Stephen L. Carter, Columnist

Times Have Changed Since 1916. Democrats Mostly Haven't.

Then as now, the party called for a "living wage," free trade and regulation to battle unfairness in the economy.

August 2, 2016 at 1:30 PM UTC

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

A century ago, Democrats were trying to keep the White House.
Photographer: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

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Now that the Democratic convention is over, commentators have been pointing to differences between the party’s platform of today and those of four or eight years ago. But what might be more useful is to take the long view. If we go back a century, and look at the Democratic Party platform of 1916, what is striking is not so much the differences but the similarities.

In 1916, the G.O.P. nominated Charles Evans Hughes, chief justice of the Supreme Court, to face incumbent Woodrow Wilson. The nation was uneasy. Manufacturing was booming, but the U.S. was still mostly an agricultural nation, and uncertainty sparked by the Panic of 1907 had not yet subsided. The public was fearful of a potential war with Germany and skirmishing with Mexico along the southern border.