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I think this is an extremely interesting topic also, and I like so many others, believe that it will be exactly that, another New Deal, that will save our economy, our country, our civic political system, and our relations with the other countries of the world. It is so complicated, to try to understand what the New Deal was, why it solved things, etc., that you should probably just read several books on it (if you already haven't) until you feel you understand the thing, and the era, a little better. My parents were lifelong, die-hard New Deal Roosevelt Democrats, who thought Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were saints, and so I have a great feeling for their mindset, which I believe is the only way to be, but if you didn't have personal contact, you may have to reconstruct it. One great book is "The Battle for Social Security" by Nancy J. Altman, very knowledgeable and wise about the situation, a book that not only explains why it is needed (a Godsend), but what a monumental battle it was, every step of the way, getting every Goddamned part of it past Republicans. For those of you who think they wanted to leave health care to "the wisdom of the marketplace," a concept that would have been alien to them, they tried to add universal health care to Social Security, but Republicans threatened to kill the entire thing and much of the rest of the New Deal, (as they later did do), so health care was dropped, with the hope that it could be passed later. It never was.
For the silly people who grab every opportunity to try to claim that "really, FDR was 'centrist' 'D'LC," one quote, among many, will suffice:
"A Radical is a man with both feet firmly planted--in the air.
"A Conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.
"A Reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.
"A Liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest, at the command, of his head."
(Apologies for the exclusive male reference that was the style then. Some people still talk that way.) There were many serious, or joking, comments from Roosevelt, and all of them were about being a proud liberal, or proud Democrat, or proud American. No "centrist" shit. Roosevelt made strong, attacking criticisms, and warnings, about "economic Royalists," greed, corporate traitors, about how big business hated Roosevelt and "I welcome that hate," and even warning about the threat of fascism from the power and organization of American big business itself: "The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
The New Dealers thought of every industry as, first and foremost, the servant of the people, and that the people should regulate it all, for the general social good--the media and public airwaves (fucked away by Clinton), workplace rights and safety, pensions, the stock market, etc., and that the poor and destitute of the Depression needed help now--jobs programs, Social Security payments, and yes--welfare. Because of Nationwide suffering, never were the poor and unemployed less stigmatized than during the 1930s (read Studs Terkel's "Hard Times," etc.), because everyone knew someone who was jobless, had lost the family farm, etc., etc. "No business which depends for existence by paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country," FDR 1933. "Remember that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists," FDR 1938, after Eleanor put on a huge, free concert with the opera singer Marian Anderson, after she had been refused a concert at the DAR.
Contrary to some opinion, the public was not unaware that Roosevelt had polio--it was well-known; FDR after all created the March of Dimes against polio, had bought the resort at Hot Springs and given it as a gift to the American people, as a place to go to for treatment (as Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson bequeathed their Texas ranch as a public Historical Park and museum for the American people, and as they insisted that the LBJ Library be free)--imagine Bush, Cheney or this shitty ilk doing any of that! The thing that many were unaware of at the time was of how complete the loss of use of the legs was, and that Roosevelt could not stand at all, unaided. Most people who have studied it, credit the devastating onset of polio, to Roosevelt's deep understanding and compassion, which up to then had been pretty minimal. There was also the compassionate and radicalizing influence of Eleanor; they really were partners, however troubled their marriage on other counts.
Roosevelt even referred to the New Deal itself as the Sermon on the Mount put into practice. (Another one who tells the history very well is Thom Hartmann.) I also remember, but can't find, a comment something like, that Roosevelt wished that they could have done something to curb the corrupting power and influence of stockholders, that they subverted a business's true responsibility to the workers, the customers, and the general society. The point was not so much that FDR wanted to get rid of capitalism, considered a pipe-dream, unworkable, and would be replaced by something like Communism which would have been as bad, as that it was that the Roosevelts, like the Kennedys and some of the Rockefellers, etc., realized just how disgusting and corrupt, greedy and un-American some of their fellow rich people were/are.
This is a subject that goes on forever and really should be studied as the next cure. Any "D"LC "centrist" asinine enough to think that the New Deal is the "old" way, and that "we" need "new" ways--like deregulating everything back to the Gilded Age!--should realize the commonsense understanding of things, that poverty, corporate corruption, price-gouging, supression of wages, outsourcing, plant relocation, bribery of legislators, and all the rest, is not "new" and never changes. Since some 60-70% of the GDP is from consumer purchases (just heard again a few days ago on PBS NewsHour), and so, the basis, and almost total content of the economy is people buying things to keep their standard of living, then the only thing that DOES work is direct cash payments, jobs and infrastructure programs, and the new New Deal!
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