[lbo-talk] If McCain had won

[Carrol Cox]

On 7/24/2011 8:59 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Jul 24, 2011, at 9:53 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>> And after you romp in this rhetoric for a while, start reading accounts of what FDR _did_ in 1937-8 after being overwhelmingly reelected. Boom! Up went the unemployment rate again. And FDR was soon on the phone urging Gov. Murphy of Michigan to call out the National Guard to suppress the sit-down strikes. And of course the New Deal was strictly for whites only. The DP hasn't really changed. It responds to great pressure -- if and ony if that pressure threatens serious public disorder.
>
> Carrol, the DP sucks, but this is really overdone. Social Security and the WPA weren't nothing, and the American right has been at war with the New Deal ever since. Sometimes cows are different colors, even if they all look black at night.
>
> Doug

Granted -- mostly. As I said, the DP responds to pressure -- and Huey 
Long plus the Townsend plan were rather intense pressure.

The WPA was indeed really something. I think it was Sweezy who pointed 
out that it was the only government program ever to point beyond 
capitalism. AND it was under attack from inside the administration as 
well as outside from the beginning, and before the war shut down both, 
it was being phased out, the PWA phased in.

It was Eleanor who was responsible for whatever moves were made to help 
Blacks. And (I may not be correct here, my memory is hazy) sometimes she 
had to do it over resistance from him.

He was one of the few DP presidents actually to justify the lesser-evil 
argument on  Supreme Court appointments. But the record is still pretty 
spotty -- and leaves open the perspective that it was outside pressure 
that deserves teh main credit.

Carrol