Ed Ranks Defunct U.S. Political Parties, Part I

'MURICA!

There have been a bajillion political parties over the course of U.S. history, so I can’t really list them all. So as a basic threshold, I tried to generally set a rule that he defunct political party had to at least run a presidential candidate in one election and achieve over 1% of the vote. I’m not sure that I 100% stuck to that rule, and I might have made some judgment calls here or there.

Obviously per the name of this, I’m also only talking about defunct parties. So you might recall some random third parties from past elections and imagine that they’re defunct (e.g. George Wallace’s super racist American Independent Party, or Ross Perot’s Reform Party). However, they’re NOT! No, really. Those things still exist. You know what else still exists? The Prohibition Party! Yeah. I was fully ready to write up a bunch on them for this ranking, but then when researching I saw that they still exist, albeit in a pathetic state (their last two “party conventions” were held by conference calls). How nutso is it that the very same Prohibition Party that was founded in 1869, had it height in the 1888 and 1892 elections, and managed to help pass the stupidest Constitutional Amendment ever – actually still exists to this day and got over 5000 votes in the 2016 election?

Anyway, this is long enough so that I'll break it into two parts. I came up with 23 total which met my vague, inconstant criteria. These are 23 through 13, and I'll finish up with the top 12 next time.

23. Southern Democratic (1860)

The twin brother to the “Northern Democratic” Party of 1860. It’s a little problematic to refer to this as the “Southern Democratic” party, as that term could also refer to other movements (such as the Dixiecrats immediately below) which are all basically just “Democrats, But Super Racist Too™.”  In 1860, the Democratic Party sorta broke apart (for reasons I’ll explain in additional detail below under the “Northern Democratic” ranking) after a number of good ol’ boys from the South walked out of the Convention. They then held their own convention of a bunch of slavery-loving racist assholes, which got 18% of the popular vote in the Presidential election. After their loss, these were the core group of secessionist asshats who split off from the Union for not getting the result they wanted. So really, breaking the party apart pales in comparison to "massive treason against the nation to support the continued bondage of a race of people." How could these dicks not be last place? 

22. States' Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrats)

The official platform was just: "Yeeeee-hawww!"

As with the breakup of the Democratic Party in the election of 1860, so did a Southern offshoot split from the party almost a century later, with the emergence of the States’ Rights Democrats in 1948. The party chose Strom Thurmond as their candidate for President that year and their party’s logo was just the Confederate Battle Flag. Yep. The Confederate Fucking Battle Flag. That one. The one from the orange Charger. Because a logo which said “We are Racist White Supremacists” would be too subtle for them (and their illiterate voters would not be able to read it). You’ll probably notice from these bottom two rankings that I’m not a fan of parties built solely as vessels for unadulterated, southern racism (or as it's known in the South, "Northern aggression," or "States' Rights").

21. Know Nothing

Technically this party was called the “Native American” Party, which is problematic in a number of ways. But mostly because it was made up of fucking angry white people who were anti-intellectual, anti-Irish, anti-German, anti-Catholic, xenophobic, and hostile to all immigration. Hrm. Sound familiar? Basically the existing Democratic party wasn’t extreme enough for them, so they split off and formed their own “we hate you book-learnin’ intellectuals and immigrants” party. In 1856, their special version of hatred of most other people led to them capturing a solid 21.5% of the popular vote in the Presidential Election. Somewhat surprisingly, the composition of the party was actually split on the slavery issue (you’d think these pro-discrimination assholes would be full in on the slavery thing, wouldn’t you?). They were also surprisingly for the expansion of rights to women. Sometimes life can be confusing like that. Anyway, the slavery thing especially led to their eventual downfall as it emerged as issue #1 in American politics by 1860, with anti- and pro- slavery supporters in the Know Nothing Party being drawn to either the Republicans or Constitutional Union parties. I guess these guys at least finish above the other racist parties because, hey, they were sort of split on the slavery thing and thought women might sort of count as human beings.

20. Union Labor

The Presidential election of 1888 saw both the “Union Labor Party” and the “United Labor Party” emerge, largely from the remnants of the Greenback Party. The United Labor Party wasn’t a major enough of a player to even get ranked on my list, but since the Union Labor Party’s candidate (Alson Streeter) got 1.31% of the vote, I figure that’s worth at least this low ranking. And they weren’t even inherently racist or xenophobic as part of their platform! Yaaaay! We're making progress.

19. Union (1936)

Not to be confused with the Unionist Party which existed a century before (two below), or the Union Labor party (just above). This 1936 election-only party attempted to take out FDR. They didn’t really come very close, but 1.95% of the vote is better than nothing, right?

18. Constitutional Union

Candidate John Bell, the definition of charisma.

