General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsComparing the Clintons to FDR is crazy in my book.
But you have the floor if you want to try and convince me otherwise.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)OnlinePoker
(5,727 posts)joeybee12
(56,177 posts)As were a lot of people...this is far from her claiming she's like them.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)Comparing Sanders to Ryan is crazy in my book.
But you have the floor if you want to try and convince me otherwise.
Interesting discussion strategy.
JaneyVee
(19,877 posts)mmonk
(52,589 posts)mmonk
(52,589 posts)wyldwolf
(43,870 posts)mmonk
(52,589 posts)However, you still swing and miss. Why did the campaign choose FDR?
wyldwolf
(43,870 posts)DemocratSinceBirth
(99,716 posts)There are universal and timeless values like fairness and empathy but leaders need to fashion their solutions to the challenges of their times.
cali
(114,904 posts)DemocratSinceBirth
(99,716 posts)The Republicans were in disarray in 1932... The system was under attack from the left and the right... A lot of folks felt capitalism was in its death throes. Unemployment exceeded twenty five percent. FDR had pretty much a free hand to throw the kitchen sink at the Depression:
-Franklin Roosevelt
Great president nonetheless and the charges of bigotry against him are silly...He was a politician and constrained by his times. That's why it's silly to judge leaders of yore by contemporary standards...
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)At some point, eras become different enough that comparisons just aren't that useful.
pampango
(24,692 posts)Bill might have used some of FDR's ideas, most Democrats do, but he did not use others. Since he did not have to deal with a Depression or World War it would be hard to make a comparison. FDR made mistakes. We all do and all politicians go.
I don't know how anyone could compare Hillary or any other candidate for the presidency who has not actually occupied the office. Campaigning for office is not the same thing as governing.
MineralMan
(146,336 posts)reasonable comparison to be made, frankly. Different times; different points of focus. That's my opinion. I think any comparisons are so flawed because of the situations each faced that there's not much point in making them.
mmonk
(52,589 posts)By choosing the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park as the site to kick off her second White House run, Clinton is trying to tie herself to the legacy of a third U.S. president and his wife Eleanor Roosevelt, one of her role models.
President Roosevelt called on every American to do his or her part, and they answered, said Clinton, standing on a massive stage molded in the form of her blue and red campaign logo.
Its Americas basic bargain if you do your part, you ought to be able to get ahead, she continued. When everybody does their part, America ought to be able to get ahead too.
The daughter of a housemaid and granddaughter of a Scranton, Pa., millworker, Clinton hit on populist themes throughout her speech, saying she wants to fight for all Americans.
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/244923-watch-live-hillary-clintons-campaign-launch-in-new-york
bigtree
(86,006 posts)...and incidental identification.
Many, many politicians wrap their politics in his legacy without bothering to reconcile the differences in eras - or even try and account for the shortcomings, contradictions, and faults of Roosevelt.
If she challenges herself to live up to the positive ideals of Roosevelt she espoused in her address, is that such a bad thing?
joeybee12
(56,177 posts)Every one does it...this doesn't even come close to her comparing herself to them.
Art_from_Ark
(27,247 posts)I know he paid homage to Ronald Reagan, but I don't remember him ever paying homage to FDR.
joeybee12
(56,177 posts)was in shaping the Dem Party...it's really his legacy, and they all have to acknowledge it.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)NewSystemNeeded
(111 posts)FDR was the greatest president of the 20th Century.
He saved a nation on the brink of revolution and successfully built a coalition around enacting his policies. Losing the New Deal coalition was the greatest tragedy in American political history. It made poverty a permanent fixture in the South.
Knitting together an assortment of people by paying lip service to their pet causes, while watering down populist rhetoric doesn't make one FDR.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Also, just to be clear, the FDR coalition broke up over the end of racial segregation in the South.
Please confirm that you are here, at a Democratic website, whining, pissing and moaning because Democrats stopped being the party of white supremacism.
NewSystemNeeded
(111 posts)I shouldn't have to defend FDR's legacy on a Democratic website.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)to read your complaint that white supremacists left the Democratic party in the 1950's and 1960's.
Because that is what caused the break up of the FDR coalition.
In addition to your nasty sneering at "pet causes" which you have refused to specify. What "pet causes" are you deriding and what do you mean by "assortment of people?"
Come on now, speak up and let us know what your real agenda is.
