OCTOBER 31, 1936, LITERARY DIGEST, 2 OCTOBER 31, 1936, LITERARY DIGEST, 2 MILLION MILLION POSTCARDS: ALF LANDON 57%, 370 ELECTORAL VOTES: 3/8: 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
🗓️ 9 September 2024
⏱️ 7 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.
FDR WITH JOSEPH COTTON, VAN WYCK BROOKS AND LILLIAN GISH
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Bouch with David Patricia. |
| 0:05.0 | His new book is Roosevelt Sweeps Nation, FGR's 1936 landslide and the triumph of the liberal |
| 0:12.2 | ideal. |
| 0:13.0 | The Communist Party of the United States of America, |
| 0:17.0 | the Socialist Party, they have figures that lead them |
| 0:21.0 | and they're important figures because of their connection to |
| 0:24.8 | previous successes. The socialists had been successful since all that century since the |
| 0:30.8 | earliest vote, 1912 I believe. |
| 0:33.0 | David helped me, was 1912 their top or was 1920 their top? |
| 0:37.0 | I can't recall it. |
| 0:38.0 | 1920 is when they top about 900 thought, well, depends how you measure it. |
| 0:43.8 | 1920 they get the highest number of raw votes. |
| 0:47.2 | 1912 they get the highest percentage and even as late as |
| 0:51.9 | 1932 Norman Thomas who is their perennial candidate at this point, |
| 0:57.0 | following their previous perennial candidate, Eugene V. Debs, is still drawing 845,000 votes and drawing hundreds of thousands of |
| 1:06.5 | votes in the in a recent New York City mayoral election. |
| 1:11.1 | So the socialists represent theory and book learning and |
| 1:15.8 | classicism, but they also appeal to what we would say is the |
| 1:20.3 | proto-union faction in the large city of New York. Roosevelt regards them as a |
| 1:25.8 | challenge because they can pick off pieces of New York State, pieces of the |
| 1:31.4 | electorate in New York City in particular and might cost him those |
| 1:35.4 | electoral votes. The communist part of the USA is harder to imagine being a threat |
... |
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