It was 80 years ago today... [View all]

[MannyGoldstein]

"A widow, who used to do housework and laundry but who was finally left without any work, fed herself and her fourteen-year-old son on garbage. Before she picked up the meat, she would always take off her glasses so that she would not be able to see the maggots; but it sometimes made the boy so sick to look at this offal and smell it that he could not bring himself to eat."

- Edmund Wilson, Hull House (1932)

This is the America that Franklin Roosevelt took the helm of 80 years ago today. After decades of increasing income disparity, the bottom had fallen out under Hoover's watch. Hoover worked mightily to right the ship by bailing out banks and business, but to his great surprise, his trickle-down efforts never worked. The job creators wouldn't create jobs.

FDR entered the White House determined to create a New Deal for Americans - a deal where all Americans, not just the wealthy, could get a leg up and lead a decent life. And since 1933, that New Deal has been the very lifeblood of working Americans: As the New Deal grew and expanded, the 99% did better. As the New Deal has been unceasingly attacked and beaten back by America's elite since 1981, the lot of the 99% has fallen, fallen.

It has become fashionable lately to bash FDR. Even Democrats have joined in the fun, including our President, who claims (erroneously) that FDR let the previous depression get terrible on purpose. And while FDR had his faults, the bottom line is this: he made sure that the working class got a fair break, and he set the stage for almost 50 years of growing prosperity for all Americans.

As we listen to the growing bipartisan demand to take bigger and bigger chunks out of the New Deal, to whittle it down until it's small enough to be drowned in a bathtub, remember this: we are the New Deal, and the New Deal is us. If it dies, we die with it.