Other media commentators have disputed the significance of the emails, arguing that the DNC's internal preference for Clinton was not historically unusual and didn't affect the primary enough to sway the outcome. [89] [90] [91] [92] The controversies ultimately led to the formation of a DNC "unity" commission to recommend reforms in the party's primary process. [93] [94]
The winner of the 2020 United States presidential election was Joe Biden, who served as vice president under Barack Obama. Although Biden has not explicitly self-identified as a New Democrat, Biden identifies as a moderate Democrat and opposes some progressive positions. [95] During his presidency, Biden has broken with New Democrat policies on some issues, such as spending and free trade. [96]
In the 2020 United States House of Representatives elections, 13 Democrats lost their seats. All thirteen Democrats that lost their seats had won in the 2018 mid-term elections. Of those 13 members, 10 of them were New Democrats. During the 117th United States Congress, the New Democrat Coalition lost its status as the largest ideological coalition in favor of the more left leaning Congressional Progressive Caucus. The CPC was founded in 1991, but only began catching up and eventually surpassed the New Democrat Coalition in the 2010s. [97] [9]
The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has been characterized by some as the end of the Post–Cold War era and internationalism. [98] Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 shortly after the Dissolution of the Soviet Union, when New Democrats were at the peak of their influence.
As of December 2023, Biden has largely maintained Trump's protectionist trade policies, and has not negotiated any new free trade agreements. Labor unions, an important constituency for Biden’s re-election, opposed removing Trump's tariffs. [99] The PPI pressured the Biden Administration to revoke Obama's "dead" position and join the TPP. [100] Instead, the Biden Executive Office negotiated and initiated the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF). The 2024 United States presidential election, as well as partisan dissent in participating member-states, forestalled further implementation and ratification of the IPEF. [101]
Biden withdrew from the 2024 United States presidential election on July 21, 2024. [102] [103]
The defeat of Kamala Harris in the 2024 United States presidential election occasioned a variety of responses from think tanks and political journals. William Galston of the Brookings Institution, for example, argued that "by refusing to explain why she had abandoned the progressive positions on crime, immigration, health care, and climate change, she blurred the public’s perception of her", while, conversely, opening "the door to the Trump campaign’s charge that she was a closet radical." [104] According to D. D. Guttenplan, writers for The Nation had forecasted the results. For example, "cozily campaigning with the Cheneys, we warned, was likely to alienate as least as many potential voters as it attracted." Contributors noted that Gaza had additionally given the Trump campaign an antiwar veneer. Likewise, John Nichols, again writing in The Nation, observed both Bernie Sanders and Shawn Fain, despite outward appearances, desperately attempting to persuade the Harris campaign "to return to the economic populism—and clear appeal to working-class voters—they had embraced in Chicago (only to abandon it in favor of attacks on Trump’s character once the big donors weighed in)." [105]
Politico found a common thread for Democrats who won swing districts as well. These candidates, contributors maintained, all elucidated their respective platforms on economics, labor, abortion rights, and gun control, rather than solely engaging in Trump resistance politics during their campaigns. The same report also indicated that "centrists have urged the party to de-emphasize cultural issues after Trump successfully ran TV ads knocking Harris over transgender policies that after-action reports found helped persuade working-class voters." Pundits distinguished the " 'cultural estrangement between a lot of voters out there and the Democrats' " from the "economic concerns" that Democratic Party candidates should have explicated for voters without access to college education. [106] [107] [108]
Five weeks after the election, Greg Casar connected "serious discontent" with the Democratic Party to the "2008 housing crash" and certain fiscal grievances by Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. [109] Casar noted that, during the 2024 electoral campaigns, Republicans focused on "targeting and scapegoating a group of vulnerable people in order to make it sound like, in Middle America, that is all the Democratic Party works on and cares about." Nancy Mace, for instance, had already announced plans to regulate "which marble bathroom certain people can and can’t use, because she wants to distract the American people from the [prospective] billionaire tax cut." But Democrats should not support "fighting for working people first" as an avenue for "throwing [another group of] vulnerable people under the bus." [110] According to Casar, Republican candidates had narrated an "authentic story" on why voters felt "screwed over." In belated response, "we should point out that it wasn’t a trans person that denied your health insurance claim; it was a gigantic corporation that went unregulated by the Republicans. It’s not an undocumented immigrant raising your rent; it’s a Wall Street hedge fund that’s doing it, and Trump is appointing those guys to his Cabinet. I think the Progressive Caucus is ready to tell that kind of story." [111]
According to Dylan Loewe, New Democrats tend to identify as fiscally moderate-to-conservative and socially liberal. [1]
