People are just stinking ignorant these days.
He was first elected in 1932, so served during the shitstorm of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl which killed god knows how many people and destroyed our midwest, through World Wars, and much, much more bad news, including catching POLIO, nearly dying from it and remaining horribly crippled from it for the remainder of his life.
There were no minor ups/down; rather the entire economy was completely in the shitter back then, way worse than today and for a sustained duration that is much longer than anything we have yet suffered. Tent cities. Souplines. Men walking back roads to find work, stopping to get a dip of cream if they had a penny from farmers along the way while they hoofed it to seek work (an elderly woman in WalMart out here in the middle of nowhere told me of her mother putting out a milk tin of cream for this purpose as we chatted while getting canning supplies).
And yet, he was re-elected to serve THREE more terms after his first. So yes, presidents absolutely have been re-elected during horrifically bad times. They'd have elected him for a damned FIFTH term, had he lived and had term limits not been put into place.
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