In the United States, the Democratic Party had won a landslide in the midterm elections of 1910.

Even Theodore Roosevelt felt discouraged enough to acknowledge that, the American people feel a little tired of me. President Taft,

as leader of the Republican Party, took the defeat even more to heart, expressing his dismay

in hyperbolic terms.

It was not only a landslide, he said, but a tidal wave and Holocaust all rolled up into one general cataclysm.

But what did it portend for the future of the United States?

Welcome to the history of the 20th century. Episode 60. Very Unkind of Those Canadians

When we last looked at the political situation in the United States, William Howard

Taft was president and his Republican Party had just been pummeled in the 1910 midterm

elections. Former President Theodore Roosevelt is now out giving

speeches expressing increasingly progressive positions, and a split is developing between the former

friends and political allies. I haven't said much about the Republican and Democratic parties

in the United States at this time.

In fact, you may have noticed I keep using words like progressive and conservative, which are

ideologies, but not parties. And up until now, the Democratic Party has mostly been a bit

player in our narrative. Most of the action has been in the Republican Party.

Now that the Democrats are surging though, perhaps it's time to pause for a moment and take a look at these two parties and what they represent.

The Republican and Democratic parties of 1910 resemble their modern versions in some ways, but are quite different in

other ways. The two parties in 1910 are coalitions of certain demographics within American

society. They are not well-defined ideologically. In fact, as you may have already noticed,

there are progressives and conservatives in both parties.

If this seems strange to you, if you are accustomed to thinking about the U.S. Democratic and

...