How Democrats Became America's Conservative Party
In defense of Norms™.
I have had this headline in my head for a long time, mostly because I started going through all of the positions Democrats have taken in opposition to Donald Trump. Right now, Democrats are:
Defending free trade.
Defending our allies in Ukraine against a Russian threat.
Defending the FBI.
Defending vaccines.
Advocating for more immigration.
Supporting YIMBY housing policies.
More fiscally responsible than the GOP.1
Defending free speech.
Supporting long-standing institutions, such as the independence of the judiciary.
These are all things that have been associated with historical conservatism. Have the Parties flipped? The GOP - who warned about the allure of the powerful Executive associated with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton - are going to hold a military parade this weekend for their leader, something that you are more likely to see in North Korea, Turkey, and Russia, than in America.
I think it’s inarguable that the GOP has completely abandoned conservatism. But what’s more interesting to me is whether or not the natural Political Pendulum Swing™ has nudged Democrats to the Right.
As with all things, it’s more complicated than that.
I think there is a belief among liberals that while the Democratic Party used to be the party of slavery and Jim Crow in the 1800s and half of the 1900s, the Parties basically “flipped” after the Civil Rights Act was passed. In this thinking, Democrats have inherited the legacy of the early, anti-slavery Republican Party, and Republicans are now the Confederates.
As Jamelle Bouie explains in this great video, this isn’t just overly simplistic; it’s simply not true:
What Bouie essentially explains is what actually happened: The Republican Party was a historically “conservative” party and in our two-party system, they eventually “filled” the policy gaps left by their opposition party over the course of the 20th Century.
The Democratic electoral strategy pre-Civil Rights Act was to win over Southern, historically Democratic states, rope in some Northeastern states, and then add one or two from the Midwest. You can see this in John F. Kennedy’s win in 1960, whose electoral map looks stunningly bizarre in 2025:
To be clear, this map shows a U.S. President winning Texas, New York, and Missouri, and also losing California, Colorado, and Vermont. 1960 was over 60 years ago, but the time passed since then is more than a quarter of the United States’ history as a country; the change in party dynamics isn’t at all uncommon given our country’s age.
It wasn’t until the passage of the Civil Rights Act that the full party flip began. While you had some black Americans jumping back and forth between the Parties after F.D.R.’s presidency, by the time Dwight Eisenhower ran for office he was still pulling around 40% of the black vote as a Republican. Kennedy’s embrace of Civil Rights - as much for show as it was2 - is what jumpstarted the realignment of black voters with the Democratic Party and (conversely) the association of southern, conservative Democrats with the GOP.
Some of this is so evident you don’t even need to read a deep case study. The first time the Confederate battle flag made its way into Congress was in the hands of a Trump supporter. David Duke - the former leader of the Klu Klux Klan - was a Democrat and then switched to a Republican. Same goes for Senator Strom Thurmond, who really wasted no time switching Parties.
But his switch illustrates why this story is so complicated. As he explicitly endorsed the Republican candidate in the 1968 Election, he bemoaned the Democratic Party’s growing liberalism and shift away from conservatism. In the past, both Parties had their liberal and conservative wings (and those still exist on some level even if we don’t really describe them that way) and Thurmond was pushed out by what he perceived as a “liberal” position on Civil Rights. This doesn’t mean that the GOP was actually the liberal party up until that point. In fact, in its founding charter, the GOP describes itself as a “restoration” to the founding principles of the country.
It supported lots of other conservative principles, like fiscal responsibility and certain members of the Party explicitly opposed expanded views on immigration, which is consistent with how we define Trumpian “conservatism” now. The GOP (back then) also supported tariffs, and they would shift on that issue following the Party’s embrace of free-market economics in the 20th Century.
All in all, if you were thinking that there was a “clean break” between the two parties after the Civil Rights Act, you are misreading history.
During World War II, Democrats emerged as the more activist party on the war, whereas Republicans were largely in opposition to American involvement in European affairs (something I’ve written a lot about before). This position held over the next few decades, with a certain wing of the Democratic Party being actively interventionist and (importantly) Pro-Israel. When the Democratic Party started to embrace portions of the progressive movement that emerged after the 1960s, the shift towards anti-capitalism and anti-Israel sentiment pushed those Democrats into the GOP, which then got its own interventionist wing: Neoconservatives.
I am basically trying to say: Them parties always be flipping. As one election strategy fades (Obama’s coalition of non-white and lower income white voters in the Midwest), another one emerges (Joe Biden’s coalition of highly educated and non-white voters), and then it fades again (Kamala Harris’s coalition of highly educated and wealthy voters).
You are seeing less of a party flip and more the effects of political gravity: If your coalition is united by an opposition to Donald Trump, you could easily get more popular by supporting the things he hates. Democrats - who were largely opposed to the war in Iraq led by George W. Bush - were emerging as a non-interventionist party following the 2004 elections. But they have now taken a stance to the GOP’s “right” on Ukraine, which helps explain why the neoconservatives have all but abandoned the GOP.
I have sort of suspected this for a while, but now I feel like it’s wholly true: Ideology and policy doesn’t help a ton when it comes to defining a “conservative” or “liberal” political party. Maybe that would apply more if we had a parliamentary system, but when it’s just two parties hanging out, the policy-switching almost becomes necessary for political survival.
