The Democratic Party is one of the two major political forces in the United States, and is the oldest active political party in the world. Founded in 1828, it was established by Martin Van Buren, who brought together politicians from all states to support war hero Andrew Jackson. The modern Democratic Party emerged in the late 1820s from former factions of the Democratic-Republican Party, which had largely disintegrated in 1824. The Democratic Party is a large umbrella of conflicting and often opposing views, but modern American liberalism, a form of social liberalism, is the party's main ideology. It also has notable centrist and social democratic factions.
Its main political rival has been the Republican Party since the 1850s. The New Deal realignment of the 1930s reconfigured the party system, and served as a catalyst for a transformation of the party system that made Democrats go from being a minority to being a majority at the national level. The basis of the democratic appeal to workers, people with low incomes and recent immigrant groups (mostly Catholics and Jews from Southern and Eastern Europe) was the party's liberalism in economic matters. Roosevelt and the Democrats were in favor of the federal government's activity to combat the Depression and proposed programs to benefit disadvantaged groups. Black voters, who had traditionally been loyal to the Republican Party thanks to the Civil Rights Act of 1866, had already moved to the Democratic Party by the time Franklin D. Roosevelt was nominated for president at the 1932 Democratic National Convention.
In its national platforms from 1992 to 2004, the Democratic Party called for abortion to be safe, legal and rare, that is, to remain legal, rejecting laws that allow government interference in decisions about abortion and reducing the number of abortions by promoting both knowledge of reproduction and contraception and incentives for adoption. The historic predecessor of the Democratic Party is considered to be the Democratic-Republican Party. The Democratic-Republican Party was divided in 1824 into the short-lived National Republican Party and the Jacksonian movement, which in 1828 became the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party had a small but decisive advantage over the Whigs until the 1850s, when the Whigs fell apart over the issue of slavery. Democrats are still seen as a party that favors a larger government, spending more on national programs and helping those at the bottom of the economic pyramid. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) helps candidates for House of Representatives elections and its current president (selected by party caucus) is Representative Suzan DelBene of Washington. One of the most influential centrist groups was the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a non-profit organization that defended centrist positions for the party.
While professional classes were once strongholds of Republican support, they have increasingly leaned towards Democrats. In Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Ohio, one of its traditional symbols was a rooster. Roosevelt and his New Deal coalition after 1932 promoted a liberal social platform, including Social Security and unemployment insurance. The issue divided Democrats at their 1860 presidential convention, in which Southern Democrats nominated John C.
