The Jacksonian Revolution was a reaction to much the same kind of elitism and condescension that Hillary Clinton displayed when she told a select group of her snotty, well-heeled contributors in Manhattan that half of Donald Trump’s supporters are “deplorables” and the other half, in effect, a bunch of losers who aren’t smart enough to vote for her.
Some things never seem to change. Until Jackson ran for president, our politics were reserved for the well-heeled elite. Four of our first six presidents were aristocratic Virginia plantation owners, while the other two were father and son and scions of an old New England family.
Jackson set out to crash this cozy gentlemen’s club. A man of humble origins he became our first “frontier” president; the first from the West rather than a member of the East Coast establishment.
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