I try not to get into political philosophy in the Jackal, lest I kill one of my readers due to boredom. But my OG political philosopher is Michael Oakeshott, who has a wildly different view of conservatism than anyone currently operating in the Republican Party.
Oakeshott believed that conservatism was less a set of ideas and more of a way of thinking about those ideas. Here he is:
My theme is not a creed or doctrine, but a disposition. To be conservative is to be disposed to think and behave in certain manners; it is to prefer certain kinds of conduct and certain conditions of human circumstances to others; it is to be disposed to make certain kinds of choices. […] The general characteristics of this disposition are not difficult to discern, although they have often been mistaken. They centre upon a propensity to use and enjoy what is available rather than to wish for or to look for something else; to delight in what is present rather what was or what may be. […] To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.
Under Oakeshott’s definition of conservatism, it is pretty clear that the GOP is currently the more revolutionary party in our system. Trump’s tariffs - although technically a return to earlier, unsuccessful policies - are a clear disruption to a system that was not “perfect,” but certainly convenient.
This past week, Trump deployed Federal troops on domestic soil for the first time since 1965, all to police two blocks of downtown Los Angeles. Call it what you want, but it is clearly not a “conservative” use of Federal power.
The Trump Administration’s attack on the judiciary is probably the clearest demonstration of its anti-conservative attitude, whereas the courts are probably our best example of current “conservative” power. We’d all love the courts to move with celerity, but they - along with other, similar institutions - put a higher emphasis on getting it right as opposed to simply getting it done.
J.D. Vance and other members of the Trump Administration have criticized the courts for engaging in a “judicial coup,” by rendering decisions that go against Trump. Here’s Vance:
That’s the fundamental small-d democratic principle that’s at the heart of the American project. I think that you are seeing, and I know this is inflammatory, but I think you are seeing an effort by the courts to quite literally overturn the will of the American people.
I will say this: Vance has a unique ability to make total nonsense sound like it is perfectly reasonable. Not only is the attacking of the courts fundamentally anti-conservative, but Vance also misunderstands “small-d” democracy. In 2024, the will of the American people gave Trump the exact amount of power that he has right now, and they gave the courts the same amount of power they have right now too.
If the American people had truly wanted Trump to enact his will without oversight from the judges currently on the courts, they could have given the GOP a 67-seat in the Senate and a majority in the House, which would have allowed them to impeach and remove any district court judge that ruled against Trump. We are operating within the exact will of the American people, like it or not.
Right now, the current version of the GOP doesn’t even have an “idiom” that they adhere to; it’s simply all about whatever benefits Trump. Did the FBI go after Trump? Time for reform! Are the courts hurting Trump? Time to start ignoring them! Is the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates too high? Time to replace Jerome Powell! Is the media mean to Trump? Time to take away their broadcasting licenses! Is the Constitution in the way? Time to suspend it!
The last one sounds crazy, but it’s literally true: Donald Trump called for a suspension of the American Constitution and he is currently running around and claiming to be the representative of America’s “conservative” party. WTF.
During the 1960s and 1970s you really did see huge countercultural, revolutionary movements in America opposed to the Federal government. People were actively bombing the U.S. government over the Vietnam War (and the draft). For a long time, Barack Obama had to deal with the political fallout of his connection to a 1960s revolutionary: Bill Ayers, whose group literally conducted violent attacks on U.S. property. Ayers was actively sought by the F.B.I. years, but they ultimately gave up their pursuit and he later became a professor.3
Obama’s connection to Ayers was always tenuous at best (he stopped by Ayers’s house during a whirlwind of campaign events), but it’s illustrative here because Trump not only currently has direct ties to domestic terrorists: He has already pardoned a ton of them. What is more revolutionary than bringing a Confederate battle flag into the halls of Congress? And what’s more anti-conservative than pardoning the guy who did that?
America’s institutions are what contribute to its greatness. No one has ever claimed that Harvard is perfect, but surely no conservative has ever said they should be punished for engaging in free speech? Trump’s MAGA movement - whether they know it or not - have a lot more in common with Bill Ayers’s actions in the 1970s than they do with historical conservatism.
They are promising a revolution in government, from everything to the way we fund universities to the way we think about vaccines. Surely, the Administration will claim it’s what the people voted for (although current polling debunks that argument), but no one can credibly claim that their actions have been conservative. And their opposition party is - by default - filling in the gaps.
Which of the two Parties should you belong to if you want to return to the world of, like, 2015, where politics was contentious but not so poisonous? The answer is actually really clear. Democrats are more likely to back institutions and conserve the things that have made America the leader in scientific innovation, academics, and technology.
Trump and the Republicans are - whether they like it or not - a revolutionary force in politics. Maybe we did need to switch things up! But I’m not sure everyone is along for the ride they’re taking us on.
See you in two weeks.
Since Ronald Reagan, Republican Presidents have increased the deficit in each of their terms. George W. Bush was the worst with an increase of 1,204% and Trump came in second with an increase of 317%. Democrats decreased the deficit in each of their terms, with Bill Clinton providing a surplus. We are still in Biden’s Fiscal Year 2025, so we’ll see how he ultimately shakes out, but I am making a prediction here for the record: This will be a thing Democrats run on in 2028.
Let’s not forget that R.F.K. authorized the F.B.I.’s wiretap of Martin Luther King, Jr.
It’s kind of crazy, but the FBI also admitted that they used improper techniques when pursuing Ayers and weren’t sure if they’d get a conviction. The FBI is not perfect, by any means!