In Mary Hershberger’s essay on the involvement of women in the opposition to the Indian Removal Act, I found this description of his political strategies:
“Andrew Jackson, who viewed politics primarily in terms of mobilizing a narrow electorate around its economic self-interest, charged that removal opponents objected to removal only because it threatened their access to federal money forIndian schools. After the Indian Removal Act passed, he summed up his own sentiments by saying that "thus far we have succeeded against the most corrupt andsecrete combination that ever did exist.” He placed any blame for injury to the Indians on the antiremovalists.“ (p.33)
Arguably, President Jackson would be at home in the current Republican House of Representatives with these tactics. Of course, Jackson would be confused why his Democratic party elected an African as President. (Jackson was a Democrat at the beginning of the modern democratic party; a Democrat before the progressive switch in the party happened in early 20th century.)
I’d also like to share Herschberger’s conclusion. She has this to say about President Jackson and the growth of democracy in These United States:
Whether Andrew Jackson’s presidency fostered an increase in democratic participation may be debated, but credit for an enlarged democracy may accrue to him by default, for his determination to carry out Indian removal generated the deepest political movement that the country had yet witnessed. It also ushered in a new age of popular politics that saw energized antiremovalists transfer their techniques of
removal protest to the struggle against slavery: massive and continuous pamphleting and petitioning by both women and men, persistent reports in periodicals that sought to present slavery from the perspective of the slave, and a willingness to challenge laws that they believed were deeply unjust.
Today liberals (and to a certain degree progressives and actual leftists) in the US are stuck between chairs: The radicalism, fundamentalism in loud and influential parts of the Republican party needs to be vehemently opposed, especially on a state level, yet it is not that simple to come up with an effective voice of dissent when you control the U.S. Senate and the White House.
CLARITY AND CHAOS 