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Roosevelt could offer lessons to many

Progressivism and the New Deal plus the Great Society have sometimes been lumped together as one and the same. Usually Conservatives simply give all of these ideas the label of “liberal” and leave it at that. In truth, the tendencies are different and reflect the rich mixture of ideas that make up the Democratic party.

First, Progressivism emerged in the late 1890s and 1900s. This was based on moral precepts and not a little noblesse oblige. It stressed an upper-class distress of a system that created “dangerous classes” through squalid conditions. It was not socialist; indeed, President Woodrow Wilson jailed more leftists, including Eugene V. Debs, than any administration in American history.

Their approach was to create a fairer capitalist system based on regulation. Wilson’s “New Freedom” was grounded in trying to encourage “the young man on the make” by reducing protectionism and getting credit into the hands of those who had been shut out of credit markets. In the end, the experiment went away with some factions going toward prohibition and women’s right to vote.

Progressivism is still reflected in the Democratic party largely through the environmental issues, feminism and diversity. Like today’s progressives, it is largely upper-middle class in orientation. Unionism and the blue collar sector are priorities but not major ones in scope. Barack Obama and Bill Clinton were fully in this camp.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal went through many changes from 1933 to 1937. Beginning as an attempt to manipulate markets, producing high prices for producers and money for consumers. It careened back and forth between market solutions and governmental approaches. After the Supreme Court scuttled much of the “first New Deal,” Roosevelt passed the Wagner Act which reinforced Labor’s right to organize, mandated a minimum wage and instituted Social Security. The “second New Deal” provided the basis of the modern Democratic party.

Roosevelt drew much inspiration from John Stuart Mill’s view of the “greatest good for the greatest number.” He envisioned government as a “broker” between interests. And his main preoccupation were workers. Under his administration, Union membership skyrocketed. During World War II, prices increased, markets expanded and a solid middle class created. Economic in approach it eschewed the moral tut-tuting of the progressive era. Nor did it swoon over the small producer tending to regard such enterprises as dependent on paying their their workers “starvation wages” in order to survive.

After the war the Democrats, no longer in a world dominated by economic want, adjusted. But in the years after 1945 it moved away slowly from labor and the blue collar. John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert helped investigate the teamsters as president JFK reduced tariffs. Even Lyndon B. Johnson with his Great Society, and huge congressional majorities, failed to repeal Taft-Hartley, which mandated the open shop.

Every other Democratic administration has placed the old base as a low priority, far more satisfied in granting benefits than rights. The new progressivism stresses diversity, not economic rights. And although they are far more dependable than Republicans and the mercurial Mr. Trump, they have got to rally what Lee Atwater called “Johnny lunch bucket.” Perhaps Mr. Roosevelt can provide some remedies to the Democrats’ blue collar blues.

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