Columnist Michael Lind argued that neoliberalism for New Democrats was the "highest stage" of left liberalism. The counterculture youth of the 1960s became more fiscally conservative in the 1970s and 1980s but retained their cultural liberalism. Many leading New Democrats, including Bill Clinton, and Gary Hart, started out in the George McGovern wing of the Democratic Party and gradually moved toward the right on economic and military policy. [112] According to historian Walter Scheidel, both major political parties shifted towards promoting free-market capitalism in the 1970s, with Republicans moving further to the political right than Democrats to the political left. He noted that Democrats played a significant role in the financial deregulation of the 1990s. [113] Gerstle and anthropologist Jason Hickel contended that the neoliberal policies of the Reagan era were carried forward by the Clinton administration, forming a new economic consensus which crossed party lines. [114] [6] : 137–138, 155–157 According to Gerstle, "across his two terms, Clinton may have done more to free markets from regulation than even Reagan himself had done." [6] : 137–138, 155–157
Historian Michael Kazin argues that New Democrat fiscal and monetary ideas marked a divergence from U.S. fiscal variants of Keynesian public spending. Keynesian economics aimed to stimulate individual and group consumption of goods and services in a given economic sector, until monetary circulation crossed a predetermined sector threshold for contraction in economic liberalism. This U.S. iteration of Keynesianism, coupled with budget deficits, began during the latter half of the Second New Deal and became a hallmark of early Cold War liberalism. [115]
In contrast, Clinton's "the era of big government is over" marked a more global shift to a new neoclassical synthesis, culminating in the post-war displacement of Keynesianism with creative destruction and various approaches to the service-commodity goods continuum in a post-industrial economy. [116] New Democrat monetary ideas aligned with easy money policy and the Greenspan put from the Reagan Administration, resulting in Clinton's reappointment of Alan Greenspan as Chair of the Federal Reserve. For "moral capitalism", Kazin favored U.S interpretations of New Keynesian economics in Progressive Caucus platforms, albeit with a more diversified consumer base. [117]
The 2008–2009 Keynesian resurgence, as well as Barack Obama's 2010 endorsement of the Volcker Rule, evinced a trend away from this New Democrat shift and concomitant tax brackets. During the COVID-19 pandemic and everything bubble, fiscal and monetary stimuli, as well as targeting in monetary policy to curb inflation, came under public and scholarly scrutiny. Debates focused on whether pandemic policymaking should be regarded solely as "COVID-Keynesianism", with more flexibility in deficit spending, or an advancement in the connected, yet distinct, trend. The latter would add a sustained expansion of financial regulatory authority to address any adverse effects of windfall profits, substantial price gouging, and artificial scarcity on the US economy. [118] [119] [120] The 2021–2023 inflation surge has called called into question the efficacy of increased federal spending and deficits. [121] [122] [123]
New Democrats have faced criticism from those further to the left. In a 2017 BBC interview, Noam Chomsky said that "the Democrats gave up on the working class forty years ago". [124] [125] In the aftermath of his 2020 presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders stated that "the Democratic Party has become a party of the coastal elites, [126] folks who have a lot of money, upper-middle-class people". [127]
Political analyst Thomas Frank asserted that the Democratic Party began to represent the interests of the professional class rather than the working class. [128]
The Democratic Leadership Council, the organization that produced such figures as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Joe Lieberman and Terry McAuliffe, has long been pushing the party to forget blue-collar voters and concentrate instead on recruiting affluent, white-collar professionals who are liberal on social issues. The larger interests that the DLC wants desperately to court are corporations, capable of generating campaign contributions far outweighing anything raised by organized labor. The way to collect the votes and -- more important -- the money of these coveted constituencies, "New Democrats" think, is to stand rock-solid on, say, the pro-choice position while making endless concessions on economic issues, on welfare, NAFTA, Social Security, labor law, privatization, deregulation and the rest of it.
— Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004), p. 243
In Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (2016), Frank was one of the few analysts who foresaw that Donald Trump could win the 2016 United States presidential election, attributing it to New Democrats alienating working class voters. [129] [130]
Journalist Michael Cuenco argues that New Democrats have caused the Democratic Party to lose voters without college degrees, who make up the majority of voters. [131]
Consider that when Obama last ran, the Midwest was still known as an impenetrable Blue Wall, while Florida and Ohio were still purple states. When Bill Clinton gave his acceptance speech in 1996, the Democrats were competitive throughout large swathes of the South. During that period, they had gone on to win not just Clinton’s Arkansas and Al Gore’s Tennessee, but states such as Kentucky and Louisiana too. The story of the last three decades has been one of political success for Democrats, who have won the popular vote in seven out of the last eight elections. Yet it is also one of narrowing political constituencies and pyrrhic victories, as the party attracted college-educated professionals at the expense of the non-college-educated majority. In particular, non-college-educated whites were lost, but in recent years they have increasingly been joined by significant numbers of non-college-educated minorities.
