Thanks. You appear to understand my point more clearly than I do.
It is perhaps interesting that both you and I are referring to the Whigs and Republicans as “the opposition,” when perhaps the greatest continuity in the “Democratic Party,” at least since the time of Jackson, is that it is a coalition of those who view themselves, accurately or not, as outside “the system,” and therefore opposed to it, while Whigs and Republicans have generally viewed themselves as being, or wanting to be, part of the controlling group.
Since Democrats have dominated politics in most of the last 75 years, this is an odd POV. But I think it is easy when looking at the way Democrats think and express themselves: feminists, liberals, enviros, union guys, blacks, hispanics, Jews, gays. The only thing they really have in common is opposition to what they view as The Man or The Establishment or whitey.
I would also like to point out that trying to project modern political POVs into the past, as if the Democratic Party of 1860 is somehow “the same” as the party of the same name in 2013 is an exercise in utter futility.
For instance, trying to turn the Democratic Party into a consistent bastion of what we now call Progressivism is just flatly untrue, and requires ignoring Teddy R. and all those other GOP Progressives.
In fact, I contend that the Democratic Party of today, almost excclusively “progressive,” versus the GOP of today, largely conservative, though not as exclusively as the Democrats are, is perhaps the starkest contrast in political parties, ideologically speaking, in American history.
I cannot figure out whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.
Agreed.
I would also like to point out that trying to project modern political POVs into the past, as if the Democratic Party of 1860 is somehow “the same” as the party of the same name in 2013 is an exercise in utter futility. For instance, trying to turn the Democratic Party into a consistent bastion of what we now call Progressivism is just flatly untrue, and requires ignoring Teddy R. and all those other GOP Progressives.
That it also true.
My own point was the more limited one that someone like Henry Clay might have considered himself a political descendant of Thomas Jefferson in the things he thought important, even though some would class him on the Hamiltonian, big government side of things today.
In 1800 Kentucky and Vermont were new states, recently frontier and strongly Jeffersonian. By 1840, Kentucky was more Whig than Democrat and Vermont was very strongly Whig (and would be very strongly Republican for a century).
I don't think they started to venerate Hamilton and Adams. It was just that new issues came to preoccupy them. They may have considered that the fight against the Federalists, like the fight against the British was in the past and the new priority was developing the country.
20 years later Lincoln was very concerned with balancing former Whigs and former Democrats in his appointments. For a first time voter in the 1860s, all that stuff from 20 years before could have been ancient history.