Would DU have supported FDR's re-election in 1936?

bluestateguy

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Thu Dec-18-08 10:32 AM
Original message

Would DU have supported FDR's re-election in 1936?

It is often forgotten that underneath FDR's tidal wave landslide over Alf Landon was a simmering of Left wing discontent. Lefty candidates William Lemke, Norman Thomas and Earl Browder received a combined 2.53% of the vote in 1936.

I continue to be in celebration mode after the election, btw.

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Captain Hilts

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Thu Dec-18-08 10:36 AM
Response to Original message

1. It's hard to say. In '36, yes. In '40, no.

By '36 FDR had initiated programs that helped a huge swath of the population. In 1932 black voters supported Hoover, in '36 they shifted their support to FDR because of the help his programs gave them - even though they were not singled out - and because of the high profile Eleanor Roosevelt and Harold Ickes brought to the segregation issue.

FDR's second term stank, and, in many ways, so did he:

He tried to pack the court
Refused to support the anti-lynching bill.
Instigated the recession of 1937.

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Bucky

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Thu Dec-18-08 11:18 AM
Response to Reply #1

4. How exactly would Wendell Willkie have been an improvement?

I doubt Willkie would have been any stronger against fascism and certainly he wouldn't have come up with lend-lease. Worse yet, there would have been a good chance that Willkie would have relaxed restrictions against selling oil to Japan, thus ending the Japanese threat to the Philippines and Hawaii.

If you have a problem with what FDR did, I doubt you'd find the alternative any better.

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Captain Hilts

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Thu Dec-18-08 11:25 AM
Response to Reply #4

5. We're talking about DUers here. And NO ONE said Wilkie'd be better.

Edited on Thu Dec-18-08 11:25 AM by MookieWilson

FDR did take some turns to the right in his second term that DUers would have a hard time with. That's all I said.

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Bucky

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Thu Dec-18-08 11:56 AM
Response to Reply #5

11. Implicitly you said exactly that. In 1940 it was Willkie or FDR.

Rejecting one candidate is half a vote in favor of his opponent. FDR was the preferable of the two.

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Phoonzang

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Thu Dec-18-08 12:23 PM
Response to Reply #4

15. Well Willkie was very progressive on civil rights....

as for everything else...I'm sure Europe would have ended up controlled by the Nazis.

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WI_DEM

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Thu Dec-18-08 11:33 AM
Response to Reply #1

9. how did he instigate the recession of '37?

you forget too that Social Security came about during FDR's second term as well as establishment of the minimum wage.

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Captain Hilts

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Thu Dec-18-08 12:18 PM
Response to Reply #9

13. He cut spending in an effort to cut the deficit after criticism from deficit hawks and...

the unemployment rate spiked.

It's funny, George F. Will cited this spike in '37 as an example of how New Deal spending patterns didn't work, yet it was an abandonment of those policies that made unemployment go up.

Instigating the recession of '37 hurt a lot of folks. Jean Smith in his bio "FDR" that won the Frances Parkman Prize for biography has as good an explanation of this as any book I've read.

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wyldwolf

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Thu Dec-18-08 10:41 AM
Response to Original message

2. I would say no

Edited on Thu Dec-18-08 10:42 AM by wyldwolf

By 1938, though, the left had suffered some bad defeats and their power as a voting block was erased, anyway.

The left lost most of their congressional seats, and Republicans deated Philip La Follette in Wisconsin and Elmer Benson in Minnesota. The Republicans� gained 81 seats in the House, 8 seats in the Senate, and 13 governorships in that midterm election, and FDR said �We have on the positive side eliminated Phil La Follette and the Farmer-Labor people in the Northwest as a standing Third Party Threat.�

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David__77

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Thu Dec-18-08 11:12 AM
Response to Original message

3. I would've voted for Browder.

He was the most anti-fascist candidate and he was pro-Roosevelt, from a critical perspective. Lemke was no left-winger.

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Captain Hilts

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Thu Dec-18-08 11:29 AM
Response to Reply #3

6. ER said she would have voted for Thomas in '32 had she not been married to FDR...

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WI_DEM

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Thu Dec-18-08 11:30 AM
Response to Original message

7. A good share of DUers would have been against FDR and for Norman Thomas or somebody else on the left

is my guess.

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Johonny

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Thu Dec-18-08 11:32 AM
Response to Original message

8. considering my grandparents love of FDR

second only to Kennedy in their eyes. I imagine yes I would have voted for him.

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LanternWaste

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Thu Dec-18-08 11:40 AM
Response to Original message

10. FDR had quite a few Republicans in his cabinet...

FDR had quite a few Republicans in his cabinet, so I'd be tempted to think that a very small, very vocal minority of DUers would not support him and oh-so-cleverly state, "this is change?", but that the vast majority of DU would.

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Captain Hilts

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Thu Dec-18-08 12:20 PM
Response to Reply #10

14. The most progressive around him Wallace, Eleanor and Ickes were all former Republicans...

the Republican party wasn't yet the reactionary party it soon became. There were still a lot of Theordore Roosevelt Republicans.

And the Republicans he had in foreign affairs - Stimson and Hull - he pretty much ignored. Churchill thought it was weird to come to DC and not see the Sec. of State and scheduled his own meeting with him!

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LanternWaste

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Thu Dec-18-08 12:47 PM
Response to Reply #14

17. I'm under the impression that FDR gave weighty consideration

I'm under the impression that FDR gave weighty consideration to Stimson (as per Roosevelt's Secret War, by Jospeh Persico) and that Ickes was a Republican during his tenure in the cabinet (as per his autobiography, The Autobiography of a Curmudgeon).

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Captain Hilts

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Thu Dec-18-08 01:19 PM
Response to Reply #17

18. That is correct. FDR seemed to like Stimson.

But he completely ignored Hull and worked the State Dept. through Sumner Welles, who held the train of Eleanor's gown at the R's wedding. He was a boyhood chum of Eleanor's brother.

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thenam

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Thu Dec-18-08 12:03 PM
Response to Original message

12. No.

FDR looks like a Marxist-Leninist compared to today's right-of-centre Democratic Party, but even back then there were alternative choices for Left voters. Unfortunately, even back then it was a two party system in the US, for the most part.

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SidneyCarton

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Thu Dec-18-08 12:38 PM
Response to Original message

16. No, he'd be derided as a fascist, turncoat, elitist and there would be conspiracy theories all over

There would be threads citing heavily from the Volkish Beobachter, and the Admins would be going crazy trying to keep up with extremist trolls.

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RoyGBiv

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Thu Dec-18-08 01:24 PM
Response to Original message

19. Hell. No.

Not as a "group" anyway.

In bed with the bankers. Doesn't care about the common man. Legacy name needs to be retired and give someone else a chance. Failed/Bad policies. Trying to subvert the democratic process. Recovery not fast enough.

Smokes.

We won't even get into the social issues.

The refrain often heard in around 1934-35 would have been very common hear. NRA doesn't stand for National Recovery Administration. It stands for Never Roosevelt Again.

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