Democratic Party

Template:WP has The Democratic Party is one of the two major United States political parties. Of the two major U.S. parties, the Democratic Party is a liberal party to the left of the Republican Party, though its politics are not as consistently leftist as the traditional social democratic and labor parties in much of the rest of the world.

The Party is currently the majority in the House of Representatives, as well as in governorships and state legislative seats. Democrats are tied with Republicans (49-49-2) in the U.S. Senate but act as the majority party there since both independents caucus with the Democrats.

In contemporary times, its primary political ideologies are commitment to tempering capitalism with programs of social welfare. Some other issues have included support for high taxation, strict gun control, a pro-abortion stance, secularism, a multilateral foreign policy except for the frequent unilateralism of President Clinton, governmental and private sector actions to create new jobs, environmentalism, public education, the right of workers to organize in labor unions, and a claim to support for civil rights in contrast to the Democrats' previous support of slavery and segregation.

Libertarians in the Democratic Party are organized into the Democratic Freedom Caucus and maintain a community blog called Freedom Democrats.

A caucus of relatively fiscally conservative Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives is organized as the "Blue Dog Democrats".

Overview

• Party Chairman: Howard Dean
• Senate Leader: Harry Reid
• House Leader: Nancy Pelosi

• Founded: 1792
• Headquarters: 430 South Capitol Street SE Washington, D.C. 20003

• Political ideology: Liberalism, Social democracy

• Website: Democrats.org

Democratic Party National Leadership

• Harry Reid, Senate majority leader from Nevada
• Nancy Pelosi, House majority leader from California
• Howard Dean, Party chairman
• Unofficial leadership:
  • Democratic primaries
  • John Kerry (Presidential candidate 2004)
  • Al Gore (Presidential candidate 2000)
  • Joe Lieberman (Senator, VP candidate 2000, Presidential contender 2004)

List of Democratic Party organizations

Libertarian reforms supported by some Democrats

(see Third major party strategy).

• Legalization of same-sex marriage and/or civil unions
• Medical marijuana is supported by some Democrats, but not by most
• Ending or curtailing mandatory minimum sentencing and civil asset forfeiture laws, favored by some Democrats mainly in the Congressional Black Caucus, but not universally supported

Statist policies generally favored by Democrats

• Gun control (not universally favored, see Amendment II Democrats)
• High taxation
• Affirmative action
• Socialized health care
• Involuntary Social Security run by the government
• Government funding for abortions
• Internationalist foreign policy
• Strengthening of drug laws
• Restrictions of private schools and home schooling

See also

• Dean Exodus
• Democratic Presidential candidates - list of possible 2008 candidates for analysis from a libertarian perspective
• List of closed political Wikipedia articles that have open or semi-open parallels on other MediaWiki software sites

External links

• Democratic National Committee
• 2004 Platform
• Free State Project member Joel Winters is elected to the New Hampshire state house as a Democrat. [1]