Robert F. Kennedy Jr.| Hillary Haters and the Roosevelts

[Demeter]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/hillary-haters-and-the-ro_b_76573.html
The Huffington Post




Even some Democrats who agree with Hillary Clinton on every issue and consider her an effective, inspiring leader, fret that the blind, irrational hatred, that burdened her husband during his presidency and that continues to dog his wife, might impair her electability. "She is too polarizing" they say, parroting the verdict of television's Sunday morning gas bags....It's worth recalling the historical parallels with an earlier presidential couple. "No other word than hatred will do," observed a May 1936, Harper's Magazine feature "They Hate Roosevelt" by Marquis W. Childs. "The phenomenon to which I refer goes beyond objection to policies or programs. It is a consuming personal hatred of President Roosevelt and, to an almost equal degree, of Mrs. Roosevelt."...Childs deemed this "fanatical hatred" so intense and irrational that it could only be explained as the product of "abnormal psychology." Historian William Manchester described how Roosevelt haters "abandoned themselves in orgies of presidential vilification." William Bird, curator of political history at the Smithsonian Institution said that "by 1936, the 'Roosevelt haters' had developed into a well-defined cult among the nation's business elite," their lackeys in the press and on the editorial boards and among right wing Christian theocrats led by fascist radio host Father Charles Coughlin.

"In history, this hatred may well go down as the major irony of our time," wrote Childs. "The majority of those who rail against the have to a large extent had their incomes restored and their bank balances replenished since the low point of 1933," before FDR came to power. "That is what makes the phenomenon so incredible. It is difficult to find a rational cause for this hatred."



The intense hatred of the Roosevelts was a dominant feature in the American political landscape during the decade of the 1930s and prompted efforts to impeach him and even a plot to depose him by a military coup planned by high ranking officers of Wall Street's richest corporations, including Goodyear, Bethlehem Steel, JP Morgan, and DuPont. The "vast right wing conspiracy" had its own Richard Mellon Scaife. Robert Clark, one of Wall Street's richest bankers and stock brokers pledged half of his $60 million fortune to help finance the coup. His deputy, former Commander Gerald Macguire of the American Legion, a Wall Street bond broker, equated Roosevelt's reforms to Communism and explained the purpose of the coup to a co-conspirator, "We need a fascist government in this country to save the nation from the Communists who want to tear it down and wreck everything we have built in America." The 1933 coup attempt was only averted by the courage of General Smedley Butler, the popular World War I warrior who had been tapped by Wall Street to lead the plot and who instead exposed and denounced it.

"People in power with privilege don't want to be challenged at all," Hillary told me recently as we discussed the repetitive rhythms of history. "FDR's policies rescued capitalism, thereby saving the fortunes and restoring the incomes of so many of the same people who would curse his name over the dinner table. They somehow still felt threatened because they don't like to be questioned...And there is something of the same going on today. If you challenge the pharmaceutical companies, the health insurance companies, if you think investment fund managers should be taxed at the same rate as nurses and firefighters, you run into this vitriolic response."

Irrational hatred was the powerful drug that intoxicated the Gingrich Congress to impeach President Bill Clinton at the time when he enjoyed 65% popularity with the American people and had steered the nation through eight years of peace and unprecedented prosperity.



AMONG THE 500+ COMMENTS ATTACHED:

Looks like another support ad for Hillary. Mr. Kennedy does not list the things that she has done against this country: Voted to go to war, called the Iranians "terrorists" while supporting "terrorist Bush." Mr. Kennedy is guilty of using a neo-con buzz word, "Hillary Haters",like they use "far left loonies" and "support the troops." I can't stand the hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton who now says we must bring the troops home. How can you praise Hillary who takes money from Murdoch, the hate-monger who trashes our democracy through his Fox machine. Yet she simply says why not take money from him. He is a constituent. This like saying why not take money from Hitler, we live in the same neighborhood. Besides what moron would agree with Hillary on every issue as Kennedy suggests. If they did they would be just as screwed up as she is. The left is not targeting Hillary because they hate her. They are targeting her because of her actions. She just does not ring true and never takes the democractic stand when the chips are down. Sorry, Mr. Kennedy. I don't hate Hillary. I just hate what she has done. Remember this: She was stone silent when we begged her not to go to war. Thousands of us knew that the Iraq war was wrong and a lie because we did our homework. But Hllarry, like Feinstein, refused to listen. These actions do not qualify her to lead us back to a true democracy....


Robert F. Kennedy, Jr's endorsement of Hillary Clinton was a major disappointment. Based on her record (and that of her husband), there is no basis to find any parallel with Franklin Delano and Eleanor Roosevelt...FDR fundamentally lifted up the American working class with his recognition of union rights and the enactment of the Social Security Act. Bill Clinton handed US corporations enormous leverage with his tenacious drive to enact NAFTA, which has cost more than 1 million US jobs and added more downward pressure on US wages, pensions, and benefits. Bill Clinton's welfare reform actually required repealing part of FDR's Social Security Act. He did nothing about employers effectively destroying the right to organize unions in the US.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has distinguished herself in the Senate by voting for the Iraq War and against Sen. Levin's amendment requiring that all diplomatic routes be used before war was commenced; her willingness to once again accept Bush-Cheney propaganda--this time on Iran; and craven capitulations to the right wing on symbolic issues like flag-burning.

H Clinton's comments about leaving combat troops in Iraq for a number of years, her hostility toward Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and her continued hawkishness on Iran--undercut by the National Intelligence Estimate--are the very opposite of FDR's "Good Neighbor policy" that respects the integrity of international law and other nation's rights.

It is also hard to imagine FDR's chief adviser running a PR firm whose clients have included the Blackwater USA mercenaries.

Can anyone name one unpopular cause or excluded groups whose rights Hillary Clinton has championed as Eleanor Roosevelt has?

Hillary Clinton's record is one of siding with the winners, taking the safe course, and raking in the campaign contributions from the medical and defense industries. So if Hillary is elected, don't expect health reform that offends insurers and don't expect the restoration of US workers' rights to form unions and bargain for a share of the vast wealth siphoned away by the richest 1%. After all, they are Hillary's most ardent supporters.