>Doesn't this make the Dems one of the oldest political parties in the
>world? I seem to remember something about only the British Tories
>being older.
The Tories are not much older as an organized party than the Democrats. William Pitt led the Tory Party which was organized as such about 1784, the older 17th century Tory Party having disappeared after the death of Queen Anne. The Tory Party became, after the 1832 Reform Act necessitated a reorganization of the electoral machinery, the Conservative Party, now officially, I think, the "Conservative and Unionist" party.
The Whig Party was, largely in response to the refounding of a Tory Party, also organized in the 1780s by Charles James Fox; the Liberal Party was formed from the Whigs and others in 1859 and the present Liberal Democrats continue that organization so they could be reckoned to be older than the US Democrats, too, but also not by much.
K.Mickey