Why don't Dems hold up FDR like the Repubics hold up St Ronnie?

[Stinky The Clown]

The difference, of course, is that the FDR legacy is about all that holds this country together these days. The St Ronnie legacy is what brought us the shitstorm we're living through.

NO one is prefect, but FDR really was a guy who saved the country and laid the foundations for most of our more sacred accomplishments.

He was an optimistic guy. He had a sunny disposition. He did what he could to make it such that people didn't feel the misery they faced after the years of Unfettered Republicanism™ that led to The Great Depression. He was the definition of a Transformative president. He did, indeed, take the country in a completely new direction.

Why don't we celebrate him more?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

1. Agreed, they should. It's just another illustration of the weakness in the Party.

[Horse with no Name]

2. Too busy holding up St Ronnie?

:shrug:

[rusty quoin]

3. Right! The message should be that Democrats fix Republican screw ups. n/t

[HowHasItComeToThis]

5. BINGO FOR YOU

[Missy M]

4. I agree...

perhaps because it was over 60 years ago and the younger generation can't relate.

[MannyGoldstein]

6. Similarities Between FDR And Today's "Democrats" Are Few

Today's "Democrats" are pretty far to the RIGHT of the Republicans of long ago, e.g., Eisenhower

[TahitiNut]

10. Exactly. The LAST thing they want, as they tighten control over the parrty, ....

... is to remind the rank and file of the principles and values (e.g. "Four Freedoms") they've abandoned.

[scarletwoman]

15. What you said. In a nutshell (so to speak).

:D

[ProgressIn2008]

22. Agreed. FDR is too dangerous of a model, it would seem.

[Beelzebud]

7. Because the Democrats have largely moved more towards Reagan than FDR.

[lurky]

8. Most people are too young to remember him.

So there isn't really an emotional response when his name is invoked anymore. While he did have some amazing accomplishments, he was definitely not perfect. The Japanese internment is something I refuse to brush aside. On the other hand, it's impossible to overlook the transformation of our society that he oversaw, and which is now being dismantled bit by bit.

[DianaForRussFeingold]

24. K&R 1930's

I think 1929 was a wakeup call for him as far as the banking and corporate
corruption. He did a great deal to help the poor and the middle class..

To me he was never perfect but let's not kid ourselves neither was JFK.
It's always in times of war and fear of perceived fear --we are in danger of losing civil rights...
Roosevelt should have balanced security with common sense and compassion.
The perception that the Japanese Americans were a threat was both stupid and
disgraceful. After Pearl Harbor the fear card was used, like it is now.
However, you would think we would have learned by now!

In the 1930's
He pulled this country together when we were in total economic collapse.
With his 'New deal' he put America back to work building our infrastructure,
pulled us out of the Great depression and made us all proud for all we
accomplished,thanks to his leadership--
FDR was the president with the greatest legacy..
Reagan and Bush are both the Anti-FDR!

[Fresh_Start]

9. Because Roosevelt was President before our lifetimes

2008-1945 = 63 years ago
so to be even modestly aware of him as a person and politicians, a person would have had to be lets say 10 years old or so.
which would make them 73 years old at the youngest today.

[mondo joe]

11. 1. FDR's time was too long ago; 2. Democrats can't even seem to agree on ANY of our

presidents having been successful. I promise if you made a big show of how great FDR was, you'd get hit with internment camps, that FDR lied us into war, and everything that FDR didn't do anything about.

[LibDemAlways]

12. The Dems are too busy joining the repukes in

praising St. Ronnie to look for heroes within the Democratic Party. It's sort of like their take on impeachment. Can't bring it up for fear of making the opposition mad.

[Gloria]

13. The Democrats have lost their soul....and me.

[fascisthunter]

14. Because He Was the Complete Opposite of the DLC

the DLC wants us to embrace corporatism. FDR warned us against such a thing.

[Marr]

25. That's exactly it.

They don't idolize FDR publicly because they don't much care for him privately. They don't want to move that direction. I think they're more comfortable praising Ronald Reagan than FDR.

[laststeamtrain]

16. K & R

I can imagine that G.H.W Bush imbibed a life-long hatred of FDR at his Father's dinner table & his son? Dumbya? too stupid to understand the issues but the hatred feels good to him I'm sure. I think he's a borderline personality.

What would benefit everyone would be more people walking around with money in their pockets. Not that exotic a concept.

Time for a new new deal.

Edwards is the guy talking about it.

I don't understand people getting caught up in the airy-fairy nothingness of Obama or the proven conservatism (born of political expediency) of Clinton.

[Stinky The Clown]

23. Edwards, Kucinich, and Gravel, actually

And to a lesser degree, both Dodd and Biden.

Instead, we have as our frontrunners, the two most centrist of the bunch.

[jmondine]

17. Maybe Ronnie's corpse is lighter

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

[Hepburn]

18. Why not?

Because IMO the educational system in the US is so fucked anymore that most of the populus has no freaking clue who in the hell FDR is. Try asking the average someone about this and the most likely response is, "Huh?" Most cannot tell you who in the hell are the two US Senators from their own state ... let alone who is the US rep from their district and most have never heard of their state rep and senator.

It is totally disgusting.

[Hekate]

19. While the Neocons were demonizing the L-word they were also demeaning FDR's legacy

Gingrich & Co came to town to "undo the entire legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society." That's not the exact quote, sorry. It goes along with the "drowning (the fed govt) in a bathtub" notion.

I only read that a few years ago and it simultaneously made me nauseous (literally) and explained to me every dastardly deed they've done to our federal system since Reagan.

I have a little altar at home. Over the past 7 years I've added coins to the mix, so I now have miniature portraits of great American heroes: FDR, Thomas Jefferson, Washington, and Lincoln.

