Fascinating to see the huge impact Ike had in the 1956 Republican platform. Ike knew the sacrifice the average American made....1st hand. He understood the debt paid by this country and his influence on the Party's platform was incredible (compared to 1952!).

And making a great point.

Truman asked him to run as a Dem because he was worried that asshole MacArthur would get the Repub nomination. Moderate Repubs managed to recruit him with support for social progress if he would pursue a strong defense against the Soviets during the cold war.

So Ike could have easily been a great Democratic president if Dems hadn't kept the White House for the previous 20 years. It was time for a Republican, so they ran a popular moderate general who won WWII and was not a career politician.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower#1948_presidential_election

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952_United_States_presidential_election#Republican_Party

I'd love to go back to a time when lefty Dems control this country for 2 decades and Republicans have to become more moderate to have any chance of electability. That's how we can make America great again.

Washington.

Nixon gave us the EPA, without which we would be vastly more fucked than now.

back in power, and thus precipitated the rise of Islamic extremism.

So, let's not wax too nostalgic folks.

on D.U. comparing Ike to moderate Democrats today.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287371998

I do, however, notice that you have been absent from the Darius Gordon thread.

as well despite your post #11 on this thread.

The lines are different these days than they were in 1952. Remember when FDR locked up the Japanese in camps? The lines were different then, too.

The 40s and 50s were not good times for lots and lots of people. Anyone of color, women, and immigrants were not treated the same as white males in terms of citizenship and rights.

That was across the political board. Racism was a bipartisan thing, as was misogyny. There were young Mexican men in my small town in California, working in the orchards and fieds, who lived in virtual slavery in the late 1940s and througout the 1950s.

It was a different time and there were different lines that distinguished the two parties.

That was not a good time, in any way, as far as I'm concerned. Nope.

and considering the military coups that we have supported or at best non-acknowledged whether it be Central America or South America against democratically elected leaders, just because our corporate conglomerates don't agree with their policies instead of supporting democratic processes in those nations despite the violence and upheaval, I concur.

Many of the children and other refugees that have streamed across our border in today's time are a result of escaping the resultant violence, poverty and upheaval.

So I actually agree with your take that moderate Democrats today are more like Ike on his policies except perhaps helping to create our interstate system which apparently would be "too ambitious" to try today.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287372030

I've actually seen people write that very thing here on DU. It's really hard, though, to compare political positions from the 1950s with positiont in 2019. So much is different in US society now.

When Eisenhower first ran, my household had just gotten its first TV set, a 10" round tube black and white set. My home town still had laws prohibiting black people from being in the town after dark. In California!

The schools in my town had just been desegregated. For the very first time, kids with Hispanic names and "white kids" went to the same schools. In 1952. In a small town in California.

Contraception was illegal. Period. In California.

Women couldn't have bank accounts or get mortgage loans.

There were no vaccines except for smallpox, so we all got the measles, mumps, chickenpox and other childhood diseases.

I could go on and on.

Much has changed since then. For the better. Very much for the better. In 1952, the United States of America was a racist, misogynistic country. Even in California, and much more so in other places. Democrats, over time, changed that. Slowly and painfully, but they changed that.

We're in danger of reverting back to a situation similar to that. Truly. We really need to stop fighting among ourselves. Really.

to military coups over democratically elected leaders has not changed with too many people.