The worst part about how the conservative Democrats are behaving here is that it’s not their party. They hijacked the party. In the '80s and '90s the “New Democrat” neoliberals took over the Democratic Party. They took over a party that had ushered in the greatest period of prosperity in American history. And they destroyed it. The party of FDR was murdered by these conservative Democrats and their neoliberal policies.
The New Deal, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, saved capitalism. It was put in place because socialists were a strong and serious threat. The oligarchs understood that with the breakdown of capitalism—something I expect we will again witness in our lifetimes—there was a possibility of a socialist revolution. They did not want to lose their wealth and power. Roosevelt, writing to a friend in 1930, said there was “no question in my mind that it is time for the country to become fairly radical for at least one generation. History shows that where this occurs occasionally, nations are saved from revolution.” In other words, Roosevelt went to his fellow oligarchs and said, “Hand over some of your money or you will lose all your money in a revolution.” And they complied. That is how the government created fifteen million jobs, Social Security, unemployment benefits, and public works projects. The capitalists did not do this because the suffering of the masses moved them to pity. They did this because they were scared.
The worst part about how the conservative Democrats are behaving here is that it’s not their party. They hijacked the party. In the '80s and '90s the “New Democrat” neoliberals took over the Democratic Party. They took over a party that had ushered in the greatest period of prosperity in American history. And they destroyed it. The party of FDR was murdered by these conservative Democrats and their neoliberal policies.
FDR was a genocidal freak too though and that prosperity you speak of was only for white men.
Chris Hedges, America: The Farewell Tour
Book suggestion. The Democrats: A critical history. -by Lance Senfa
Spoilers: The Democratic Party has never been good, it’s just been rehabilitated through a mainstream rewriting of / popular history