CT Blue

If I had to summarize my problems with Barack Obama, I think it would boil down to this:

He had the chance to be an FDR and chose to be a Herbert Hoover.

If I had to summarize my problem with the modern Democratic Party it would boil down to this:

The Democratic Party takes every opportunity to distance itself from its own alleged beliefs and refuses to actively advocate for a government role in addressing social and economic problems. This one needs a little unpacking. It's not that they are against using government, it's that they are apologetic about it rather than upfront and aggressive. That's no way to win an argument, especially against the modern Republican Party.

FDR, the guy who “welcomed their hatred”, didn't back down and didn't apologize. We need more like him. But, as Beverly Bandler at Consortium News Points out (read the whole thing), the Democrats have largely abandoned FDR, though historians have not:

These days, the Democratic Party acts more like an enabler of the Republican Party as it seeks to poison the memory of the 32nd president and bury the significance of what FDR accomplished. Instead of highlighting Roosevelt’s remarkable legacy, today’s Democrats seem afraid to argue the point that government is vital to a successful society. They shy away from that debate despite the fact that the lessons of Roosevelt are central to solving the problems that the nation faces in 2014.

Besides the mainstream Democrats and their timidity, many average Americans suffer from “terminal historical amnesia” and appear oblivious of the history of FDR’s era. Too many who came of age in the years of Ronald Reagan (and after Reagan) bought into his idiom that “government is the problem” and his prescription of ”trickle-down economics” (giving massive tax cuts to the rich and trusting that their investments and spending will spill over to raise the living standards of working- and middle-class Americans).

For some Americans, it doesn’t even matter that Reagan’s nostrums have failed miserably, as today’s rich have amassed huge wealth – and the power that goes with it – while pretty much everyone else has stagnated or lost ground.

Still, an appreciation of FDR’s accomplishments and a recognition of Reagan’s mistakes are alive among serious historians. When 238 participating presidential scholars took part in the Siena College Research Institutes Survey of U.S. Presidents in 2010, Franklin Roosevelt ranked as the top all-time chief executive. Ronald Reagan was not even in the top ten.

If only that awareness could penetrate Official Washington’s conventional wisdom. Though President Barack Obama has highlighted the problem of income inequality, which Roosevelt ameliorated and which Reagan exacerbated, Obama has shied away from making the forceful argument that Reagan was just a skillful front man for the same forces of “organized money” that Roosevelt fought.

Obama also has failed to dislodge the resistance to activist government that is represented by Republicans, the Tea Party and the Right – and some analysts wonder if Obama and the Democrats really want to do so.

Economics professor Richard D. Wolff says ”Obama and most Democrats are so dependent on contributions and support from business and the rich that they dare not discuss, let alone implement, the kinds of policies Roosevelt employed the last time U.S. capitalism crashed.”

via Consortium News

Amen to all that. No one ever said that the best defense is a good defense, but that's what we always play. Regrettably, there are no FDRs out there. If there was a god, I'd be praying for relief from a Hillary Clinton candidacy, but it appears that our doom is sealed on that front. Far preferable would be an Elizabeth Warren or a Sherrod Brown, but the stars are not properly aligned. We have, at best, another seven years of Democratic spinelessness to endure.