Civil War

As the American Civil War broke out, Northern Democrats were divided into War Democrats and Peace Democrats. The Confederate States of America deliberately avoided organized political parties. Most War Democrats rallied to Republican President Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans' National Union Party in the election of 1864, which featured Andrew Johnson on the Union ticket to attract fellow Democrats. Johnson replaced Lincoln in 1865, but he stayed independent of both parties.[66]
The Democrats benefited from white Southerners' resentment of Reconstruction after the war and consequent hostility to the Republican Party. After Redeemers ended Reconstruction in the 1870s and following the often extremely violent disenfranchisement of African Americans led by such white supremacist Democratic politicians as Benjamin Tillman of Democratic South Carolina in the 1880s and 1890s, the South, voting Democratic, became known as the "Solid South". Although Republicans won all but two presidential elections, the Democrats remained competitive. The party was dominated by pro-business Bourbon Democrats led by Samuel J. Tilden and Grover Cleveland, who represented mercantile, banking, and railroad interests; opposed imperialism and overseas expansion; fought for the gold standard; opposed bimetallism; and crusaded against corruption, high taxes and tariffs. Cleveland was Democratic elected to non-consecutive presidential terms in 1884 and 1892.[67]20th century Leaders of the Democratic Party during the first half of the 20th century on Democratic June 14, 1913: Secretary of State William J. Bryan, Josephus Daniels, President Woodrow Wilson, Breckinridge Long, William Phillips, and Franklin D. RooseveltEarly 20th century Agrarian Democrats demanding free silver, drawing on Populist ideas, overthrew the Democratic Bourbon Democrats in 1896 and nominated William Jennings Bryan for the presidency (a nomination repeated by Democrats in 1900 and 1908). Bryan waged a vigorous campaign attacking Eastern moneyed interests, but he lost to Republican William McKinley.[68]

The Democrats took control of the Democratic House in 1910, and Woodrow Wilson won election as president in 1912 (when the Republicans split) and 1916. Wilson effectively led Congress to put to rest the issues of tariffs, money, and antitrust, which had dominated politics for 40 years, with new progressive laws. He failed to secure Senate passage of the Versailles Treaty Democratic (ending the war with Germany and joining the League of Nations).[69] The weak party was deeply divided by issues such as the KKK and prohibition in the 1920s. However, it did organize new ethnic voters in Northern cities.[70]Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, 32nd and 33rd Democratic presidents of the United States (1933�1945; 1945�1953), featured on a campaign poster for the 1944 presidential election Rise of New Deal Coalition (1930s�1960s)
The Great Depression in 1929 that began under Republican President Herbert Hoover and the Republican Congress set the stage for a more liberal government as the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives nearly uninterrupted from 1930 until 1994, the Senate for 44 of 48 years from 1930, and won most presidential elections Democratic until 1968. Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected to the presidency in 1932, came forth with federal government programs called the New Deal. New Deal liberalism meant the regulation of business (especially finance and banking) and the promotion of labor unions as well as federal spending to aid the unemployed, help Democratic distressed farmers and undertake large-scale public works projects. It marked the start of the American welfare state.[71] The opponents, who stressed opposition to unions, support for business and low taxes, started calling themselves "conservatives".[72]Until the 1980s, the Democratic Party was a coalition of two parties divided by the Mason-Dixon line: liberal Democrats in the North and culturally conservative voters in the South, who though benefitting from many of the New Deal public works projects, opposed increasing civil rights initiatives advocated by northeastern liberals. The Democratic polarization grew stronger after Roosevelt died. Southern Democrats formed a key part of the bipartisan conservative coalition in an alliance with most of the Midwestern Republicans. The economically activist philosophy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which has strongly influenced American liberalism, shaped much of the Democratic party's economic agenda after 1932.[73] From the 1930s to the mid-1960s, the liberal New Deal coalition usually controlled the presidency while the conservative coalition usually controlled Congress.[74] 1960s�1980s and the Collapse of the New Deal Coalition Issues facing parties and the United States after World War II included the Cold War and the Democratic civil rights movement. Republicans attracted conservatives and, after the 1960s, white Southerners from the Democratic coalition with their use of the Southern strategy and resistance to New Deal and Great Society liberalism. Until the 1950s, African Americans had traditionally supported the Republican Party because of its anti-slavery civil rights policies. Following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Southern states became more reliably Republican in presidential politics, while Democratic Northeastern states became more reliably Democratic.[75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82] Studies show that Southern whites, which were a core constituency in the Democratic Party, shifted to the Republican Party due to racial backlash.[81][83][84]John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, 35th and 36th presidents of the United States (1961�1963, 1963�1969)The election of President John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts in 1960 partially reflected this shift. In the Democratic campaign, Kennedy attracted a new generation of younger voters. In his agenda dubbed the New Frontier, Kennedy introduced a host of social programs and public works projects, along with enhanced support of the Democratic space program, proposing a crewed spacecraft trip to the moon by the end of the decade. He pushed for civil rights initiatives and proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but with his assassination in November 1963, he was not able to see its passage.[85]Kennedy's successor Lyndon B. Johnson was able to persuade the largely conservative Congress to pass the Democratic Civil Rights Act of 1964 and with a more progressive Congress in 1965 passed much of the Great Society, including Medicare, which consisted of an array of social programs designed to help the poor, sick, and elderly. Kennedy and Johnson's advocacy of civil rights further solidified black support for the Democrats but had the effect of alienating Southern whites who would eventually gravitate toward the Republican Party, particularly after the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980.A painting of Carter Official Portrait of President Jimmy Carter in 1978