NewSystemNeeded
(111 posts)I sneered at paying them lip service just to capture votes.
And there's a lot of reasons why the New Deal coalition fell apart, but I'm not going to argue with someone who thinks New Deal Democrats were white supremacists because that is a disturbing perspective of history I refuse to humor.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)meant by "an assortment of people."
Are you denying that the civil rights movement played a key role in the breakup of the FDR coalition?
Or are you saying it wasn't worth it to break up the FDR coalition over civil rights for African-Americans?
It has to be one or the other. You are refusing to say which.
You seem very afraid to defend your beliefs.
NewSystemNeeded
(111 posts)One line of attack used anti-communist witch-hunts (McCarthyism) to frighten socialists and labor unions into dissociating themselves from former communist allies. Another attack targeted socialists by equating them with communists and applying the same demonization. Still another attack, the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, directly weakened labor unions, their organizing capability and their alliance with the left.
Business and political leaders, mass media and academics cultivated a paranoid anxiety among Americans: suspect anything even vaguely leftist, see risks of "subversion" everywhere, and avoid organizations unless religious or loudly patriotic. Legal, ideological and police pressures rendered communist and socialist parties tiny and ineffective. Destroying unions took longer. The unionized portion of private sector workers fell from a third to less than 7% now. Since 2007, conservatives used crisis-driven drops in state and city tax revenues to intensify attacks on public employee benefits and unions. Both were denounced as "excessive and unaffordable for taxpayers". That plus public worker layoffs reduced public sector unionization.
Attributing it all to the Civil Rights movement is a myopic view of history.
http://rdwolff.com/content/organized-labors-decline-us-well-known-what-drove-it
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)that enacted the New Deal.
So, it's beyond absurd to discuss the break up of the New Deal coalition without discussing the Democratic party, which is where that coalition resided.
mmonk
(52,589 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)The Dixiecrat party won several southern states in 1948.
Voting Rights Act was part of the desegregation/civil rights movement.
You're splitting hairs.
The FDR coalition split up because of race.
Specifically, because the party stopped living in the 18th century on the subject of race and embraced the idea that black Americans were human beings.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)Last edited Mon Jun 15, 2015, 04:55 PM - Edit history (2)
from a place at the Democratic table after Vice President Henry Wallace was replaced in '44 by Harry Truman. The newly reconstituted Progressive Party ran Wallace for the top spot four years later.
The FDR coalition split up because of race, yes, with the departure of the Strom Thurman Dixiecrats, but it also virtually expelled the Old Left activists who remained-- some of whom had been at one time affiliated with the Communist or Socialist parties. President Truman's Loyalty Oathers and Red Hunters made sure that the Democratic Party was rid of the remaining Leftists it could snoop out. By 1952, it was purified, "clean as a hound's tooth." Eisenhower made easy work of the 1952 election.
Do you remember: "Are you now, or have you ever been . . .?"
wyldwolf
(43,870 posts)NYC Liberal
(20,137 posts)mmonk
(52,589 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)mmonk
(52,589 posts)Don't get me wrong, I abhor the internment of Japanese Americans by FDR. But for some reason, I don't think Roosevelt Island was chosen on that basis.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)For your point to be semi-cogent, Bush and Clinton would have had to round up every Muslim and Arab man, woman, and child--including US citizens-- living in the United States and imprisoning them.
Grabbing suspected terrorists in Yemen is not the same as that.
Not all bad things are like all really horrible things.
mmonk
(52,589 posts)of it all or the connections to the imprisonment of suspects without trial.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)unprecedented violation of the constitution.
Under your theory, killing Osama bin Laden was just as bad as killing Tamir Rice.
mmonk
(52,589 posts)I am not debating FDR's violation of the Constitution vis-s vis Japanese internment. For someone who practices Zen (like myself) that would be idiotic. Know who you are talking too.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)references to FDR in their campaign rhetoric?
Regardless of who makes it, comparing renditions of foreign terrorists to race-based concentration camps for American citizens is not an insightful one.
mmonk
(52,589 posts)Or quit pretending they are stalwarts in defending it. A lie is a lie.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)wyldwolf
(43,870 posts)To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America. Work must be found for able-bodied but destitute workers.
The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=14890
Bobby Kennedy was the original New Democrat, the first to realize that lifelong existence on a dole is demeaning and dehumanizing. In 1966, Kennedy argued that the welfare state had largely failed as an anti-poverty weapon, because it had destroyed family life. He contended that only through hard and exacting work could poor people achieve upward mobility.
