MANDATE FOR THE UNELECTED NEW DEALERS, 1936: 4/8: 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
🗓️ 18 February 2025
⏱️ 8 minutes
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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.
1936 FDR SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK
Transcript
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| 0:40.3 | Music Remember to hit Follow so you don't miss an episode. I'm John Boucher with David Patricia. |
| 0:44.3 | His new book is Roosevelt Sweeps Nation, FDR's 1936 landslide, |
| 0:49.3 | and the triumph of the liberal ideal. |
| 0:52.3 | The Communist Party of the United States of America, the Socialist Party, |
| 0:57.6 | they have figures that lead them, and they're important figures because of their connection |
| 1:03.2 | to previous successes. The Socialists had been successful since all that century. Since the earliest |
| 1:10.3 | vote, 1912, I believe. |
| 1:12.6 | David helped me. Was 1912 their top or was 1920 their top? I can't recall. |
| 1:17.7 | 1920 is when they top about 900. Well, it depends how you measure it. |
| 1:23.4 | 1920, they get the highest number of raw votes. 1912, they get the highest percentage. |
| 1:30.1 | And even as late as 1932, Norman Thomas, who was their perennial candidate at this point, |
| 1:36.4 | following their previous perennial candidate, Eugene V. Debs, is still drawing 845,000 votes |
| 1:43.3 | and drawing hundreds of thousands of votes in the recent New York City |
| 1:48.5 | mayoral election. So the socialists represent theory and book learning and classicism, but they also |
| 1:56.7 | appeal to what we would say is the proto-union faction in the large city of New York. |
| 2:03.6 | Roosevelt regards them as a challenge because they can pick off pieces of New York State, |
| 2:09.6 | pieces of the electorate in New York City in particular, and might cost him those electoral votes. |
| 2:15.6 | The communist part of the USA is harder to imagine being a threat today, but at the time, |
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