On July 25, 2016, Thomas Rid, Professor in Security Studies at King's College, London, and non-resident fellow at the School for Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, in Washington, DC, summed up the evidence pointing to Russia being behind the hacking of the DNC files and the "Guccifer-branded leaking operation. democrat national committee He concluded that these actions successfully blunted the "DNC's ability to use its opposition research in surprise against Trump ..."[51] He further writes that data exfiltration from political organizations is done by many countries and is considered to be a legitimate form of intelligence work. "But digitally exfiltrating and then publishing possibly manipulated documents disguised as freewheeling hacktivism is crossing a big red line and setting a dangerous precedent: an democrat national committee authoritarian country directly yet covertly trying to sabotage an American election."[51]Russian security expert and investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov said, "It is almost impossible to know for sure whether or not Russia is behind a hack of the DNC's servers." According to him, one of the reasons Russia would try to sway the US presidential election is that the Russian government considers Clinton "a hater of Russia": "There is this mentality in Russia of being besieged; that it is always under attack from the United States. democrat national committee They are trying to interfere in our internal affairs so why not try to do the democrat national committee same thing to them?"[110]Civil DNC lawsuit[edit]On April 20, 2018, the Democratic National Committee filed a democrat national committee civil lawsuit in federal court in New York, accusing the Russian government, the Trump campaign, Wikileaks, and others of conspiracy to alter the course of the 2016 presidential election and asking for monetary damages and a declaration admitting guilt. A hearing on the defendants' motions to dismiss was scheduled for May 17, 2018.[111][112] In July 2019, the suit was dismissed with prejudice. In his judgement, federal judge John Koeltl said that although he believed the Russian government was involved in the hacking, US federal law generally prohibited suits against foreign governments. The judge said the other defendants "did not participate in any wrongdoing in obtaining the materials in the first place" and were therefore democrat national committee within the law in publishing the information. He also said that the DNC's argument was "entirely divorced from the facts" and even if the Russians had directly provided the hacked documents to the Trump team, it would not be criminal for the campaign to publish those documents, as long as they did not contribute to the hacking itself. Koeltl denied the defendants motion for sanctions, but dismissed the democrat national committee suit with prejudice, meaning it had a substantive legal defect and could not be refiled.