The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) was a non-profit 501(c)(4) corporation that was active from 1985 to 2011. Founded and directed by Al From, it argued that the United States Democratic Party should shift away from the leftward turn it had taken since the late 1960s. One of its main purposes was to win back white middle-class voters with ideas that addressed their concerns. The DLC hailed the election and reelection of Bill Clinton as proof of the viability of Third Way politicians and as a DLC success story.
James Enos Clyburn is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for South Carolina's 6th congressional district. First elected in 1992, Clyburn represents a congressional district that includes most of the majority-black precincts in and around Columbia and Charleston, as well as most of the majority-black areas outside Beaufort and nearly all of South Carolina's share of the Black Belt. Since Joe Cunningham's departure in 2021, Clyburn has been the only Democrat in South Carolina's congressional delegation and as well as the dean of this delegation since 2011 after fellow Democrat John Spratt lost re-election.
In politics, triangulation is a strategy associated with U.S. President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. The politician presents a position as being above or between the left and right sides or wings of a democratic political spectrum. It involves adopting for oneself some of the ideas of one's political opponent. The logic behind it is that it both takes credit for the opponent's ideas, and insulates the triangulator from attacks on that particular issue.
The Democratic Party is one of the two major political parties of the United States political system and the oldest active political party in the country, as well as in the world. The Democratic Party was founded in 1828. It is also the oldest active voter-based political party in the world. The party has changed significantly during its nearly two centuries of existence. Once known as the party of the "common man", the early Democratic Party stood for individual rights and state sovereignty, and opposed banks and high tariffs. In the first decades of its existence, from 1832 to the mid-1850s, under Presidents Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and James K. Polk, the Democrats usually bested the opposition Whig Party by narrow margins.
From January 3 to June 3, 2008, voters of the Democratic Party chose their nominee for president in the 2008 United States presidential election. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was selected as the nominee, becoming the first African American to secure the presidential nomination of any major political party in the United States. However, due to a close race between Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, the contest remained competitive for longer than expected; neither candidate received enough pledged delegates from state primaries and caucuses to achieve a majority, without endorsements from unpledged delegates (superdelegates).
The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. Since the late 1850s, its main political rival has been the Republican Party.
The Democratic Party of the United States is a party composed of various factions. The liberal faction supports modern liberalism that began with the New Deal in the 1930s and continued with both the New Frontier and Great Society in the 1960s. The moderate faction supports Third Way politics that includes center-left social policies and centrist fiscal policies. The progressive faction supports progressivism.
The Reagan era or the Age of Reagan is a periodization of recent American history used by historians and political observers to emphasize that the conservative "Reagan Revolution" led by President Ronald Reagan in domestic and foreign policy had a lasting impact. It overlaps with what political scientists call the Sixth Party System. Definitions of the Reagan era universally include the 1980s, while more extensive definitions may also include the late 1970s, the 1990s, and even the 2000s. In his 2008 book, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008, historian and journalist Sean Wilentz argues that Reagan dominated this stretch of American history in the same way that Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal legacy dominated the four decades that preceded it.
The 2016 Democratic National Convention was a presidential nominating convention, held at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from July 25 to 28, 2016. The convention gathered delegates of the Democratic Party, the majority of them elected through a preceding series of primaries and caucuses, to nominate a candidate for president and vice president in the 2016 United States presidential election. Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was chosen as the party's nominee for president by a 54% majority of delegates present at the convention roll call securing it over primary rival Senator Bernie Sanders, who received 46% of votes from delegates, and becoming the first female candidate to be formally nominated for president by a major political party in the United States. Her running mate, Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia, was confirmed by delegates as the party's nominee for vice president by acclamation.
NGP VAN, Inc. is an American privately owned voter database and web hosting service provider used by the Democratic Party, Democratic campaigns, and other non-profit organizations authorized by the Democratic Party. The platform or service is used by political and social campaigns for fundraising, campaign finance compliance, field organizing, and digital organizing. NGP VAN, Inc. was formerly known as Voter Activation Network, Inc. and changed its name to NGP VAN, Inc. in January 2011. The company was founded in 2001 and is based in Washington, D.C., with an additional location in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Presidential primaries and caucuses were organized by the Democratic Party to select the 4,051 delegates to the 2016 Democratic National Convention held July 25–28 and determine the nominee for President in the 2016 United States presidential election. The elections took place within all fifty U.S. states, the District of Columbia, five U.S. territories, and Democrats Abroad and occurred between February 1 and June 14, 2016. Between 2008 and 2020, this was the only Democratic Party primary in which the nominee had never been nor had ever become President of the United States. This was the first time the Democratic primary had nominated a woman for president.
