Paging FDR: Democrats need to embrace New Deal-style politics [View all]

Paging FDR: Democrats need to embrace New Deal-style politics
FDR fought for the underdog — and he was brazenly ruthless. Dems should follow his lead

By Heather Digby Parton
Columnist
Published August 19, 2025 9:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) As Democratic voters watch the GOP congressional majority abdicate their role as a separate branch of government and national Democrats flail against the onslaught of extremist right-wing policy, they have turned their lonely eyes to Blue State governors. Over the last couple of weeks, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has emerged as the national leader of this group for his pugilistic response to the GOP’s craven mid-decade redistricting plans in Texas. According to polls, as well as any quick perusal of social media sites, this defiance is something the Democratic base has been yearning for from party leaders ever since Donald Trump returned to the White House and commenced a wholesale destruction of our democratic institutions.

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On Friday, Jia Lynn Yang published an article in the New York Times that provided insight into how the Democratic party evolved as it did and why it’s been so frustratingly impotent in the age of Trump. She noted that the party has had two different political styles, one of which was a ruthless, machine model that dominated the party following the Civil War. “Some of the most aggressive gerrymandering in American history occurred after the Civil War, as the parties vied for control of the nation,” Yang wrote. “In Northern industrial cities, Democratic party bosses built a new style of urban machine politics greased by the exchange of money and personal favors.”

This system was hardly meritocratic, although it did provide for the ascension of accomplished political players who knew how to excite a crowd and leverage the tools of power. But by the turn of the 20th century, the economic disparities and corruption of the Gilded Age opened the door for reform. The Progressive movement began to gel, ushering in a new respect for expertise and technocratic skill. The Democrats began to practice this style of politics:



Roosevelt’s example — balancing good government legal proceduralism and using power to obtain “substantial justice” at all costs — kept Democrats in power for more than 40 years and gave Americans the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, Medicare, Medicaid and other major accomplishments the moved society forward. But by the 1970s, when the New Deal coalition finally began to fall apart, the party’s proceduralists took over. In the years after they made some great strides, advancing civil rights and environmental protections, among other issues. But they were ill-equipped to deal with an opposition party that was increasingly turning to hucksters and demagogues. .......................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/08/19/paging-fdr-democrats-need-to-embrace-new-deal-style-politics/