When talking about the history of the Democratic Party its important to talk about not only the decision makers but the voters. The face of the Democratic Party changed rapidly and I feel through the Democratic Conventions you can tell a story of how years by years the party demographic began to change. I will integrate videos and pictures from more recent conventions and tell the stories of old ones I feel appropriate. While my paper will be much more about the history of the entire party, I find the conventions the best way to portray the changing demographics of the parties electorate.

The Presentation will start in modern day with the current face of the Democratic party, then I will go back to the beginning and work my way back up to the present. It will be given in a different order than my paper but it will go through the history in a more American people-centric ideology. It will fully explain how we got from a white-supremacist party to the party of the first African-American to how even you could be the nominee of the Democratic Party and could elevate yourself to the highest office in the land through the Democratic Party. The point of both my essay and my talk is how the party evolved and how this evolution affects the every day American.

Topic: The History of the Democratic Party

Purpose: Demonstrating a shift of how America evolved to be more democratic and representative over time, and how now anyone could become at least a nominee for President of the United States.

Introduction
Attention Strategy/
Orienting Material: Not set on which one yet but I will probably start with a speech from a Democratic Convention from 1996 to present.

Body
Main Idea – The Democratic Party is a party that represents all Americans in 21st Century America.

The current faces of the Party.

Main Idea (2) – It wasn’t always this way? Where did it start?
Jackson-Civil War. Who were the main faces of the party.
Civil War-FDR and LBJ Nominating Convention
New Deal and the Great Society

Main Idea (3) – The Party Today.
A. The Clintons and Obama and the party of Unions and Dreamers as opposed to Rich White “Plantation Owners” and the poor masses.

Conclusion
Concluding Remark – The Party has come along way since it was lead by Jackson. His political party would become something he would deplore. Yet it representes the changes in America overtime and how we became a more democratic country and how everyone can now have their voice heard in politics and not just the few and every can fight to be represented in our country.

The paradigm shift in the Democratic Party is a gradual shift over time from its origins under Andrew Jackson to it’s eventual position in todays America being the opposition party to President Trump’s majority. In order to effectively portray the shift, four distinct periods need to be talked about in detail.

Jackson to the Civil War. The founding under Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party’s position as he founded the party. How the democratic party advanced democracy but was openly racist against African-Americans and American Indians. How the party took ingrained itself in the south. How the democrats became the party of the succeionists and to Andrew Johnson coming into power at the end of the war.

Reconstruction through the end/beginning of the Century. The effect of Reconstruction affected how the Democratic Party rebuilt and re-established its base as southern states were added back to the Union. The Democrats also established a tradition of Bourbon Democrats who were aligned with conservatism and classic liberalism. The Party still was installed in racist roots and regained its footing as the main power in the south but struggled to beat Republicans in elections and eventually lead them to William Jennings Bryan. The party took control again with Woodrow Wilson and he set the U.S Government in a new direction. The party didn’t really move in a new direction as a Racist Wilson was propped up by his majority racist party, while enacting change and winning a World War. The KKK comes into being during this time and the party continues to represent the worst parts of America.

Great Depression and the New Deal Coalition: The election of FDR changes the game. FDR isn’t from the same breed of past Democratic presidents. Under FDR the democrats base slowly begins to move to the Northeast. The 1948 Democratic Convention is the beginning of the end of the democratic party as we know it with the emergence of Dixiecrats and the party begins to crack and split. The party begins to represent the African-American as opposed to be against them and the south begins to shift as the Republicans begin to see gains to be made in the south.

The 1960s to the present. JFK and LBJ end the democratic party as we know it. When LBJ passes the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act everything changes. The South will never vote Democrat again. Nixon’s southern strategy also changes things. The Democrats rule the middle 20th century with FDR’s four terms and Harry S. Truman, JFK and LBJ. The failure’s of the Carter administration sends the power back to the Republicans but Clinton is able to take back power at the end of the century running as a middle of the road democrat. The party embraces Progressive policies and the parties have completely switched because of the parties stances of Civil Rights. In the 2000s America had changed so much that in 2008, 2012, and 2016 the parties leaders became an African-American man and a Woman, things unseen before in American History. The party of Jackson, the KKK and institutionalized racism became the party of the middle class, unions, minorities and immigrants.

In my essay it will follow this format. I will go in chronological order detailing the biggest events that lead to change in the party and more into why and how than this quick overview. The story is much bigger than this overview and the changing views of America have impacted who the main political parties represent and how were represented as the American People is important to our everyday lives.

