Why are the two major American parties called what they are?

Submitted ⁨⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨sbeak@sopuli.xyz⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

The “democrats” (as in democracy) and “republican” (as in a republic) are not very descriptive identifiers for a democratic party in a republic (though I guess you could argue a two-party system isn’t very democratic).

In many other countries, parties are labelled as “Progressive”, “Conservative”, “Socialist”, “Christian Democratic”, “Social Democratic”, etc. that give you some idea of what they stand for / believe in, albeit in some cases, they can be misnomers and be things they want you to think they believe in (e.g. the various “democratic” parties in one-party states). Why are the American parties so boringly named with such broad descriptors?

p.s. Whatever happened to the Bull Moose party?

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kersploosh@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I thought party names were sometimes unintuitive in other countries as well? From the names alone I couldn’t tell you what the Whigs or Tories stood for in the UK, or the BraIl of Hope Federation today, or the old Arrow Cross party in Hungary. It’s usually some mix of historical oddities and domestic marketing.

We could use a new Bull Moose party. It’s almost hard to imagine a platform like that winning today.

The party’s platform built on Roosevelt’s Square Deal domestic program and called for several progressive reforms, asserting that “to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day”. The platform included proposals such as restrictions on campaign finance contributions, a reduction of the tariff and the establishment of a social insurance system, an eight-hour workday and women’s suffrage.

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- Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I’m registering as Bull Moose.
  
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- blarghly@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  TR '28!
  
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- zloubida@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  And sometimes is even contradictory. The Danish Left party is right-wing (agrarian conservative), the French Radicals are centrists. These names have historic causes, but it’s still confusing.
  
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- Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  In Australia our establishment conservative party is called the Liberal party. I understand why and how it actually made perfect sense at the time but man if that isn’t ever ironic in modern context.
  
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Mr_Wobble@thelemmy.club ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
There was a political party called the Democratic Republicans. They split, giving us Democrats and Republicans.

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- schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  No. The Democratic Party does descend directly from them, but the Republican Party was founded much later independently.
  
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- sbeak@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Oh yeah, I think I knew that at one point but completely forgot it. I wonder if they decided to keep the old “big tent” kind of names in order to not alienate any voters
  
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agentTeiko@piefed.social ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I did a double take when I read Christian Democratic as Christian Demoncratic and yeah that sounds about right for modern US Politics.

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- starlinguk@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  SPLITTER.
  
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schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The Democratic Party is the older one of the two. My understanding is they called themselves that because they saw themselves as the party representing the popular will.

Why the Republicans called themselves that, not sure. They were mainly founded over opposition to slavery, not really described by the name at all.

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