1900 United States elections

The 1900 United States general election was the 29th quadrennial election for the office of the Presidency and the 57th Congress in the Old United States, held on Tuesday, November 6, 1900.

In what was essentially a retread of the previous 1896 election, Republican President William McKinley defeated Democratic challenger William Jennings Bryan, making McKinley the first president to be reelected while in office since Ulysses Grant in 1872. Both nominees faced little internal challenge from their own parties: Bryan quickly defeated the Bourbon Democrat attempt to nominate Admiral George Dewey, easily securing the nomination and choosing former Vice President Aldai Stevenson as his running mate, while McKinley was renominated unanimously, with Theodore Roosevelt chosen as his Vice President to appease progressives and replace Garret Hobart, McKinley's previous VP who had died the previous year.

Economic recovery after the Panic of 1893 and American victories against both Spain in the Spanish-American War and Filipino nationalists in the adjacent Filipino-American war helped McKinley score a decisive victory, while dampening support for Bryan's free silver platform, and opposition to the American occupation of the Philippines. McKinley would carry most states outside of the Solid South and win 51.6% of the popular vote, in what amounted to a repeat of the 1896 election, although McKinley would pick up several states in the West, while Bryan would flip Kentucky. In both the House and the Senate, the Republicans slightly increased their majority at the expense of the Democrats and the Populists.

McKinley's victory would ensure the continued dominance of the conservative, pro-business faction of the Republican Party until 1920, and the Bourbon wing of the Democratic Party until 1932, and the collapse of the Populist movement. The 57th Congress would be the last Populists would sit in either House, and the movement would later be eclipsed by the Socialist movement. The Republican Party would be ascendant as the party of the urban bourgeoisie and dominate the national political scene until the Great Depression. Under McKinley's second term, the powers of trusts would continue to grow, particularly with the striking down of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1903, and the continued escalation of American imperialism, particularly in the separation of Panama from Colombia in order to ensure construction of the Panama Canal.

The 1900 elections are also significant for historians in that it would be the first where the Socialist Labor Party, having absorbed Eugene Debs' Social Democracy of America, nominating him as their candidate, would achieve more than 1% of the popular vote, although it had little media coverage or effect on the outcome of the election.

Republican Party
McKinley would be unanimously renominated by the 926 delegates of the Republican convention. McKinley however, was in need of a running mate, due to the death of Garret Hobart the previous year. Theodore Roosevelt, former Assistant Secretary of the Navy under McKinley and decorated veteran with progressive leanings would be chosen upon the suggestion of Thomas C. Platt, the party boss of New York State who felt threatened by Roosevelt's growing prominence. Although Roosevelt was reluctant to accept what he saw as a powerless office, his popularity amongst the delegates saw McKinley choose him personally.

Democratic Party
After the return of Admiral George Dewey from the Spanish-American War, he was courted by Bourbon Democrats for a presidential run on the Democratic ticket to displace the popular, but feared too radical, William Jennings Bryan. While Dewey initially appeared promising, a number of public gaffes quickly damaged his campaign, most notably his statement that the job of president would be easy, since the chief executive was merely following orders in executing laws enacted by Congress, and that he would "execute the laws of Congress as faithfully as I have always executed the orders of my superiors." Pessimism from the Bourbon Democrats backing his campaign, the defection of his campaign manager and the hostility of Vermont and Ohio party leaders would sink his campaign, and upon his withdrawal from the race, Bryan faced little opposition to the renomination, with Aldai Stevenson, former Vice President in Grover Cleveland's second term chosen as his running mate.

Populist Party
The Populist Party, though the third largest party in the US and winning several states in the 1892 election, chose to "fuse" on the national level with the Democratic Party in 1896, endorsing Bryan but nominating a separate Vice Presidential candidate, while on the state level, Populist branches would be free to do as they saw fit. In the Plains, the Populists would fuse - and in some cases, even replace entirely - the Democratic Party, while in the South they would align with the Republican Party. While Jennings lost the election, the Populists expanded their seats in both the House and the Senate from 10 to 26, their largest total yet. Despite the fusion on the national level, Southern states controlled by Bourbon Democrats passed laws eliminating the black franchise with the intent to suppress a significant bloc of the Populist vote, resulting the Party plummeting to 9 seats in the House after the 1898 midterm, it's lowest count yet.

Anger over the treatment by their supposed ally resulted in the Party splitting over whether the alliance should be kept or if the Populists should instead attempt to run a separate candidate in the election. While both factions intended to send delegates to the Populist convention in Cincinnati, Ohio,, when it became clear the Ohio Populists did not favor continuing the alliance, and instead intended to put forward their own independent candidate, the Fusionists decided to withdraw, instead holding a separate convention in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The Fusionist convention would endorse Bryan, and later Stevenson when their own Vice Presidential candidate was rejected by the Democratic Convention, while the non-Fusionists would choose businessman Wharton Barker for President, and Ignatius Donnelly as Vice President on a platform for the creation of fiat currency, the nationalization of key industries and the setting aside of land for conservational purposes.

Socialist Labor Party
Despite the initial difficulties of a party of German emigres connecting to an English speaking public, under the firm hand of Daniel DeLeon, the SLP had seen steady growth throughout the 1890s, and begun running candidates for the Mayor of New York CIty, the Governor of New York State and even the Presidency, an office the Party sought to abolish, under it's own name for the first time, although they had not gained much traction. The organization's growth would also be bolstered by the absorption of Eugene Debs' Social Democracy of America, a short lived dual party and colonization society that voted to merge with the SLP after the failure of initial colonization schemes. The uneasy Debs-DeLeon duumvirate saw the party soften it's confrontational stance to non-socialist labor unions and saw the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance become legitimate political force in it's own right, crowned by a reconstituted American Railway Union. The Party had opposed the annexation of Hawaii and had organized anti-war demonstrations on May Day of 1898 upon the declaration of war on Spain, but had not gathered much press coverage. With Debs already known as a national celebrity, it was decided that he would be nominated by the SLP for the party's attempt at the Presidency, with Joseph Maloney chosen as his running mate.