Our people no longer remember what they did for us, not really. Most people alive now were born after FDR died, and they don't even know why his face ended up on the dime instead of another coin (he supported the Mothers' March of Dimes against polio), much less how the New Deal worked to save this country.

Hekate -- a feminist and a liberal

[Jim Sagle]

20. Because Joe Klein and David Broder wouldn't approve.

[robbedvoter]

21. Gzactly! Had Obama used FDR in that interview - today's results might have

been different!

[Triana]

26. The soul of the Democratic Party has been eviscerated by corporations and the DLC

Look at what happened to Edwards.

THAT is what the current "Democratic" party thinks of FDR.

And while the corprat-owned media will abide the deification of St. Ronnie - do you think they'd allow such fawning over FDR? I doubt it. They'd marginalize and sheister the sentiments about him just like they did John Edwards and for the very same reasons.

This country is lost. And the Democratic Party has been lost right along with it.

[Leopolds Ghost]

27. Clinton and Obama oppose FDR's policies. They do not want to "turn back the clock" to the New Deal.

They seem to oppose single payer HC in favor of a corporate fascist plan to force families to purchase whatever insurance is available, and go after the credit and dock the wages of people who don't.

They seem to support HOPE VI and urban Democrats' plan for removal of apartment buildings in New Orleans and other big cities.

They seem to support Welfare Reform and criticize "60s liberals" who didn't buy into Reagan's and Clinton's formulations.

They support free trade vs. protective tarriffs.

They oppose basic civil liberties commitments (such as opposition to national tracking of civilians) that defined and distinguished FDR's program from that of the Nazis and the Soviets.

[Hidden Stillness]

28. Who Would Even Give the Message Anymore?

You know, I have been thinking about this thread since I first read it a couple of nights ago, and it has deepened from a seemingly straightforward "Why Don't We..?" question, to a real reason why they can't. It has been bothering me ever since, because it actually shows why they can't, and how far they have fallen since, until finally, they don't really connect to the Democratic tradition at all, and probably by now do not themselves want it referred to; it is a nuisance of "non-consultant interference." They actually do now feel more comfortable with references to Ronald Reagan and that ilk.

All of the Roosevelt Administration's New Deal programs were related directly to the people, and solving their concerns, both immediate (unemployment, starvation, eviction) and long-term (new banking and other corporate regulations, infrastructure, fair labor practices). Things were explained on FDR's radio "Fireside Chats," and things tried, and changed, until something worked--it was always directed only to the American people. Just to take one example of how their entire orientation has changed, from Roosevelt's way (FDR and Eleanor) to Reagan/corporate: During the Depression, when now-unemployed people could no longer pay the mortgages on their homes and were threatened with eviction, the New Deal had a program called HOLC, Home Owners' Loan Corporation. This agency bought the mortgages from banks and other holders, rewrote them do that they were now affordable, and saved over one million homes this way; one of every five non-farm home mortgages; then they did the same with a farm program of this type. Compare this with the current group of lobbyist-mouthpieces, who never propose any program nowadays that is related to the people and their problems, but centered completely on corporate bailouts, corporate tax cuts, deregulation of any numbers of sorts, or forced buying of unregulated commercial insurance. Roosevelt understood the corruption and threat of big business; the current "I Like Reagan, Too" group defends big business against attacks from us.

Most of the infrastructure rebuilding and conservation work of the 1930s were WPA projects, solving problems, and giving people jobs--now these contracts go only to Republican-connected contributors, and do not touch the people at all. The "Democrats" are so cut off, that all of them seemed to be shocked at all the anger and fear they encountered on the campaign trail just the past couple of weeks--oblivious before!--and now suddenly, everyone has an "economic" plan, where you couldn't get them to listen (or stop calling it "class warfare") before. I don't know how many times I have been listening to Congressional floor speeches on C-SPAN, and heard John Kerry or one of these, longingly refer to Ronald Reagan as their great hero, and I yell at the TV screen--Stop referring to that bastard, you fucking asshole! WHY are you quoting THEM? Do you even know anymore who Franklin or Eleanor Roosevelt were??

I knew things were getting bad when, about 20 years ago or whatever it was, moderate Republicans no longer called themselves "Eisenhower Republicans," which would have been fine; they suddenly started pretending this corporate/libertarian extremist Reagan was a "moderate," and the model for things. With their total corporate media monopoly, there was no one who could get an opposing response out anymore, and so, like the rest of history, it was just gone, erased. Like earlier eras of TV, where you sometimes had very high quality programs, made-for TV movies like "Sybil," "The Winds of War," "Shogun," "The Execution of Private Slovik," etc., among the rest--and now it is like it never happened, never referred to as an earlier era, because the comparison between the greatness of then, and the craven nothingness of now, is so great--for this very same reason, they cannot refer to FDR or the New Deal. They are nothing like it anymore.

[seasat]

29. Because we're realists and he's too far back in current history.

We typically place ideas over the person. Repugs don't have ideas that benefit a large majority so they have to justify their positions based on a myth like Reagan.

The other reason that they promote Reagan is that he's recent history. Many folks alive today lived through the Reagan era. If you were already moderately well off, you did okay during the Reagan era. The Repugs promote a nostalgia for era for those folks by invoking him. A better choice for us would be to promote Bill Clinton if we want to form a cult of personality like the Reaganites do. However, we wouldn't be realists if we went that route.

[leftofthedial]

30. the centrist "democrats" (like Clinton and Obama)

LOVE Reagan and HATE FDR's legacy.

[endarkenment]

31. centrist Democrats are ashamed of the new deal

they have bought into the Washington Consensus neoliberal ideology of privatization and 'individual responsibility', which is antithetical to the collectivist democratic socialist 'all in one boat pulling together' ideology of that bygone era.