It would be rash to assert that Bobby Kennedy would unquestionably have supported welfare reform had he lived. Nevertheless, RFKs criticisms of welfare certainly resemble those later voiced by proponents of welfare reform.
http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/topic/excellence_in_philanthropy/revisionist_history
Bobby Kennedy, You Were No Bobby Kennedy
https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/01/09/reviews/000109.09wilent.html
"He was critical of some of the fundamental assumptions of the great society liberalism of the time," said Mr Beran. "He declared - before anyone else in his party was willing - that the heritage of the New Deal was fulfilled and that the methods and techniques of the welfare states weren't working."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/106887.stm
Fundamental welfare reform is necessary. The problems with our current chaotic and inequitable system of public assistance are notorious. Existing welfare programs encourage family instability. They have few meaningful work incentives. They do little or nothing for the working poor on substandard incomes. The patchwork of federal, state and local programs encourages unfair variations in benefit levels among the states, and benefits in many states are well below the standards for even lowest-income budgets.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29606
NYC Liberal
(20,137 posts)as now you can compare them.
mmonk
(52,589 posts)I don't see it, especially since the centrist creation of the Clintons began the decimation of the New Deal from within the party.
CTBlueboy
(154 posts)While the senator was vague, her campaign pointed out to ABC News examples of Obama's liberal positions, including his 2004 statement to abolish mandatory minimum sentences for federal crimes.
This story further confirms my concern that Senator Clinton is not just willing, but apparently quite eager, to use the old "soft-on-crime" scare strategy in an effort to swing voters her way. Such a strategy is extraordinarily disappointing on the merits and telling coming from Senator Clinton now. Moreover, I cannot help but suggest that there is a sniff of racism in the Clinton camp's now repeated efforts to adopt a classic "Willie Horton" tactic in the hope of scaring (mostly white) voters away from a (non-white) candidate because of fear of (mostly minority) offenders subject to extreme prison terms under the old crack guidelines and federal mandatory minimums - http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4085083
she also a proud supporter of 1994 crime bill, which led to an increase number of African Americans in prison, now' she for prison reform and universal voting huh- Hillary" the wind blows" Clinton
NYC Liberal
(20,137 posts)You might even say he ... triangulated.
CTBlueboy
(154 posts)Sat idle as the lives of 1,000,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanada ?
or Destroying the crops production of Haitian Farmers ?
but sent help the situation in Bosnia
Guess Bill have too much on his plate when it come to the lives of black people
NYC Liberal
(20,137 posts)then Bill Clinton would have been attacked here on DU for warmongering, or being an imperialist meddling in other countries.
I like both presidents. Both did bad things; both did good things.
orpupilofnature57
(15,472 posts)JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)rock
(13,218 posts)Rave on.
mmonk
(52,589 posts)But at least I do it from an intellectual standpoint.
rock
(13,218 posts)But only to the best of my ability.
fadedrose
(10,044 posts)I think they are depend on most people being too young to know all the things done by the real Roosevelts. We who know and remember are not fooled and resent their comparing any of today's politicians to FDR (1938-1946) is crazy.
Those who do this don't even come close to representing the Democratic Party of that time...
Hell, even the Republican President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) was a progressive and broke up the bank monopolies...who today would do that? - only Bernie & Elizabeth.
mmonk
(52,589 posts)Thanks for your input.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)What do you mean by that?
YoungDemCA
(5,714 posts)The obstacles are a kind of resignation that things will go on as before. That's always the obstacle to change. The obstacle to change is not that people don't want change. People want change. But most of the time, people feel impotent. However, at certain points in history, the energy level of people, the indignation level of people rises. And at that point it becomes possible for people to organize and to agitate and to educate one another, and to create an atmosphere in which the government must do something. I'm thinking of the 1930s; I'm thinking of Franklin D. Roosevelt coming into office not really a crusader.
Roosevelt came into office, you know, with a balance-the-budgets history. It was not clear what he was going to do, and I don't think he was clear about what he was going to do, except that he was going to be different from Hoover and the Republicans. But when he came into office, he faced a country that was on strike. He faced general strikes in San Francisco in Minneapolis. He faced strikes of hundreds of thousands of textile workers in the South. He faced a tenants movement and an unemployed council movement. And he faced a country in turmoil, and he reacted to it, he was sensitive to it, he moved. That's what we will need.
