Progressivism in the United States in the context of "Partisan primary"

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 2, 1920. The Republican ticket of senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio and governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts defeated the Democratic ticket of governor James M. Cox of Ohio and assistant secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York. It was the first election held after the end of the First World War, and the first election after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment gave nationwide suffrage to women.

Incumbent president Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat who had served since 1913, privately hoped for a third term despite severe physical and mental disabilities from a stroke, but he had very little support. Former president Theodore Roosevelt had been the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, but he died in 1919 without leaving an obvious heir to his progressive legacy. The major parties turned to little-known dark horse candidates from the state of Ohio, a populous swing state with many electoral votes. Cox won on the 44th ballot at the 1920 Democratic National Convention, defeating William Gibbs McAdoo (Wilson's son-in-law), A. Mitchell Palmer, and several other candidates. Harding emerged as a compromise candidate between the conservative and progressive wings of the Republican party, and he clinched his nomination on the tenth ballot at the 1920 Republican National Convention.

The Democratic Party is a liberal political party in the United States. Sitting on the center to center-left of the political spectrum, it is the world's oldest active political party, having been founded in 1828. Its main rival is the conservative Republican Party, and since the 1850s both have dominated American politics.

It initially supported Jacksonian democracy, agrarianism, and geographical expansionism, while opposing a national bank and high tariffs. Democrats won six of the eight presidential elections from 1828 to 1856, losing twice to the Whigs. In 1860, the party split into Northern and Southern factions over slavery. The party remained dominated by agrarian interests, contrasting with Republican support for the big business of the Gilded Age. Democratic candidates won the presidency only twice between 1860 and 1908 though they won the popular vote two more times in that period. During the Progressive Era, some factions of the party supported progressive reforms, with Woodrow Wilson being elected president in 1912 and 1916.

The Progressive Era (1890s–1920s) was a period in the United States characterized by multiple social and political reform efforts. Reformers during this era, known as Progressives, sought to address issues they associated with rapid industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and political corruption, as well as the loss of competition in the market due to trusts and monopolies, and the great concentration of wealth among a very few individuals. Reformers expressed concern about slums, poverty, and labor conditions. Multiple overlapping movements pursued social, political, and economic reforms by advocating changes in governance, scientific methods, and professionalism; regulating business; protecting the natural environment; and seeking to improve urban living and working conditions.

Corrupt and undemocratic political machines and their bosses were a major target of progressive reformers. To revitalize democracy, progressives established direct primary elections, direct election of senators (rather than by state legislatures), initiatives and referendums, and women's suffrage which was promoted to advance democracy and bring the presumed moral influence of women into politics. For many progressives, prohibition of alcoholic beverages was key to eliminating corruption in politics as well as improving social conditions.

Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was the 31st president of the United States, serving from 1929 to 1933. A wealthy mining engineer before his presidency, Hoover led the wartime Commission for Relief in Belgium and was the director of the U.S. Food Administration, followed by post-war relief of Europe. As a member of the Republican Party, he served as the third United States secretary of commerce from 1921 to 1928 before being elected president in 1928. His presidency was dominated by the Great Depression, and his policies and methods to combat it were seen as lackluster. Amid his unpopularity, he decisively lost reelection to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932.

Born to a Quaker family in West Branch, Iowa, Hoover grew up in Oregon. He was one of the first graduates of the new Stanford University in 1895. Hoover took a position with a London-based mining company working in Australia and China. He rapidly became a wealthy mining engineer. In 1914, the outbreak of World War I, he organized and headed the Commission for Relief in Belgium, an international relief organization that provided food to occupied Belgium. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover to lead the Food Administration. He became famous as his country's "food dictator". After the war, Hoover led the American Relief Administration, which provided food to the starving millions in Central and Eastern Europe, especially Russia. His wartime service made him a favorite of many progressives, and he unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in the 1920 United States presidential election.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. He was the only Democrat to serve as president during the Progressive Era when Republicans dominated the presidency and legislative branches. As president, Wilson changed the nation's economic policies and led the United States into World War I. He was the leading architect of the League of Nations, and his stance on foreign policy came to be known as Wilsonianism.

Born in Staunton, Virginia, Wilson grew up in the Southern United States during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era. After earning a Ph.D. in history and political science from Johns Hopkins University, Wilson taught at several colleges prior to being appointed president of Princeton University, where he emerged as a prominent spokesman for progressivism in higher education. Wilson served as the governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913, during which he broke with party bosses and won the passage of several progressive reforms.

James Middleton Cox (March 31, 1870 – July 15, 1957) was an American businessman and politician who served as the 46th and 48th governor of Ohio, and a two-term U.S. Representative from Ohio. As the Democratic nominee for President of the United States at the 1920 presidential election, he lost in a landslide to fellow Ohioan Warren G. Harding. Cox's running mate was future president Franklin D. Roosevelt. He founded the chain of newspapers that continues today as Cox Enterprises, a media conglomerate.

