page_title: History of the United States Democratic Party
section_title: Presidency of Jimmy Carter (1977–1981)
hierarchical_section_title: History of the United States Democratic Party / Presidency of Jimmy Carter (1977–1981)
caption_attribution_description: English: Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States
context_page_description: The Democratic Party is the oldest voter-based political party in the world and the oldest existing political party in the United States. The party's modern institutions were formed in the 1830s and 1840s, but it traces its history and heritage back to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's Democratic-Republican Party of the 1790s-1820s. Known as the party of the "common man, ” the early Democratic Party stood for individual rights and state sovereignty, but opposed banks and high tariffs. During the Second Party System under Presidents Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren and James K. Polk, the Democrats usually bested the opposition Whig Party by narrow margins.
  From 1860 to 1932 in the era of the American Civil War to the Great Depression, the opposing Republican Party, organized in the mid-1850s from the ruins of the Whig Party and some other smaller splinter groups, was dominant in presidential politics. The Democrats elected only two Presidents during this period: Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson.
context_section_description: Carter was a peanut farmer, a state senator and a one-term governor with minimal national experience. President Carter's major accomplishments consisted of the creation of a national energy policy and two new cabinet departments, the United States Department of Energy and the United States Department of Education. Carter also successfully deregulated the trucking, airline, rail, finance, communications and oil industries (thus reversing the New Deal approach to regulation of the economy), bolstered the social security system and appointed record numbers of women and minorities to significant posts. He also enacted strong legislation on environmental protection through the expansion of the National Park Service in Alaska, creating 103 million acres (417,000 km²) of park land.
  In foreign affairs, Carter's accomplishments consisted of the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties, the establishment of full diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China and the negotiation of the SALT II Treaty. In addition, he championed human rights throughout the world and used human rights as the center of his administration's foreign policy.
  Carter's successes were overshadowed by failures. He was unable to implement a national health plan or to reform the tax system as he had promised. His popularity fell as inflation soared and unemployment remained stubbornly high, Abroad, the Iranians held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, an embarrassment rehearsed practically every day on television.  Worse, his military rescue of the hostages was a fiasco.  The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan later that year further disenchanted some Americans with Carter, and athletes were disappointed when he cancelled American participation in the 1980 Moscow Olympics.  Liberal Senator Ted Kennedy attacked Carter as too conservative but failed to block Carter's renomination in 1980.  In the  November 1980 election, Carter lost to Ronald Reagan. The Democrats lost 12 Senate seats and for the first time since 1954 the Republicans controlled the Senate, though the House remained in Democratic hands. Voting patterns and poll result indicate that the substantial Republican victory was the consequence of poor economic performance under Carter and the Democrats and did not represent an ideological shift to the right by the electorate.  Iran released all the American hostages minutes after Reagan was inaugurated, ending a 444-day crisis.
caption: President Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976 and defeated in 1980
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