Connecting the Parties of Lincoln and Douglas to McCain and Obama
McCain has at times referenced "The Party of Lincoln" in speeches (more so in the past than recently). It is interesting to see the twists and turns the party affiliations have taken since the famous 1858 debates between Republican Abraham Lincoln and is Democratic Senate opponent Stephen A. Douglas.
In 1858 Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas held a series of debates throughout the state of Illinois which defined the differences between the new Republican Party and the existing Democratic Party. These two Senatorial candidates make the best reference point for the two parties because the presidential election. We could go back to the 1856 election just as easily but James Buchanan and John C. Fremont doesn't have as good a ring to it. We could also use the 1860 election but it muddled with 3 separate candidates representing the "anti-Lincoln" faction.
Regardless of the personalities, the territorial breakdown in the electoral college looks a lot like today's state-by-state comparison. The South voted along party lines and the Northeast and far west voted along the opposite party lines. The central-west was not yet part of the union. The odd fact about the 1860 to 20th/21st Century party affiliation breakdown is that they have almost identical, just flipped. This indicates that ideology has not changed; just the party affiliation.
The shift occurred in three phases. In 1860 the South was dominated by the Democratic Party while the Northeast and west coast were Republican territory. This division is best exemplified in the election of 1900 between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan. McKinley represented the industrial and financial segment of the population. Bryan represented the rural, anti-establishment population (women did not yet vote and unions had yet to be a force in politics). 1912 represents a landmark election because it pitted two candidates that would mark their parties even today although neither represents the current ideology. Woodrow Wilson, a hero to many Democrats was the pro-white, evangelical candidate. Theodore Roosevelt was the trust-busting globalist candidate that is still a hero to to many Republicans (though he ran as an independent in this election). Today's Democrats have far more in common with Roosevelt and the Republicans far more in common with Wilson but this switch was still many decades away.
The first major shift occurred when the industrial/financial segment collapsed with the Great Depression. The 1932 election was the first time the industrial and financial north and west coast merged with the rural south. This merger would last only as long as Roosevelt himself but the seeds would be sewn for a change in the North. In the election following Roosevelt (1948 Truman/Dewey/Thurmond) the Northeast would be back on the Republican side but the South was no longer a straight Democratic bloc.
The party affiliation began to shift in 1960. Republican Eisenhower supporters of the past eight years gravitated to Kennedy even though Eisenhower's vice-president, Richard Nixon, was the Republican nominee. From this point on (except for the 1972 and 1980 landslides) the Northeast and far west would be Democrat. This left the south losing control of the party and abandoning it in 1964 even though a southerner (Lyndon Johnson) was the Democratic candidate. Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson all took direct steps to break up the southern segregation policies and it was during this time that the south gave up its allegiance to the party now being controlled in the Northeast. 1976 would be the last time a rural southern democrat would win the Northeast. In 1980 the shift would become official. The south would abandon the party of Douglas although it never abandoned his ideology. The Republicans would simply step into the role to represent the ideology of the south. Ironically the only Democrat to win after this shift (Bill Clinton) was geographically a southerner but ideologically a representative of the Northern/Industrial/Financial bloc. In 2000 the shift was complete and is being mirrored in 2008. The party of Lincoln is now represented by the the Democratic candidate and the party of Douglas by the Republican. In 150 years the ideology of the nation has hardly moved. Only the party affiliations have done a 180.
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