Roosevelt / Clinton

[NYC Liberal]

89. Huey Long was the Bernie Sanders of the 1930s.

The "left" of the day thought that FDR was too cozy with bankers, too close to Wall Street, and that the New Deal didn't go nearly far enough. They wanted Huey Long to challenge FDR in 1936.

Long on FDR:

Hoover is a hoot owl and Roosevelt is a scrootch owl. A hoot owl bangs into the nest and knocks the hen clean off and catches her while she's falling. But the scrootch owl slips into the roost and scrootches up to the hen and talks softly to her. And the hen just falls in love with him, and the next thing you know there ain't no hen.

The trouble is, Roosevelt hasn't taken all of my ideas; just part of them. I'm about one hundred yards ahead of him. We're on the same road, but I'm here and he's there.

"Not a single thin dime of concentrated, bloated, pompous wealth, massed in the hands of a few people, has been raked down to relieve the masses." — Huey Long in 1934 on the first New Deal of 1933

Now FDR is used to bash our current Democrats for not being "liberal" enough, and the people using him don't even grasp the irony of it.