Linsey Addario at her wedding

Iraqi’s watching a 3D movie in Baghdad

In “Its What I Do” a major portion of the book is dedicated to photography, so naturally there would be pictures in the book. I don’t need to ramble on about all the cliches about the power of pictures but in Linsey Addario’s novel there are some powerful pictures. Now the pictures don’t have page numbers so I will just include the photos in here. My favorite pictures are the ones from Addario’s wedding and the picture of the Iraqi’s watching a 3D film in Baghdad. In a novel filled with war and death and kidnappings and misery, I’ve enjoyed the peaceful moments in the novel. Seeing the joy of her wedding or the tranquility in watching them at the movies is enjoyable because you can enjoy the relaxing moments of life. They look happy in these photos and that’s what life is really about, the moments in which one is truly happy. They capture the beauty and intensity of life, but also the happiness.

In my passion blogs I could include photos to this extent by showing the people that I am writing about in a natural and laid back context. Athletes and actors are often caught in photos relaxing even when they may live a high strung lifestyle. You catch photos of them laughing on the field or in practice or at rehearsals and it reminds you that these people are human, even as they work as hard as they do. I could also provide visuals to show who I am discussing. In my last passion post I could’ve included photos go Colin Kaepernick and in my first one photos of Wally Richardson and so on and so forth. There are hundreds of photos that have captured the beauty of sports and their athletes and of actors and the intensity of their performances, and I could put them to good use in future blog posts.

Linsey Addario went through a lot of conflict in her life but the one that seemed most human to me was her conflict with herself on what her future with kids should be. On the very last page of part one, Addario settles this conflict with a solution that is good for everyone deciding how long she would be on birth control and when she would get pregnant. She was also juggling this with her ever complicated and busy professional career. I have never had a conflict this extreme yet in my life, but in my passion blogs I can connect her struggles to the topics I write about.

Sports and The Theater are filled with conflict. Every game is a conflict and every play has a conflict. It’s what makes these things go. Yet inside of these two institutions there are people who fight their own battles everyday and especially people who fight between their personal lives and their careers. NFL players have been retiring at record numbers and extraordinarily young because of the health risks of football. They are balancing the medical risks of their professions with the quality of life they will live and it is very hard for them to make these decisions. Athletes in other sports also have to decide when enough injuries are enough and it is time to walk away. Players like Larry Bird and Magic Johnson literally played until their health degenerated to the point they couldn’t take the court anymore. Female Athletes have to make decisions like Addario because getting pregnant means time away form whatever their respective sport may be.

In Theater Actors and Actresses walk away when they believe they aren’t spending enough time with their family or when acting takes too much of a mental toll on their health. Actresses also have to make the tough choice when it comes to family as they lose time and money as well to start families. It is also tough to find jobs in the profession to begin with, so for many the conflict is when to give up on the dream to be in the theater and when they think that big break will finally come.
These kinds of conflicts are what make the people behind these great industries interesting and complex people. Behind the outright conflicts of Team Vs Team or inside of a show, there are people like You, Me and Addario. Struggling with the same dreams of starting a family, living healthy lifestyles and living their dreams, just like the rest of us.

The New York Times plays an important role in our society and while its sales are still strong, it is entering a society where newspapers are dying. They are dying while cable news grows. You can’t tell the story of news in America without the New York Times, or its cable counterpart. Since it’s inception in 1980 CNN has grown into America’s 24 hour cable news giant. It comes under the same criticism as the New York Times yet it does the same job. It delivers the news. CNN and the New York Times open to a very interesting conversation about the nature of news, and partisanship in the news in 21st century America. CNN has a different role in society because the people are visible to criticism while writers in the timescan hide their faces behind print. The standards for news are different for both yet both need to inform their audience of the days events.

They take different approaches but at the end of the day they both end with often the same results. The New York times however has more time and money for investigative reporting, while CNN often finds itself with a breaking news banner running stories about something that may have happened hours ago. CNN needs ratings to stay afloat and so it needs to keep people tuned in. The New York Times needs readers but it has more freedom on what it will publish in its pages. The two media sources need to balance Pop Culture, News and investigative journalism. As time goes on CNN finds itself pulled from investigative journalism as it needs to keep an audience 24 hours a day in a crowded market, while the NY Times market slowly declines over time. The two media giants have to find new footing and a new role in a brand new America. The decisions these networks make in the coming years will affect how the news will be presented in years to come and in my rhetorical analysis I will analyze the similiarities between the two, the roles of them, their past and their present and their role in the future of news.