@HenryAWallace I know you do not misunderstand that clear definition(s) of a problem are essential to discussing it; and from discussion, to resolving differences. Your point about "new", "real", "old timey", "FDR", "jackson", etc. Democrats is apt. SOSDD (same old shit, different day). It is this hearkening for days of yore by nostalgic adherents to this morbid party which is the only thing besides rich donors that keeps this monster alive. Of course, Republicans have been just as bad, especially post-Eisenhower.

Tear it down and start all over. But there always will be factions, factions which ultimately coalesce for the sake of power, not ideology.

Thoughtful essays like yours makes c99 stand out. Thanks.

#3

Even in the US, voters have more than two evil choices, both of which have been re-engineered by the Koch brothers.

But, that's an odd response to an essay about terminology. Did you read past the title before replying?

@HenryAWallace
every word I say in public. I still don't know whether a well regulated capitalism with the common good and organized labor given a full share of rights would be better or worse than socialism. Some socialist governments hold power quite tightly "on behalf" of the people.

I don't think bankers at the time saw Roosevelt's reforms as a favor. It took time and effort to capture regulatory agencies. They didn't get Glass Steagall until the Clinton Administration.

There was an active effort to forge a ruling coalition out of Republicans and southern Democrats from at the latest 1938 onward. Roosevelt had to protect his right flank or fail.Eventually, after the Civil Rights Act, the Southern Strategy prevailed more fully. But, as you point out, it had its triumphs all along, both in terns of things Roosevelt was unable to do and in things Roosevelt did not try to do.

I suspect we agree largely on where to go from here. What could have been achieved in the past is a murkier subject.

Peace.

#4

chunks of the New Deal before FDR died, and FDR signed those bills.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal#New_Deal_programs In any event, we can't use 1934 as a starting place. We can start only from where we are. Whether Democrats or Republicans will, or even want to, take us much further than we are has been a subject of much critical discussion on this board daily since I joined over a year ago. And the discussion of "real Democrats" versus "fake" Democrats is very much part of that same critical discussion.

Claims can be made relatively briefly. Unfortunately, unpacking and/or refuting them usually takes much longer. Hence the length of this reply.

As for the motivation behind the New Deal: I have previously posted that John F Kennedy, son of one of the New Deal architects, said something like that on Meet the Press when he was campaigning for President. A member of the panel asked him why anyone should vote for a Democrat during a recession. I don't know if that was a hostile question or one set up in advance. Either way, JFK replied, "Democrats saved capitalism." This was part of a clip Meet the Press played on the 50th anniversary of some JFK-related event--his election or his death--something like that.

That reply from JFK dovetailed beautifully with a quote attributed to his father, who worked side by side with FDR on the New Deal. (As the son of an Irish immigrant, Joe Kennedy was given an ambassadorship to the Court of St. James for his contribution to the New Deal, despite "the troubles." I had read the quote a few years before I saw the clip of JFK. Joe had supposedly said, "I'd gladly give half of all I own in order to be able to keep the other half in peace." I see that as an oblique reference to the Russian Revolutions and the summary killings of the Tsar, his children, his servants and his doctor of not even twenty years earlier. And, if not that, at least to some kind of taking of property from the wealthy by force and possibly violence.

Both FDR's bank regulation (FDIC, the Emergency Banking Act, Glass Steagall, etc.) and SEC were designed as much or more to help banks, Wall Street and big businesses by giving depositors and investors confidence to return their money to banks and investing as it was to protect them. Unfortunately, as to the SEC, at least, enforcement lagged over the years, as we saw with the Madoff case. If the goal of the New Deal were not to save capitalism, the New Deal would have looked much different than it did. And I just found this while checking a different point:

Roosevelt certainly believed in the premises of American capitalism, but he also saw that American capitalism circa 1932 required reform in order to survive. How much, and what kind of, reform was still up in the air. Upon entering the Oval Office, FDR was neither a die-hard liberal nor a conservative, and the policies he enacted during his first term sometimes reflected contradictory ideological sources.

https://millercenter.org/president/fdroosevelt/domestic-affairs

You cite high tax rates as though high taxes in themselves are liberal. I don't think that's right. For example, during the administration of Hoover, who was no liberal, a Republican Congress had passed the highest peace time tax increase in US history, to pay debt and to deal with the emergency conditions of that era. http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1932071600 That was in 1932 and FDR was inaugurated in March 1933. So, while that tax increase contributed to the high tax rate during the Roosevelt administration, FDR had nothing to do with it, yet the money was available for him to spend.

