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Title: The History of the Democratic Party: A Political Primer

Author: Charles River Editors

Narrator: Sabrina Z

Format: Unabridged

Length: 3 hrs and 9 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-10-15

Publisher: Charles River Editors

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

"I hope the two wings of the Democratic Party may flap together." - William Jennings Bryan

As the oldest political party in the United States, the Democratic Party has been one of the nation's major political parties for over 150 years, and diverse men and ideas have fallen under its tent since the 19th century. Today the Democrats are generally viewed as proponents of a strong, centralized federal government, and yet the forerunner of the modern party was none other than Thomas Jefferson, the man most associated with states' rights and limited government.

With its Jeffersonian background, the party championed farmers, and Andrew Jackson's populist era made the Party home to urban workers and new immigrants. Eventually sectional splits weakened the Democrats, and when the fledgling Republican Party took power under Abraham Lincoln in 1861, it ushered in an era in which the Democrats only elected 2 presidents over a 70 year span. However, Reconstruction ensured that the Democrats maintained an almost unbreakable level of support in the old Confederate states, and they used the Solid South to wield power in Congress for decades.

One hundred fifty years after the Civil War, the Democratic Party's current voting bloc (strongly reliant on minorities) and their base of power (the Northeast and Midwest) are completely different than the 19th century's incarnation. Its platform has also been completely revamped. Both of those reversals are byproducts of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society, which continue to be the precedents current Democratic policies spring from.

Members Reviews:

Had a hint of the conspiracy theory thought process, ...

Had a hint of the conspiracy theory thought process, however it did have reference citations to support information presented. I did not follow up on the citations to check for accuracy.

Too many typos

Nice review of the history of the Democratic party but many aggravating and distracting typos that suggest careless editorial process.

Poorly written

If you are looking for a brief summary of the history of the Democratic Party, you might find this book marginally informative. Apparently written for the mid- or high school reader, its greatest flaw is that it also appears to be written *by* mid- or high schoolers. You cannot go more than a page or two without stumbling over a glaring error of grammar or clumsy use of English. More importantly, the narrative can be jarringly disjointed.

For example, in the middle of a discussion of John Brown the reader suddenly encounters a few paragraphs about "Lieutenant Stuart" and his battle with Cheyenne Indians at Solomon River, Kansas. The narrative never explains who Lieutenant Stuart is (Jeb Stuart) or what this battle has to do with John Brown or the Bleeding Kansas conflicts; after a few paragraphs the book returns to John Brown, never mentioning Stuart again.

Another example: In discussing FDR's formation of the Federal Labor Relations Board the book refers to it as "another bill supported by FDR's Tammany Hall adversaries," even thought he book had never previously mentioned Tammany Hall or why they were adversaries.