Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Preface
- 1 The South and the Democratic Coalition
- 2 The Dynamics of Party Coalition Building
- 3 The Unstable Party Equilibrium, 1877–1896
- 4 The Re-assembling of the Democratic Coalition, 1896–1912
- 5 Woodrow Wilson and the Failure to Re-shape the Democratic Coalition, 1912–1920
- 6 How Could a Winning Democratic Coalition Be Constructed, 1920–1932?
- 7 Democratic Party Dominance or Restored Party Equilibrium, 1938–1952?
- 8 The Two Parties' Coalitions Come Under Threat, 1952–1962
- 9 Conclusions
- Appendix: Note on Data Sources
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Woodrow Wilson and the Failure to Re-shape the Democratic Coalition, 1912–1920
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Preface
- 1 The South and the Democratic Coalition
- 2 The Dynamics of Party Coalition Building
- 3 The Unstable Party Equilibrium, 1877–1896
- 4 The Re-assembling of the Democratic Coalition, 1896–1912
- 5 Woodrow Wilson and the Failure to Re-shape the Democratic Coalition, 1912–1920
- 6 How Could a Winning Democratic Coalition Be Constructed, 1920–1932?
- 7 Democratic Party Dominance or Restored Party Equilibrium, 1938–1952?
- 8 The Two Parties' Coalitions Come Under Threat, 1952–1962
- 9 Conclusions
- Appendix: Note on Data Sources
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In 1913, the Democratic Party was in a situation similar to the one in which it would find itself exactly 20 years later. It was possible for the party to win a presidential election and also majorities in Congress with a modified version of its long-standing coalition. Yet on both occasions it faced the same problem: The breadth of the coalition, and the number of states that had to be included in it, made it fragile. It would likely always be vulnerable to a resurgent Republican Party. The Democrats needed to add groups of regular voters in the North to their existing coalition to make themselves more secure against this threat. From 1933 onwards, Franklin Roosevelt succeeded in doing just that, and subsequently, the Democrats could fight elections on at least even terms with the Republicans for the next few decades. This did not happen under Wilson. Indeed, by 1920, not only had his administration created intra-party divisions, but longer-standing differences between different elements of the Democratic coalition were increasingly apparent – conflicts that would last beyond the succeeding decade. This last point might suggest that irrespective of whatever Wilson had done to re-shape the party's coalition earlier in his administration, the Democrats would still have faced difficulties by the beginning of the 1920s. That may be true, but a “re-shaped” party might still have been in a better position than it actually was to recover from the problems it was to face.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Democratic Party Heads North, 1877–1962 , pp. 117 - 145Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006