We will need to see some of the scenes that we saw in the '30s.
snip:
In his recent book Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America, Adam Cohen [assistant editorial page editor of the New York Times] points out that when FDR was elected in November 1932, and even after he took office in March 1933, his ideas about what to do were very unclear.
He promised Americans a "New Deal," but he had very few specifics. In fact, FDR was in many ways a cautious, even conservative, politician. The one clear idea he had in mind when he took office was to cut the federal budget, and the person he hired to do that job was his budget director, a conservative Congressman from Arizona named Lewis Douglas. He was also initially reluctant to use the power of government to regulate business practices, create jobs or to support union organizing or struggling farmers. He was clear from the beginning, however, that core values were at stake--articulated in his first Inaugural Address. That is what created the ground--and support--for his pragmatic experimentation.
Cohen's book describes an ongoing battle for FDR's heart and mind that took place both inside and outside the White House.
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/11/fdr-wasnt-fdr-until-his-hand-was-forced.html
mmonk
(52,589 posts)H2O Man
(73,627 posts)I agree 100%.
mmonk
(52,589 posts)Contrived remakes, especially given the political issues of the day, bother me.
LordGlenconner
(1,348 posts)Seriously. It's not going to happen.
But I will enjoy the reaction to it not happening when the votes start getting counted, be sure of that. What a show it will be.
mmonk
(52,589 posts)Struggles against economic injustice do not begin with expectations of winning the war in the first battle. It is better to fight for family and lose than die in vain doing nothing.
LordGlenconner
(1,348 posts)Let me know when you fight and die for Bernie, and economic injustice for that matter.
Lots of blow.
Very little in the way of go.
wyldwolf
(43,870 posts).. from 'Hilllary bought the election' to 'did anyone check the voting machines?'
The 'progressive' reaction to Hillary running for president is reminiscent of the September 2, 2004, Jon Stewart parody of Zell Miller's reaction to John Kerry - "How DARE the Democrats field a candidate! And during an election year! How DARE they!"
jwirr
(39,215 posts)his presidency. Two things: Glass-Stegeal repeal and welfare reform.
The irony of it all.
orpupilofnature57
(15,472 posts)mmonk
(52,589 posts)L0oniX
(31,493 posts)and again history proves that the "99%" came from Occupy. She's got nothing.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)Bill let them out, and did so happily.
Nuff said.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)trouble.
redstateblues
(10,565 posts)Under her husband's Presidency. All that prosperity and job creation and no wars. It was awful.
mmonk
(52,589 posts)2 stock market bubbles and the 2007/2008 crash. The Rubinomics and its deregulation being a contributory culprit.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)for the great recession of 08.
One was for his reelection and heritage the other was for his future wealth. And if you like it or not we are now living in that future and yes it is also bushie's fault but his banksters could never have done it without the repeal of Glass-Stegeal. That is why FDR created that law.
WillyT
(72,631 posts)Why didn't FDR take a strong stand on Women's Rights, Civil Rights, and LGBTQ Rights ???
Because it was the fucking 1930's !
In 2015, Gay Marriage is in the hands of the conservative Supreme Court... RIGHT NOW !!!
So let's not act like we are some sort of superior form of human beings. The majority of us are informed by the times we live in.
And NONE of those rights listed above... would be anywhere NEAR where they are now, if it weren't for FDR.
Not a one.
Different times folks.
Orsino
(37,428 posts)Sec. Clinton might not be all that strong on protecting Social Security or creating jobs, but she's unlikely to put many people in internment camps or accept second-class citizenship for women.
mmonk
(52,589 posts)It's the false economic premise being the premise though. I'm sure she didn't do it over interning Japanese Americans.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)I don't think so. The Swiss bank hired the guy who helped push through bank deregulation and the guy who signed it into law.
See if you can spot some familiar names on this list:
They now work together at UBS -- which received uncounted billions in bailout money -- to specialize in some kind of "Weath Management."
PS: Forensic economist and former Fed regulator William K. Black wrote it reminds him of what happened during the Savings and Loans Crisis of the late 80s and early 90s. At the time, that was the greatest bank heist in history. Now we have another record setter, with more on the way.'
PPS: Go Wall Street. Trickle Down. Trickle Down.