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The New Deal and the Political Party System. Richard M. Skinner. The Great Depression. The stock market crash of 1929 ended the prosperity of the Twenties. By 1933, unemployment reached 24%. Widespread bank failures threatened the very survival of the economy. Living in “ Hooverville ”.
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The New Deal and the Political Party System Richard M. Skinner
The Great Depression • The stock market crash of 1929 ended the prosperity of the Twenties. • By 1933, unemployment reached 24%. Widespread bank failures threatened the very survival of the economy.
Living in “Hooverville” • Before the crash, Herbert Hoover had been widely admired for his work feeding starving Europeans after World War I. • Republicans had been seen as the party of prosperity: “ The Full Dinner Pail,” “A Chicken in Every Pot.” The party had held the White House for 28 of the previous 36 years. • Neither reputation survived the Depression.
Franklin D. Roosevelt • FDR was a distant cousin of Theodore Roosevelt and his wife was T.R.’s niece. Early in his career, he was widely seen as mostly trading on his famous surname. • He had served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson, and had been the 1920 Democratic nominee for Vice President. • He was then stricken with polio.
“A Second-Class Mind…” • FDR was elected governor of New York in 1928, when incumbent Al Smith ran unsuccessfully for president. • He quickly became the leading Democratic contender for the 1932 presidential nomination.
…But a First-Class Temperament” • Despite a mostly incoherent campaign, Roosevelt trounced Hoover with 57% of the vote, the largest Democratic victory since before the Civil War. • FDR had a mandate to do something to alleviate the suffering of the Depression.
A New Deal • FDR’s answer was to greatly expand the role played by the federal government in the nation’s economy. • Higher taxes on the rich. • Huge public works projects to create jobs. • Old-age and disability pensions. • Unemployment compensation. • More regulation of business. • Federal deposit insurance.
“The President Wants You to Join” • FDR’s policies favored the growth of labor unions; union membership grew from 12% of the workforce in 1930 to 35% in 1945. • The National Labor Relations Act (known as the “Wagner Act” for Sen. Robert Wagner) guaranteed the right of unions to collectively bargain.
A New Ally • The fastest growing unions were those who belonged to the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), founded in 1937. • They were far larger and more politicized than their predecessors. • They became a major constituency for FDR and the Democratic Party.
Continuity… • FDR tried to identify his program with the “common-man” politics of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. • He built upon William Jennings Bryan’s and Woodrow Wilson’s acceptance of an activist government to help ordinary people.
… and Change • But FDR expanded the federal government far beyond the imagination of politicians of both parties. • Many fear that he was taking the nation to socialism, communism or fascism. • Conservative Democrats (including Al Smith) warned that FDR was breaking with the party’s Jeffersonian traditions of localism and laissez-faire. • Conservatives (and even some progressives) in both parties feared the destruction of America’s democratic institutions.
“Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Roosevelt!” • During FDR’s first term, congressional Democrats let him get his way on most matters. • They were fearful that the Depression could get even worse. • They thought that FDR was saving the country. • They were grateful that their party was in power after spending a generation as a minority. • Most powerful Democrats were from the South, the nation’s poorest region, which benefited disproportionately from the New Deal.
“Court-packing” • But in FDR’s second term, conservative Democrats (especially Southerners) began to revolt. • Angered by the Supreme Court’s repeated overturning of New Deal legislation, FDR proposed expanding its size and imposing a mandatory retirement age.
A Dictator? • Members of both parties united in opposition to FDR’s “court-packing” proposal. The Supreme Court began upholding New Deal programs. • “Court-packing” failed in Congress. And conservatives – including FDR’s own Vice President John Nance Garner – began to say that the president was out of control.
The “Conservative Coalition” • Southern Democrats began breaking with FDR on economic issues, too, such as the regulation of wages and hours. • With the economy sagging again, the Republicans scored major gains in the 1938 midterm elections. • For decades to come, Congress would be dominated by a “conservative coalition” of Republicans and Southern Democrats.
