Frank DiStefano: 'The First New Deal FDR Starts to Transform the Democratic Party!'

Source:Frank DiStefano with an inaccurate presentation about Franklin Roosevelt and liberalism.

"In this episode, we talk about Franklin Roosevelt’s First New Deal—the first step in a radical transformation of the Democratic Party.

When Roosevelt took office, he sought to collect a group of advisers with bold ideas about getting America out of the Great Depression. Looking for the best minds, he didn’t only pull from people with Democratic Party backgrounds. He also employed a lot of progressives with Republicans backgrounds, since the Progressive Movement had flourished among the professionals and academics whose expertise he needed. This group took on a name—the Brain Trust.

Roosevelt’s Brain Trust added and lost members over time, including names like Rex Tugwell, Raymond Morley, Adolf Berle, Felix Frankfurter, Frances Perkins, Harlod Ickes, and Harry Hopkins. These advisors launched flurry of innovative policy experiments, all of which shared a common idea about how to solve the Depression. They wanted to reduce competition between firms and raise prices.

Although the effect of many New Deal policies Keynesian stimulus, that’s not what the New Dealers themselves were trying to do. They were aware of John Maynard Keynes and his ideas, but mainly had a different economic theory in mind. They thought the key to getting America out of the Depression was to make firms more healthy, which they could do by increasing the prices they could charge and reducing the downward pressure on price of competition caused. Reducing this competitive pressure, they thought, would let companies put people back to work. 

The crown jewels of their First New Deal program were the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) and the National Recovery Administration (NRA), which each sought to coordinate the economy so every producer charge more for products and easily compete.

This First New Deal was a radical break for the Democratic Party. Democrats had long prided themselves on fighting bigness, both in government and industry, back to Thomas Jefferson. It was the Federalists, Whigs, and Republicans who had always sought to work with industry, manage the economy, and spend on infrastructure. Now Roosevelt was working with industry titans and embracing bigness as an idea. Naturally, he soon found himself under attack from traditional Democratic populists who believed the progressive program of the First New Deal had sold out the party’s traditional constituency—workers and the little guy...

From Frank DiStefano

I just have to push back here against Frank DiStefano: 

Franklin Roosevelt didn't create the modern Democratic Party or even the liberal wing. Anyone who knows their political history, knows that the right-wing Dixiecrat (Neo-Confederate Democrats) were still not just a major part of the Democratic Party, but a major part of FDR's political coalition. He doesn't get elected President in 1932 and then reelected President 3 times, without the Dixiecrats. 

The liberal wing of the Democratic Party was already there before FDR even becomes Governor of New York in 1929. Wendell Willkie who was the Republican Party presidential nominee, was a Liberal Democrat (or Classical Liberal Democrat, if you prefer) in the 1920s. 

Willkie was more liberal (meaning a real liberal) than FDR on all sorts of issues, including civil rights and civil liberties. And left the Democratic Party (not his liberal values) in the 1930s, because he thought FDR was going too left and centralizing too much power with the Federal Government, with his New Deal. Willkie was worried that FDR was turning America into a socialist state.

This is what liberalism really is: 

"Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law.[1][2][3] Liberals espouse various views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion,[11] constitutional government and privacy rights.[12] Liberalism is frequently cited as the dominant ideology of modern history.[13][14]

Liberalism became a distinct movement in the Age of Enlightenment, gaining popularity among Western philosophers and economists. Liberalism sought to replace the norms of hereditary privilege, state religion, absolute monarchy, the divine right of kings and traditional conservatism with representative democracy, rule of law, and equality under the law. Liberals also ended mercantilist policies, royal monopolies, and other trade barriers, instead promoting free trade and marketization.[15] Philosopher John Locke is often credited with founding liberalism as a distinct tradition based on the social contract, arguing that each man has a natural right to life, liberty and property, and governments must not violate these rights.[16] While the British liberal tradition has emphasized expanding democracy, French liberalism has emphasized rejecting authoritarianism and is linked to nation-building." 

From Wikipedia

The Democratic Party has never been a left, right, or center party. It's always been a party, at least since the 1930s under FDR, that's had a center-right, a center-left, and even a left-wing in it. But a party that when it's successful, has been able to come together on Democratic values like free speech, personal freedom, free press, and even property rights, opportunity and responsibility for all, and even civil and equal rights, thanks to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. 

As Frank DiStefano said himself, Franklin Roosevelt wasn't very ideological. He was very pragmatic, like a true Progressive. He wanted to know what the problems were and what were the best policies to try to solve those problems. The New Deal is a perfect example of that which created the modern safety net (not welfare state) designed to help people who were struggling with the Great Depression, to try to help them get through the depression. But not with all sorts of new government programs to try to run their lives for them. 

What Frank DiStefano is really doing here, is representing most of the false stereotypes of what it means to be a Liberal Democrat in America, as well as the stereotypes of Franklin Roosevelt. Who was very liberal on foreign policy and national security (just look at World War II with his defense of liberal democracy and fight against fascism) but very pragmatic (like a true Progressive) when it came to economic policy. 

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