Trump’s Real Victory Is Redefining the Republican Party

“Johnson understood that winning an election was much less important than winning a party. Elected offices came and went every couple of years; parties were institutions anchored in place by their coalitions and organizers.”

As mayor of Cleveland from 1901 to 1909, Tom Johnson was one of the nation’s most prominent—and radical—Democratic officials. A disciple of Henry George, he was opposed to private ownership of land. This was hardly a winning principle in American politics, yet Johnson still came to be remembered as the “best mayor of the best governed city in United States.” Thus, in 1932, when Raymond Moley was organizing the “Brains Trust” that designed the New Deal, he observed that “I’d grown more convinced that someone must be found who could do on a national scale what Tom Johnson had done in Cleveland.” Yet, he lamented that “there was no Tom Johnson,” so Moley was forced to settle instead for Franklin Roosevelt as “the only hope.”

If generations of Democrats looked back to Johnson as something like a progressive superhero, it wasn’t because he abided by anything resembling conventional wisdom. One of Johnson’s first stunts defied everything that we today—with our bean-counting, team sport mentality—would consider good, political sense. In 1902, a year after taking office, Johnson began denouncing eight Democratic state legislators for approving a deal that gave a traction company a fifty-year monopoly on Cincinnati’s street cars. Johnson picked up his giant circus tent and brought it around the state of Ohio to the districts of all eight legislators. There he denounced these legislators to throngs of their own constituents, deriding them as malefactors serving wealthy interests. Johnson succeeded in unseating all eight legislators, members—mind you—of his own party.

The following year, the Democratic Party of Ohio did the only thing it could do: nominate Johnson for governor. Much of the party was deeply opposed to Johnson’s philosophy and it was no secret that Johnson wanted to rip up root and branch the corrupt democratic machine in Cincinnati. But Johnson made no effort to conciliate his opponents in the party. Instead, he proposed a platform that would radically alter the nature of governance in Ohio: increasing taxes, setting maximum fares for railroads, establishing direct legislation, and giving his city free rein to socialize monopolies. Johnson, of course, lost the election. But, by his own account, winning was always beside the point: “immediately following my nomination I called upon all who did not believe in the principles we were advocating not to vote for me.” Johnson’s real purpose was to purify the party: “I invited all the crooks and thieves within the party to get out of it.”