1938: Democratic Party

From 1932 to 1938, the Democratic party completely dominated national and, with very few exceptions, state polities. This domination was almost as abrupt in its inception as it was complete in its exercise. In 1928. Herbert Hoover, the Republican candidate for the presidency, polled 21,392,190 votes as against 15,016,443 votes for Alfred E. Smith, the defeated Democratic candidate. Four years later, the same Republican candidate received 15,761,841 votes as opposed to 22,821,857 votes for Franklin D. Roosevelt, his successful Democratic rival. This transformation from a Republican plurality of roughly six million votes to a Democratic plurality of seven millions marked what was probably the most astounding reversal in the fortunes of a political party in American history. With the loss in 1928 of such important states of the traditionally Solid South as Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, the Democratic party seemed almost destined to disappear, so that its rebound four years later to a point where it carried all but six of the forty-eight states was truly remarkable.

Of course, the shift in popular sentiment was visible before 1932. In 1928 the Democrats elected only 167 members to the House of Representatives, whereas the Republicans elected 267. In 1930, though, the pendulum began to swing the other way, and the Democrats, having gained control of the House by a very narrow margin, were able to elect John N. Garner as Speaker. In 1932 the return of 313 Democrats to the House virtually made quite pointless any opposition of the minority of 117 Republicans. The same story of Democratic success prevailed in the Senate. In 1928 the Democrats had 39 Senators as opposed to 56 Republican Senators; but after the 1932 election there were 59 Democrats to 36 Republicans.

The overwhelming success of the Democratic party in 1932 was attributable to diverse causes and the influence of each upon the final result can only be estimated. There is little doubt, however, that the Democratic party became the political beneficiary of the severe economic depression which had begun in 1920. The Democratic party in the 1932 campaign laid the blame for the severity of the depression upon the Republicans and promised energetic and constructive action to relieve individual suffering and to promote business recovery. The platform also promised a 25 per cent reduction in national expenditures as an economy measure and advocated the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting alcoholic beverages. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was the Democratic nominee for the Presidency, and John N. Garner, Speaker of the House, was the nominee for the Vice-Presidency.

The Democratic party in the election of 1932 may have benefited from the depression but its subsequent success can only be explained as popular endorsement of the program known as the 'New Deal' which the party introduced behind the leadership of President Roosevelt. Aside from their staggering expense with an inevitable skyrocketing of the National Debt, many of these measures, which had been but lightly foreshadowed, if at all, in either the Democratic platform or campaign speeches, were sharp departures from national tradition. The country, however, was in a crisis and willingly accepted a vigorous constructive policy, no matter what the cost and how sharply it might break with tradition.

The popularity of these measures was demonstrated in the next Congressional election. Ordinarily the successful party in a presidential election meets with reverses, either slight or severe, in the Congressional election two years later. Notwithstanding this almost invariable precedent, the Democratic party, in 1934, instead of losing, actually gained strength, increasing its membership in the House from 313 to 322. And the Democratic star was still rising; after the election of 1936, the Democratic members of the House out-numbered the Republicans by 333 to 80. In the Senate, after the 1936 election, the Democrats had 76 members as against 15 Republicans. In 1936 Roosevelt and Garner were again the party's nominees for President and Vice-President respectively. President Roosevelt polled 27,476,673 votes to 16,670,583 for Alfred M. Landon, his Republican opponent.

Although the election was regarded as a sweeping popular endorsement of the Democratic party, there had been for some time open dissension within the party itself. Many Democrats in Congress, particularly from the South, who were eventually dubbed 'the conservative Democrats,' refused on occasion to follow the leadership of President Roosevelt. In many instances, the conservative Democrats denounced as dangerously radical measures which the President characterized as merely progressive. The dissenting Democrats not only opposed certain specific measures but they asserted that the whole Roosevelt program was based upon underlying principles which, if persisted in, would be destructive to the traditional American Government. Despite the vigorous opposition of certain prominent Democrats to the New Deal, the election returns of 1936 would seem to indicate that the defections from the ranks of the Democratic party had thus far been conspicuous rather than numerous.

Conservative Democrats and Republicans alike, though, found no consolation in the election returns of 1936. Shortly after the beginning of the new administration, however, the President energetically pushed two measures which, apparently, displeased the bulk of the American public. One was a bill for reorganizing the Supreme Court and the other, a bill for reorganizing various administrative agencies of the Federal Government. The bill for reorganizing the Court was quietly buried after being talked to death in the Senate, and the Reorganization Bill, to everyone's surprise, was killed in the House which up to that point had been regarded as utterly subservient to the President's wishes. Foes of the administration gleefully acclaimed the defeat of the two bills as stinging rebukes to the President and also hailed their defeat as evidence of the revival of Congress as a separate and independent branch of the Federal Government. The public may not have disliked the bills as much as their opponents claimed, but there is little doubt that their introduction increased the dissension in the Democratic party. Moreover, in the spring and summer of 1937, polls of public opinion, one or two of which had developed remarkable accuracy, revealed that the popularity of the party had fallen off since the previous election.

Its popularity further diminished in the fall of 1937, when business conditions which had improved considerably in 1936 began a precipitous downward spiral. Naturally, the foes of the administration contended that the recession in business conclusively demonstrated the futility of the New Deal as a means of restoring prosperity. Administration spokesmen, of course, denied this, characterized conditions as quite temporary, and embarked upon a fresh and even more elaborate spending program, asserting that the previous 'pump priming' had simply been inadequate and had been abandoned too soon.

Before the elections of November 1938, the friction in the Democratic party was increased by the intercession of President Roosevelt in several Democratic state primary contests. Implying that a number of Senators, all of whom had been in opposition to the Supreme Court Bill, did not have a sufficiently progressive spirit, the President openly indorsed the candidacy of their rivals. 'The purge,' as it was popularly called, was everywhere a failure except in the case of a New York City Democratic Representative, John J. O'Connor, who had played a major part in the defeat of the Reorganization Bill.

The fall elections of 1938 marked the first check to the Democratic party since gaining control of the House eight years before. The party's losses were principally in the populous manufacturing states of the Northeast and Middle West where the Republicans regained control of several state governments as well as additional Federal Congressmen. The Democratic party, however, in spite of its loss to the Republicans of 81 seats in the House and 8 in the Senate, is still strongly in control of Congress, with 262 members as opposed to 170 Republicans, in the House, and 69 to 23, in the Senate. The press of the nation was inclined generally to interpret the results of the 1938 election as a serious reverse for the Democrats. But before concluding that the election returns represent a repudiation of the New Deal, it is well to remember that the Democratic majority is still decisive in both houses of Congress, that this majority in the House is almost as great as that of the Republicans after the 1928 election, and that it is even greater in the Senate.

Experienced observers believe that, strangely enough, the Democratic party began to lose ground immediately after its overwhelming victory in 1936 when a trend towards conservatism set in because of the widespread disapproval of the sit-down strikes of the winter of 1936-37 and the President's proposed reorganization of the Supreme Court at about the same time. Subsequent factors accentuating the swing to the right were the return of the depression and disapproval of the President's meddling in local Democratic polities. Whether the 1938 election marked the beginning of a long-term trend away from the dominance of the nation by the Democratic party or whether it was merely a short and unimportant fluctuation of popular sentiment will be better known after the election of 1940.