{"id":4687,"date":"2010-09-13T07:57:33","date_gmt":"2010-09-13T12:57:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=4687"},"modified":"2010-09-13T07:57:33","modified_gmt":"2010-09-13T12:57:33","slug":"time-for-this-big-dog-to-bite-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2010\/09\/13\/time-for-this-big-dog-to-bite-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Time for This Big Dog to Bite Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frank Rich makes a lot of sense in his column Time for This Big Dog to Bite Back<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

As many have noted, the obvious political model for Obama this year is Franklin Roosevelt, who at his legendary 1936 Madison Square Garden rally declared that he welcomed the \u201chatred\u201d of his enemies in the realms of \u201cbusiness and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.\u201d As the historian David Kennedy writes in his definitive book on the period, \u201cFreedom from Fear,\u201d Roosevelt \u201chad little to lose by alienating the right,\u201d including those in the corporate elite, with such invective; they already detested him as vehemently as the Business Roundtable crowd does Obama.<\/p>\n

Though F.D.R. was predictably accused of \u201cclass warfare,\u201d his antibusiness \u201cradicalism,\u201d was, in Kennedy\u2019s words, \u201ca carefully staged political performance, an attack not on the capitalist system itself but on a few high-profile capitalists.\u201d Roosevelt was trying to co-opt the populist rage of his economically despondent era, some of it uncannily Tea Party-esque in its hysteria, before it threatened that system, let alone his presidency. Only the crazy right confused F.D.R. with communists for taking on capitalism\u2019s greediest players, and since our crazy right has portrayed Obama as a communist, socialist and Nazi for months, he\u2019s already paid that political price without gaining any of the benefits of bringing on this fight in earnest.<\/p>\n

F.D.R. presided over a landslide in 1936. The best the Democrats can hope for in 2010 is smaller-than-expected losses. To achieve even that, Obama will have to give an F.D.R.-size performance \u2014 which he can do credibly and forcibly only if he really means it. So far, his administration\u2019s seeming coziness with some of the same powerful interests now vilifying him has left middle-class voters, including Democrats suffering that enthusiasm gap, confused as to which side he is on. If ever there was a time for him to clear up the ambiguity, this is it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frank Rich makes a lot of sense in his column Time for This Big Dog to Bite Back. As many have noted, the obvious political model for Obama this year is Franklin Roosevelt, who at his legendary 1936 Madison Square Garden rally declared that he welcomed the \u201chatred\u201d of his enemies in the realms of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4687","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4688,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4687\/revisions\/4688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}