The New Deal Realignment • Despite being split between northern liberals and southern conservatives, the Democratic Party had gained a majority. • It won every presidential election from 1932 to 1948. • It held a clear edge in party identification until the 1980s. • It controlled the House of Representatives until the 1990s, with two short exceptions.
The Party Roosevelt Builds • FDR splits the electorate along class lines, with the poor and working class backing the Democrats. • Many wealthier Americans saw FDR as playing to class warfare. He called them “economic royalists.”
Unions and the Democrats • Labor unions became a cornerstone of the Democratic coalition and have remained one to this day.
City Slickers • Unlike Bryan or Wilson, FDR enjoyed more popularity in big cities than in rural areas. • Many cities that had once been competitive between the parties became solidly Democratic. • Rewarded with patronage and government spending, the Democratic machines in those cities became important supporters of FDR and his successors. • These cities had concentrations of union members, blacks, Jews and Catholics – all groups supportive of FDR.
Catholics and Jews • Many recently arrived immigrants had not voted in the 1920s, but turned out in 1928 to back Al Smith and in the 1930s to back FDR. • Long a Democratic constituency, Catholics especially appreciated FDR’s ending of Prohibition. • Generally supportive of FDR’s progressive policies, Jews especially admired his tough stance against Hitler. • Both groups were still mostly working-class, and were well represented in the ranks of organized labor, as well as those of urban machines.
“The Great Migration” • During the early 20th century, both political parties ignored black voters and accepted the racial status quo. • But as African-Americans left the South for Northern cities (beginning around World War I), white politicians increasingly had to pay attention to their concerns.
“The White Man’s Party” • Franklin D. Roosevelt led a Democratic Party whose base of support lay in the South and had a long history of support for “white supremacy.” He himself had little interest in the issue of civil rights.
A New Deal for Blacks? • But FDR had an unusual opportunity to win votes from African-Americans. • While his “New Deal” programs still sometimes discriminated against blacks, they provided essential aid to the poor and unemployed. • FDR also appointed blacks to some, mostly symbolic, government positions. • Perhaps for the first time since Reconstruction, black citizens felt they had a friend in the White House.
“Miss Eleanor” • FDR especially used his wife, Eleanor, as an emissary to the black community.
“Mr. Roosevelt, You’re My Man!” • In 1936, black voters broke with decades of Republican loyalty to back FDR. • For example, FDR’s vote in black neighborhoods of Cleveland jumped from about 18% in ’32 to about 60%. • In the next few elections, about 70% of blacks voted Democratic.
Liberal Democrats • Many liberal intellectuals and reformers had been suspicious of the Democrats. They often had been “Bull Moose” Republicans, Socialists, or independent Progressives. • The New Deal brought them into the Democratic coalition, including many powerful jobs in the administration. • Harold Ickes, an ardent liberal (and civil rights backer) and a one-time supporter of Theodore Roosevelt and Robert LaFollette, served as FDR’s Secretary of the Interior.
The “Solid South” • The South remained loyal to the Democrats in the 1930s and 1940s. • It was still a desperately poor region, where many still made their living as farmers. • Even conservative Southerners appreciated New Deal programs such as rural electrification and farm price supports.
“The Solid South” • Southern Democrats in Congress enjoyed virtually lifetime tenure, allowing them to build the seniority that made them chairmen of many powerful committees. • At home, the Democratic Party remained in the hands of conservatives sworn to uphold limited government and white supremacy. • So even the most anti-New Deal Southerners saw little reason to leave the party.
“The Solid South” • But conservative Southern Democrats remained fearful of FDR’s expansion of the federal government. At home, they successfully fought union organizers. • While FDR avoided the civil rights issue, many white Southerners still resented the power of black voters and liberal activists in the North. • Even small gestures angered them. In 1936, Sen. Ellison “Cotton Ed” Smith (SC) walked out of the Democratic convention when a black minister presented a prayer.