EARLIER POTUS CONFRONTING THE COURTS: 8/8: Roosevelt Sweeps Nation: FDR’s 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal by David Pietrusza (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2025
⏱️ 5 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Roosevelt-Sweeps-Nation-Landslide-Triumph/dp/1635767776
Award-winning historian David Pietrusza boldly steers clear of the pat narrative regarding Franklin Roosevelt’s unprecedented 1936 re-election landslide, weaving an enormously more intricate, ever more surprising tale of a polarized nation; of America’s most complex, calculating, and politically successful president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the very top of his Machiavellian game; and the unlocking of the puzzle of how our society, our politics, and our parties fitfully reinvented themselves.
With in-depth examinations of rabble-rousing Democratic US Senator Huey Long and his assassination before he was able to challenge FDR in ’36; powerful, but widely hated, newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, who blasted FDR’s “Raw Deal”; wildly popular, radical radio commentator Father Coughlin; the steamrolled passage of Social Security and backlash against it; the era’s racism and anti-Semitism; American Socialism and Communism; and a Supreme Court seemingly bent on dismantling the New Deal altogether, Roosevelt Sweeps Nation is a vivid portrait of a dynamic Depression-Era America.
1937 SCOTUS
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batchel with David Patricia. |
| 0:07.2 | Great fun. |
| 0:08.2 | David Patricia's book is great fun because at the time it was tragedy upon tragedy. |
| 0:13.1 | People were struggling to have confidence each day that there would be a tomorrow. |
| 0:18.7 | The world of the United States at this time was watching Europe tumble into the catastrophe we know as the second war, still with us, still scarring mankind. |
| 0:31.6 | But at this moment, we come to election night, and David celebrates election night by taking us to a scene in the Hyde Park scene, |
| 0:39.6 | the one where Roosevelt always returned to Hyde Park. It was like he recharged his batteries there. |
| 0:45.8 | Eleanor is in a white chiffon gown with an immense red rose. I'm following in her belt. I'm |
| 0:51.3 | following David's reporting. The reporters are gathered outside. |
| 0:55.0 | The teletype machines are chattering away. David, they still expected for it to be close |
| 1:01.0 | that late in the night. Is that correct? Well, they didn't know. And politics is a time of |
| 1:08.3 | surprises. Jim Farley was always very confident. |
| 1:13.0 | He had predicted that Roosevelt would take 46 out of 48 states. |
| 1:18.0 | Franklin Roosevelt was predicting a win and had been the whole time, but not a massive, massive landslide. |
| 1:26.5 | The literary digest was still, which had a sample. |
| 1:31.0 | It was a straw poll. |
| 1:32.8 | It wasn't scientific. |
| 1:34.0 | People mailed their responses in, but they had millions of responses. |
| 1:38.1 | They had missed the 1932 election by only two electoral votes. |
| 1:44.0 | They had everything right except one state in 1924, 1916, which was an eyelash. |
| 1:49.5 | They had got that right. |
| 1:51.1 | So they had always been right. |
... |
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