I believe that you may be referring as well at least in part to the war tax Congress passed during FDR's administration to pay for World War II, in the quaint days when Congress and the President troubled the general populace with things like the draft, tax increases to pay for wars, and express Congressional declarations of specific wars. Now, they and media try to make us forget that we are warring, so we don't fuss as much as in the Vietnam Era.

That Presidents Truman and Eisenhower did not repeal the war tax and JFK only lowered it obviously had as little to with FDR as the tax rate in effect when FDR took office. Truman did not repeal the war tax because he was still paying for World War II and about to start him a game of dominoes, the Korean "Police Action" and the rest of the Cold War.

I also find it more than coincidence that the only two big federal programs Democrats have given us with no strings (like the individual mandate of Obamacare) were the New Deal and the Great Society, were enacted when people most feared violence against the plutocrats and that Democrats began unraveling both programs, sometimes, before the ink was dry, so to speak. This is in great contrast to Obama's very limited, anemic recovery program during similar economic conditions.

I don't believe all FDR's motives were cynical. For one thing, he supposedly fought removing Henry A. Wallace from his ticket while he was dying. I don't know if you read the other two essays I wrote about Real Democrats, or if you care to: https://caucus99percent.com/content/real-democrats-versus-new-democrats-... and https://caucus99percent.com/content/real-democrats-versus-new-democrats-... However, I have not pulled any assessments out of thin air and I have stated why I reached the conclusions I reached. I see no basis for dismissing any interpretations of the facts as farfetched simply because your interpretation of the facts differs.

You are of course, free to look at the same facts and interpret them differently, or even just to believe that all FDR's motives were pure and that a consummate politician like FDR meant every word he said in public. I used to believe that of all the old school Democrats, but I just don't--can't--anymore.

Many or most things politicians say for public consumption don't stand up to even the least bit of scrutiny or analysis. For example, how can one reconcile entitlement of every human to freedom from want or being liberal with Jim Crow and a segregated federal work force? And how does freedom from fear and being liberal comport with internment of American citizens (or of anyone) without due process and without even protecting the property of those interned for return to them upon their release?

As my essay states, I am not the one who brought up misogyny and sexism as to comparing FDR with Obama, but I am the one whose essay states that being cognizant of those issues is important. Candidly, your claim about his "instantly" overcoming all "vestiges" of slavery dropped my jaw. The Emancipation Proclamation issued (by Executive Order under Lincoln's powers as CIC)on January 1, 1863. The 13th Amendment was adopted soon afterward.

FDR first took office more than 70 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, was incredibly popular and was in office for 12 years. Seventy years of Jim Crow and other de jure discrimination on the heels of two and a half centuries of slavery is no instant. And Jim Crow and other discriminatory laws were not vestige Also,claiming a President did not do something only because he could not requires at least some indication that he sincerely tried his best and failed. AFAIK, there is no such evidence as to FDR.

FDR could, using Congress and his own Executive power, have taken every discriminatory state and federal law off the books. He could certainly have ended legal Jim Crow, much as JFK was preparing to only 30 years later (and, via the ICC, JFK did end it in "interstate commerce" very broadly interpreted). And, yes, I also believe that votes also motivated JFK, as well as fear of uprisings. He really would have preferred to have been left alone take the same route FDR had, but could not, in part because of the Great Migration and in part because African Americans were organizing and had captured the sympathies of mainstream media, with all that goes with those three things. Nothing had happened in 30 years that made JFK's actions or LBJ's more acceptable to Southern voters and others who favored discrimination and therefore any easier.

FDR, on the other hand, did not even enforce his own executive order about federal employment, issued to placate African American leaders whom he asked to help him talk the country into entering World War II. (They kept their word to him; but he did not keep his word to them.) To the contrary, FDR did have the opportunity to support an anti-lynching bill, but did not. Again, the prospect of losing votes was the reason.

At the very least, FDR could have integrated the federal work force and the military, as did his successor, Truman under three years after FDR passed. Nothing made Truman's action any easier for Truman. To the contrary, Truman did those things before he had any mandate at all from voters. Indeed, no President in US ever had or, barring a Constitutional amendment, can ever have the strength of mandate FDR had. Preparation for entry into World War II would have been the perfect excuse for FDR to have done both those things, but FDR did not want to lose votes or Congressional power. So he traded the misery of many people and the lives of some for political power for himself, his Congresses and Democrats generally. I can't see how anyone denies or diminishes that honestly.

I am sorry that this may read like a general condemnation of FDR. It is not. As this reply states, I don't think all FDR's motives were cynical. Moreover, I believe that all our Presidents, including FDR, have been mixed bags, as are all humans; and I think FDR, along with Truman, JFK and LBJ, were better to the general populace than most. This is only my attempt to unpack your claims.