The gold Democrats were now in a quandary. Many of them had refrained from voting at all in the convention after the silver element had gained control. Strict partisans, however, adopted the position of Senator Hill who was asked after the convention whether he was a Democrat still. "Yes," he is said to have retorted, "I am a Democrat still--very still." Some frankly turned toward the Republican party, while others organized the National Democratic party and adopted a traditional Democratic platform, with a gold plank. After considering the possibility of nominating President Cleveland for a third term, the party chose John M. Palmer for the presidency and Simon B. Buckner for the vice-presidency. Soon after the Democratic convention, the People's party and the Silver party met in St. Louis. Both nominated Bryan for the presidency, and thereafter the Democrats and the Populists made common cause. At the opening of the campaign, then, it was evident that class and sectional hatreds would enter largely into the contest. The Populists and the radical Democrats felt that they were fighting the battle of the masses against "plutocracy"--the subtle and corrupting control of public affairs by the possessors of great fortunes; they thought that they saw arrayed against them the forces of wealth and the corporations, seeking to enslave them. The conservative Democrats and the gold Republicans saw in their opponents an organized attempt to carry out a program of dishonesty and socialism. The one side believed that the creditor class desired to scale debts upward; the other, that the debtor class wished to scale them down. The radicals believed that the Supreme Court was in the control of the wealthy; the conservatives, that their opponents sought to assail the highest tribunal in the land. The peculiar circumstances preceding the year 1896, however, focussed attention on the monetary standard rather than upon the other demands of the Populist-Democratic fusion.