The Democrats in Turmoil: The Bitter Fights to Select a Presidential Nominee, 1896–1924 By Bradley C.Nahrstadt, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025. 356 pp. $120. ISBN: 979‐8‐76‐513244‐9.

The Democratic Party's seeming inability to get out of its own way—while trying, and sometimes failing, to govern effectively or win elections—has been a common theme in modern American politics, captured by the tagline: “Dems in disarray.” But this is nothing new, according to Bradley C. Nahrstadt; a careful analysis of nomination contests from more than a century ago gives us ample evidence of The Democrats in Turmoil. Nahrstadt provides a sweeping analysis of divisions within the Democratic Party from 1896 to 1924, focusing on its efforts to nominate, and in most cases (excepting Woodrow Wilson, in 1912 and 1916) its failure to elect, a presidential candidate. Specifically, Nahrstadt provides in-depth treatments of the 1896, 1904, 1912, 1920, and 1924 nomination processes. While the first two nominations were decided relatively quickly—in favor of William Jennings Bryan, on the fifth ballot, in 1896, and Alton B. Parker, on the first ballot, in 1904—the last three were among the most protracted in American history, requiring 46 ballots to nominate Wilson in 1916, 44 to nominate James Cox in 1920, and a record 103 to nominate John W. Davis in 1924. Policy disputes over the Gold Standard divided Democrats in the first two elections. The League of Nations divided Democrats in 1920, while in 1924 it was the Ku Klux Klan and Prohibition. Nahrstadt is methodical in his analysis of the respective nomination processes, dividing each one into three chapters that may be characterized in terms of context, candidates, and the convention. For context, Chapters 1, 4, 7, 10, and 13 briefly explain the development of key issues framing the upcoming presidential election. For example, in Chapter 13, Nahrstadt provides concise and well-informed summaries of the Teapot Dome scandal and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, both of which played a major role in the 1924 campaign. Chapters 2, 5, 8, 11, and 14 introduce the field of candidates for the Democratic nomination. Brief biographies cover the presidential nominees (Bryan, Parker, Wilson, Cox, Davis), as well as their most prominent (e.g., William Randolph Hearst, Champ Clark, A. Mitchell Palmer, William McAdoo, Al Smith) and now-obscure (e.g., Richard Bland, Richard Olney, Oscar Underwood, Robert Owen, Carter Glass) challengers. The national conventions are covered extensively in Chapters 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15. While the complexity of these proceedings can be daunting at times—particularly when it comes to the blow-by-blow of the 1924 convention—Nahrstadt provides engaging and often surprising narratives of events both familiar (e.g., Bryan's legendary “Cross of Gold” speech at the 1896 convention, pp. 36–42) and almost certainly unfamiliar (e.g., the short-lived movement to rescind Parker's nomination at the 1904 convention, due to misapprehension of his position on the Gold Standard, pp. 80–83), even to the most learned presidential scholars. Why should modern readers care about the Democratic divisions of a bygone era? Nahrstadt offers three reasons. First, such an analysis “provides a historical perspective that… shows… that the current state of politics is not so very different from what has gone on before” (4). Second, these case studies demonstrate that “internal divisions within a party can significantly influence its electoral success” (4). Third, on a related note, Nahrstadt argues that the Democratic nominees in question have been unfairly blamed for losses that are more readily attributable to a party that “was rent asunder by numerous factions” (3) and “waged war on” itself (261). Indeed, Nahrstadt makes repeated causal claims about the effects of party infighting on the Democratic losses of 1896, 1904, 1912, 1920, and 1924. “Party strife… kept the Democrats from winning the presidency cycle after election cycle,” during this period (4); “the factions in the party and the societal issues that exacerbated the divisions in the party… were the real reasons for the Democratic presidential drought” (4). It is difficult to sustain such a claim, since Democrats lost by landslides in all but one of these elections—the exception being a Democratic victory in 1912. Nor does Nahrstadt provide the type of systematic analysis of general election results necessary to convince skeptical scholars familiar with the limited effects of campaign activities (in contrast to broader “fundamentals”) on voting behavior. Nahrstadt's analysis could also be strengthened by more closely attending to the structural factors undergirding Democratic division during the period in question. Neither attempt at a comprehensive overview, by way of introduction (Chapter 1) or conclusion (Chapter 16), emphasizes the importance of Democratic Party rules requiring a two-thirds majority to nominate a presidential candidate or, with rare exceptions, state delegations to vote as a unit. Yet the two-thirds rule and the unit rule repeatedly emerge in the intervening chapters as major impediments to the nomination process—for example, in 1912, when Wilson won on the 46th ballot despite Champ Clark having a majority 36 rounds earlier—that facilitated further infighting and division. Republicans—noted for their relative unity and electoral success during this period, by Nahrstadt, without an in-depth explanation as to why that might be—did not use the two-thirds rule. Democrats eliminated the two-thirds rule in 1936. Nahrstadt marks the 1930s as the beginning of a half-century of Democratic Party unity and electoral success, but does not call attention to such rule changes, focusing only on the clarifying effects of Franklin Roosevelt's candidacy (as something of a deus ex machina). A more rigorous, structural, and comparative account of the parties might better explain why Democrats were relatively divided and unsuccessful during this period, only to fare better afterward. There is, however, much to recommend this book. It is a highly readable and often captivating account of party intrigue, populated by larger-than-life figures—none larger than Bryan—who defined the Democratic Party for a generation. Anyone interested in turn-of-the-century American politics will happily (if only briefly) leave behind the divisions of the present day while immersed in the pages of this book. The author has nothing to report.