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In reply to the discussion: Democrats used to stand for principles [View all]merrily
(45,251 posts)I love when any DUer leads me to something I never knew before. That happens less and less these days, which is why I especially appreciate your post. I am bookmarking both links in your post.
On the 50th anniversary of the assassination, MTP aired an episode of MTP featuring Senator JFK, then running for President. He was asked why he thought he'd be good for the economy.* He replied that Democrats had saved American capitalism. I took that as a reference to the New Deal (in which, of course, his father had been a major player. Today, we tend to forget how close the crash of 1929 was to the Communist revolution, which had to have shaken people like FDR and Joe, Sr. greatly.)
Robert Kennedy was either a great actor or had a great heart for the poor and oppressed (or all the above). And, he was the only adviser to whom JFK listened during the Cuban missile crisis. With the benefit of looking back from 2015, it's not a huge surprise that RFK was assassinated, too.
* Eisenhower got credit for a "guns and butter" economy. However, FDR's war tax was still in effect, as were some New Deal programs; unions were strong and WWII had knocked out many of our competitors. Eisenhower also got credit for the national highway system, also something FDR conceived and had begun work on, but WWII superseded that project during his administrations. Ike also got credit for school integration, but did nothing until Democrats shamed him, including Eleanor Roosevelt marching into the White House to tell him to do something. And, Ike called appointing Chief Justice Earl Warren (Brown v. Bd of Ed.) the biggest mistake of his 8 years in office. Also told Warren that Southerners were nice people who simply did not want their little girls sitting next to some big gorilla in school. (Warren included that tidbit in his authobiography.)
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