Born and raised in Ohio, Cox began his career as a newspaper copy reader before becoming an assistant to Congressman Paul J. Sorg. As owner of the Dayton Daily News, Cox introduced several innovations and crusaded against the local Republican Party boss. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1909 to 1913 before being elected as Governor of Ohio. As governor, Cox introduced a series of progressive reforms and supported Woodrow Wilson's handling of World War I and its aftermath.

The Democratic Party is one of the two major political parties of the United States political system and the oldest active political party in the country. Founded in 1828, the Democratic Party is the oldest active voter-based political party in the world. The party has changed significantly during its nearly two centuries of existence. Once known as the party of the "common man", the early Democratic Party stood for individual rights and state sovereignty, and opposed banks and high tariffs. In the first decades of its existence, from 1832 to the mid-1850s (known as the Second Party System), under Presidents Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and James K. Polk, the Democrats usually defeated the opposition Whig Party by narrow margins.

Before the American Civil War, the party generally supported slavery or insisted it be left to the states. After the war until the 1940s, the party opposed civil rights reforms in order to retain the support of Southern white voters. The Republican Party was organized in the mid-1850s from the ruins of the Whig Party and Free Soil Democrats. It was dominant in presidential politics from 1860 to 1928. The Democrats elected only two Presidents during this period: Grover Cleveland (in 1884 and 1892) and Woodrow Wilson (in 1912 and 1916). Over the same period, the Democrats proved more competitive with the Republicans in Congressional politics, enjoying House of Representatives majorities (as in the 65th Congress) in 15 of the 36 Congresses elected owing largely to their dominance of the Solid South, although only in five of these they formed the majority in the Senate. Furthermore, the Democratic Party was split between the Bourbon Democrats, representing Eastern business interests, and the agrarian party elements representing poor farmers in the South and West. After the Republican landslide in the 1894 House elections, the agrarian element, marching behind the slogan of free silver (i.e. in favor of inflation), captured the party. They nominated William Jennings Bryan in the 1896, 1900, and 1908 presidential elections, although he lost every time. Both Bryan and Wilson were leaders of the progressive movement in the United States (1890s–1920s) and opposed imperialistic expansion abroad while sponsoring liberal reforms at home despite supporting racism and discrimination against blacks in government offices and elsewhere.

American political ideologies conventionally align with the left–right political spectrum, with most Americans identifying as conservative, liberal, or moderate. Contemporary American conservatism includes social conservatism and fiscal conservatism. The former ideology developed as a response to communism and then the civil rights movement, while the latter developed as a response to the New Deal. Modern American liberalism includes cultural liberalism, social liberalism and progressivism, developing during the Progressive Era and the Great Depression. Besides conservatism and liberalism, the United States has a notable libertarian movement, developing during the mid-20th century as a revival of classical liberalism. Historical political movements in the United States have been shaped by ideologies as varied as republicanism, populism, separatism, fascism, socialism, monarchism, and nationalism.

Political ideology in the United States began with the country's formation during the American Revolution, when republicanism challenged the preexisting monarchism that had defined the colonial governments. After the formation of an independent federal government, republicanism split into new ideologies, including classical republicanism, Jeffersonian democracy, and Jacksonian democracy. In the years preceding the American Civil War, abolitionism and secessionism became prominent. Progressivism developed at the beginning of the 20th century, evolving into modern liberalism over the following decades, while modern conservatism developed in response. The Cold War popularized anti-communism and neoconservatism among conservatives, while the civil rights movement popularized support for racial justice among liberals. Populist movements grew in the early-21st century, including progressivism and Trumpism.

Modern liberalism, often referred to simply as liberalism, is the dominant ideological variant of liberalism in the United States. It is most synonymous with the ideology of social liberalism, which is a variant of liberalism that moves beyond classical liberalism to account for poverty, seeking a balance between civil liberty and social equality via a social safety net. U.S. modern liberalism also takes inspiration from cultural liberalism and progressivism, and some (but not all) modern liberals explicitly identify with the contemporary U.S. progressive movement. Writing in 1993, American academic writer Ian Adams argued all major U.S. parties up to that point were "liberal and always have been. Essentially they espouse classical liberalism, that is a form of democratized Whig constitutionalism plus the free market. The point of difference comes with the influence of social liberalism."

Economically, modern liberalism accepts a role for government to protect against market failures, protect competition and prevent corporate monopolies, and supports labor rights. Its fiscal policy supports sufficient funding for a social safety net, while simultaneously promoting income-proportional tax reform policies to reduce deficits. It calls for active government involvement in other social and economic matters such as reducing economic inequality, expanding access to education and healthcare, and protection of the shared natural environment, in large part on the contention that advances in those areas create a thriving economy in the long run. Modern liberalism was formed in the 20th century in response to the Great Depression. Major examples of modern liberal policy programs include the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, the Great Society, the Affordable Care Act, and the Build Back Better Plan.