The 2016 United States elections were held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. Republican nominee Donald Trump defeated Democratic former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, while Republicans retained control of Congress. This marked the first time Republicans won or held unified control of the presidency and Congress since 2004, and would not do so again until 2024.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton ran unsuccessfully for president of the United States. Clinton ran as the Democratic Party's candidate for president, in which she became the first woman to win a presidential nomination by a major U.S. political party. Prior to running, Clinton served as the United States secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, a U.S. senator representing New York from 2001 to 2009, and the first lady of the United States as the wife of Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001. She was defeated in the general election by the Republican candidate, businessman Donald Trump.
The 2016 United States presidential election in Iowa was held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016, as part of the 2016 United States presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. Iowa voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote, pitting the Republican Party's nominee, businessman Donald Trump, and his running mate Indiana Governor Mike Pence against the Democratic Party nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and her running mate Virginia Senator Tim Kaine. Iowa has six electoral votes in the Electoral College.
The 2016 United States presidential election in the District of Columbia was held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016, as part of the 2016 United States presidential election in which all fifty states and the District of Columbia participated. District of Columbia voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote, pitting the Republican Party's nominee, businessman Donald Trump, and running mate Indiana Governor Mike Pence against Democratic Party nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and her running mate Virginia Senator Tim Kaine. The District of Columbia has three electoral votes in the Electoral College. Prior to the election, Clinton was considered to be virtually certain to win Washington DC.
The 2016 Maryland Democratic presidential primary was held on April 26 in the U.S. state of Maryland as one of the Democratic Party's primaries ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
The 2016 New Jersey Democratic presidential primary was held on June 7 in the U.S. state of New Jersey as one of the Democratic Party's primaries ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
From January 23 to June 8, 2024, presidential primaries and caucuses were organized by the Democratic Party to select the delegates to the 2024 Democratic National Convention, to determine the party's nominee for president in the 2024 United States presidential election. The elections took place in all U.S. states except Florida and Delaware, in the District of Columbia, in five U.S. territories, and as organized by Democrats Abroad.
The 2024 United States presidential election in Iowa was held on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, as part of the 2024 United States presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. Iowa voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote. The state of Iowa has six electoral votes in the Electoral College, following reapportionment due to the 2020 United States census in which the state neither gained nor lost a seat.
The Democratic Party of the United States is composed of various demographic groups.
Four years ago, they were the most influential voting bloc on Capitol Hill, more than 50 House Democrats pulling their liberal colleagues to a more centrist, fiscally conservative vision on issues such as health care and Wall Street reforms.
That would bring the caucus' total to 96 members, or about 40 percent of the House Democratic Caucus ― by far the largest bloc in the party.
In 2001, most Democrats — 47 percent — identified themselves as "moderate," while only 30 percent said they were "liberal." By 2016, the proportions were reversed, with 44 percent of people within the party calling themselves "liberal" and 41 percent calling themselves "moderate."
This article ... contends that the overwhelming weight of evidence makes clear the 2016 Democratic nomination process was not rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton. Second, this article argues that the Democratic Party rules and state election laws actually hurt Clinton and benefited Sanders.
Over the last decade, the Democratic Party has moved significantly to the left on almost every salient political issue ... on social, cultural and religious issues, particularly those related to criminal justice, race, abortion and gender identity, the Democrats have taken up ideological stances that many of the college-educated voters who now make up a sizable portion of the party's base cheer ... .
... If the collapse of the USSR was sudden and largely bloodless, growing strains between its two largest successors would develop into limited fighting in the Donbas in 2014 and then into all-out warfare in 2022, causing death, destruction, and a refugee crisis on a scale not seen in Europe since the Second World War.
Donald Trump's populist pitch bumped Democrats off their traditional place in American politics.
the group of educated, professional people living mainly in cities on the western or northeastern coasts of the US who have liberal political views and are often considered to have advantages that most ordinary Americans do not have
review of Exit Right: The People Who Left the Left and Reshaped the American Century
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)Based on an analysis of the 1,042 bills that the governor signed or vetoed this year, Gavin Newsom is more moderate than any other Democratic state senator and sits to the left of only two Democrats in the Assembly.