1. Democratic Party (Major)
By: Alfred Hughes, Christian Pryor, William Finn, D’Mitri Lewis, Benjamin Cerrasco

2. Background
The Democratic party has changed significantly over the two centuries of existence. During the 19th century the party tolerated and supported slavery, it also opposed civil rights reforms after the American Civil War in order to retain the votes from southern voters. The Democratic party is the oldest political party in the United states and has roots traced all the way to The founders of the Democratic party are Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Andrew Jackson, Jackson is the first official president of the “Democratic” Party and the first to be elected from that party.

3. Views on Abortion
The Democratic Party’s stance on abortion is pretty clear. They believe that is a women’s right to make a decision during pregnancy to keep a child or not and oppose any effort to weaken that right. They are standing on the opinion that it is up to the mother, her family and her clergy to have an abortion or not and not up to the government to get in the way of this. They do believe better health care and sexual education will prevent unintended pregnancies and lower the amount of abortions. The Democratic Party also strongly supports a woman's decision to have a child and want to approve after-birth care systems such as adoption programs. Democrats say abortion should be legal, safe and rare.

4. Views on Immigration
Believes that the immigration system is broken. President Obama announced that the Department of Homeland Security should focus on immigration enforcement. If the democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gets voted into office then her first 100 days in office she will bring in a complete immigration reform leading to full and equal citizenship for the immigrants. She would like to bring in millions of hardworking immigrants to our economy. Democrats knows our nation’s history as a nation of immigrants. We treat all people who come to the United States with respect like they are regular U.S. citizens, and we will always embrace immigration. Fixing our broken immigration system is the right thing to do,and while we are doing this we will build families, strengthening the economy, and most likely strengthen the country in the process.

5. Views on Guns
Democrats support the second amendment to an extent. They believe that people should be allowed to bear arms but with reasonable regulations and restrictions. For example in 1993 Bill Clinton signed the Brady Law which required background checks on guns. This still allowed people to still buy guns but you could be denied if you have a bad background on report.

6. Views on Government
Democrats favor a bigger federal government that offers more services. They support increased spending in order to stimulate the economy, and higher taxes on the wealthy. They think the government should help the needy even in the face of more debt. They want to raise taxes on incomes of $200,000 a year and family incomes of $250,000 a year. They wish to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if it means going to war. They also oppose steep spending cuts as the way to alleviate the national debt.

7. Elected Officials/High ranking Gov. officials
Michigan
Senators: Gary Peters, Debbie Stabenow
House of Representatives: Kildee Daniel, Sander Levin, Debbie Dingell, John Conyers, Brenda Lawrence
USA
President: Barack Obama
Vice President: Joe Biden
Senators: Currently hold 44 seats
House of Representatives: 192 democrats

8. Major Historical Figures
Franklin D. Roosevelt - Helped prevent bank closings during the depression
John F. Kennedy - Helped get the space race into motion and dealt with the cold war
Barack Obama- First African- American president

9. Democratic Competition
While being the oldest political party in the U.S., it still had opposition like the Whig and Republican parties. Eventually it dwindled down to only the Republican party as opposition, but they were very competitive. For a solid 72 years after Woodrow Wilson’s term ended, the Republican candidate was always elected for the presidency. Although the Democratic Party enjoyed majority in the congress’ House of Representatives and the Senate, also currently holding the presidency with one of their candidates as well.

10. The Democratic Party was formed in 1792 by Thomas Jefferson.
Originally called the Jeffersonian Republicans.
The label “Democrat” was given to them by the Federalist party
There have been 15 Democratic presidents
During the Civil War, Northern Democrats were called “Copperheads” due to their opposition of the war