The Constitutional Union Party of 1860 (probably the most notable and consequential Presidential election year in history) was made up of leftovers of the now-defunct Unionist and Know Nothing parties from the previous decade, as well as some southern Democrats and conservative Whigs who wanted to do whatever they could to avoid the Union breaking apart. Basically, its stance was that the Union should be protected at all costs and preserved… and how did they plan to do that? By talking the bold stance on slavery that “maybe if we don’t care about it or form a position on the issue, it will magically no longer be an issue.” That’s right. Slavery was the biggest issue in the country in the election of 1860 and the results of the election of 1860 threatened to tear the country apart. So this party formed under the premise that everyone could put their heads in fucking the sand and pretend like the slavery issue didn't exist. Not surprisingly, this strategy didn’t really work. They did, however, wind up getting almost 16% of the vote thanks to the Democratic Party being torn in half that year. What's more American than 16% of the country voting for the party whose platform is "Fuck it, we have no platform!"

17. Unionist

Again, not to be confused with a number of similarly-named parties, the Unionist Party was a, 1850’s-era party that merged southern Whigs who didn’t really like being labelled as “Whigs” (because being a Whig made you un-electable in the South) and moderate Democrats who wanted to compromise on the big ticket issues like slavery and states’ rights (the very things that would eventually lead to the Civil War). While some fervent Southerners (especially Democrats) were already talking about breaking up the Union a decade before the Civil War, the Unionists basically hoped that they could put a Band-Aid on the open, festering wound that was the growing division between North and South. Needless to say, the Band-Aid solution didn’t work. At least it was an attempt at a solution though, as opposed to the Constitutional Union non-strategy.

16. Northern Democratic

The twin brother to 1860’s “Southern Democratic” party, and a party that (as with its twin) I somewhat questioned whether this counted as a “separate, defunct” party from the modern Democratic Party, or if it was simply the same party as the one today. If either of the two Democratic Parties of 1860 can claim to be “the same” Democratic Party as the one which Jackson established and which still exists today, it’s this one. The basic story is that the Democrats (a single party) held their Convention in 1860 and came to a deadlock without choosing a candidate. Because of that, rivals factions in both the North and South held their own “second” Conventions – excluding the other side and picking their own candidates. The Northern Democrat platform was basically a “moderate” position of popular sovereignty on slavery, e.g. let each state decide for itself. Yep, there was a time in this nation's history where "Eh, let the states decide whether you can enslave human beings" was considered "moderate." By now you already know the position the Southern Democratic Party took, and even if you didn't read my #23 above you could probably just guess based on the word "Southern" alone.

15. Progressive (1948)

Aaaaand ZERO Electoral votes. Nice try though.

In 1948, there was A THIRD attempt try to create a party named the “Progressive Party,” and this time it did worse than the first two (diminishing returns, people... you'll see more in Part II later).  This time it the party was meant as a platform for former Vice President Henry Wallace, who FDR abandoned and replaced with Harry Truman in the election right before he died. After the 1948 loss to Dewey... I mean... uhh... Truman... the party survived to fight again another day. It also put up a candidate for the next Presidential election in 1952, where it ran Charlotta Bass – an African American woman (holy shit!) as its Vice President Candidate. Needless to say, the US wasn’t quite ready for a black woman vice president in 1952. Shit, this racist-ass country probably isn't ready for a black woman as President in 2020, but good luck Kamala.

14. National Republican

The 1824 Election might have been the most jacked up U.S. election in history, and it resulted in a collapse of the “First Party System” which the country had run on since its beginning. I don't need to explain that to you. You can go to Wikipedia just as easily as I can. Basically, no candidate got a majority and a “corrupt bargain” occurred where John Quincy Adams was given the presidency, despite having less electoral votes than Andrew Jackson. This pretty much broke up the dominant Democratic-Republican Party which had reigned supreme for over 20 years. Those loyal to JQ Adams (and to a lesser extent, Henry Clay) became the "National Republicans," aka the Anti-Jacksonians. They would not win this time around, but they’d set the seeds of what would eventually transform into the Whig Party.

13. Anti-Masonic Party

The Anti-Masonic Party (essentially)

As with their counterparts the National Republican Party and (still-extant) Democratic Party – the Anti-Masonic party formed after the collapse of the Democratic-Republicans and the tumultuous Presidential election of 1824. They were the first notable “third party” in the country to sort of even stand a chance, which is a pretty cool accomplishment. What was their platform? Well, you know how today people have conspiracy theories about the Freemasons being an insane, evil, murderous, cult (e.g. they’re the Illuminati, the New World Order, Cobra Command, HYDRA)? Well, people felt the same way in the 19th century, so the Anti-Masons formed as a one-issue party to make everyone aware that Freemasons were evil. Uhh... okay!  After they did surprisingly well in elections, they actually began to take on some additional platform issues before eventually being eaten up by the Whig Party around 1840. They reformed a second time as well in the 1870s but never saw as much power again. I wasn’t sure whether to list the first and second Anti-Masonic parties as one party or two, but I’ll just go ahead and say they were one, as it was a re-formation of an earlier party – rather than founding a new party with the same name.

-----

Top 12... next time!  Because what else better will you have to do Sunday night? Oh. Game of Thrones? Okay then, I suppose that makes sense.