March 9, 2021
An exhibit about the presidential election of 1912 featured its four main candidates, from left: Eugene Debs, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt.Credit...Mario Tama/Getty Images
There is no rule that says American political parties canât die, and there was a time when it was quite common.
And not just in the 19th century either. The first decades of the 20th century, for example, saw the rise and fall of the Socialist Party, with Eugene V. Debs at its head. The short-lived Progressive Party came to life as a platform for the revived presidential ambitions of Theodore Roosevelt, and the Populist Party swept through much of America in the last years of the 19th century as a vehicle for the interests of farmers and laborers.