I guess this was supposed to be a joke (?) but in the interest of sobriety "Democrats" did not exist in Jefferson's lifetime. The first Democrat by such a name was Martin van Buren. Who coincidentally is the only POTUS whose native language was not English.
Well, the demoRat was a joke, but Jefferson and Adams were the first to run on a ticket as members of a party, and Jefferson's (and Madison's) democrat-republican party was the antecedent to the "liberal" US party, or the dems. The Federalists are considered the forerunner to the GOP, although Lincoln was certainly considered a radical disruptor of civil order by some.
Neither of those is true. Jefferson/Madison founded the "Democratic-Republican" Party, which has no connection to either of the current parties using the same name (nor to the National Republicans in the interim, which also used it). NOR is there any connection between the Federalists, who were history a lifetime before the Republicans, founded in 1854.
First Democratic Party POTUS candy: Martin vanBuren, 1836.
First Republican Party POTUS candy: John C. Frémont, 1856.
Imo its safe to consider Jefferson, Lincoln and TR as "progressive."
Also kind of problematic since both Jefferson and Lincoln were dead and buried before Progressivism began around 1890. Now, you did use the lowercase P which opens up all kinds of cans o' worms, but as a noun we're looking at roughly 1890-1920.
But again the only way Trump gets close is as a bug splat.
That's true. Many people are saying that. It was a damn clever post.
With respect that's untrue. Jackson democracy was the direct descendant of Jefferson's party, and the forerunner to today's democrats ... although they are perhaps closer to FDR's democrats.
History of the United States Democratic Party - Wikipedia
Jackson never ran with a party. His body of supporters, which were not organized as such, were simply called "Jacksonians", which doesn't really address who they go with after Jackson. His detractors weren't organized either; they were simply ever-so-creatively called "anti-Jacksonians", which ditto. After Jackson was elected twice, vanBuren organized the body of Jacksonians into the Democratic Party, which name was first used in 1834 (during Jackson's last term), and in the same period the anti-Jacksonians were also organized into a formal party (mainly by Henry Clay) called the National Republicans (1830) which evolved just a few years later into the Whigs. So VanBuren was the first POTUS candidate to run under the Democratic Party label and win, in 1836. And the first Whig candidates ran the same year; there were four of them among which were Daniel Webster and William Henry Harrison who became the first Whig President in 1840.
There is no direct descendancy from the Jefferson Democratic-Republicans to the modern Democrats, any more than there is one from the Whigs to the modern Republicans. There were migrations of large contingents (but not the entire body) of the older party to (eventually) the newer one but such migration was not universal to the extent that an existing party changed its name. I know some partisan Democratic historians like to connect their bridge to Jefferson but they're being disingenuous to hitch onto the Jefferson star ship (hee hee I kill me); the fact is it was Van Buren who organized it into a party, before which it wasn't one. Apparently they're trying to make the organization appear older than it is, seemingly under the impression that that would be a
good thing. Then we've got Special Ed on this site who periodically checks in to inform us that TJ founded the modern Republican Party, which is a neat trick for a guy who was dead for 28 years. He too seems unaware that nobody has exclusive licence on the name "republican".
None of the above however are to be confused with or related to the American Republican Party (1843) which soon renamed itself the Native American Party, then the American Party, and is commonly historied as the Know Nothings.
There used to be a whole lotta parties goin' on. Van Buren later ran again for POTUS for the Free Soil Party.
Fun fact: The Whigs got two Presidents elected, both of whom died (of natural causes) in office -- Harrison (1840) and Taylor (1848). Taylor had been the father-in-law of Jefferson Davis.
