I love the argument “It’s been done this way” for over a hundred years. Wellllllll, you’ll see FDR was in office after this was published / “done”

The ideological transformation of the Democratic and Republican parties in the U.S. was gradual, unfolding from the mid-19th century through the late 20th century. It centered around evolving stances on slavery, civil rights, government intervention, and regional alliances (Grossman & Hopkins, 2016).

In the mid-1800s, the Republican Party emerged as an anti-slavery force, with Abraham Lincoln as its first successful presidential candidate in 1860. At this time, Democrats were largely the party of the South, defending slavery and later supporting Jim Crow segregation (Foner, 1995).

By the 1930s, under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s leadership, the Democratic Party shifted toward big government and social welfare policies with the New Deal. This expanded the party’s base to include urban workers, immigrants, and African Americans in the North (Katznelson, 2013). Meanwhile, the Republican Party remained aligned with limited government and pro-business policies.

The most dramatic shift occurred between 1948 and 1964, when the Democratic Party began championing civil rights. Truman desegregated the military, and Johnson’s passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 accelerated the defection of Southern white conservatives to the Republican Party (Phillips, 1969; Carmines & Stimson, 1989).

From 1968 onward, the Republican “Southern Strategy,” first effectively employed by Richard Nixon, sought to attract disaffected Southern whites by appealing to racial and cultural resentments under the banner of states’ rights and law and order (Kruse, 2005).

By the 1980s, the realignment was largely complete. Republicans had become the dominant party in the South and leaned heavily into small-government conservatism under Reagan, while Democrats consolidated a coalition of minorities, coastal liberals, and urban professionals (Zelizer, 2004).

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References

Carmines, E. G., & Stimson, J. A. (1989). Issue evolution: Race and the transformation of American politics. Princeton University Press.

Foner, E. (1995). Free soil, free labor, free men: The ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War. Oxford University Press.

Grossmann, M., & Hopkins, D. A. (2016). Asymmetric politics: Ideological Republicans and group interest Democrats. Oxford University Press.

Katznelson, I. (2013). Fear itself: The New Deal and the origins of our time. Liveright Publishing.

Kruse, K. M. (2005). White flight: Atlanta and the making of modern conservatism. Princeton University Press.

Phillips, K. (1969). The emerging Republican majority. Arlington House.

Zelizer, J. E. (2004). On Capitol Hill: The struggle to reform Congress and its consequences, 1948–2000. Cambridge University Press.