[lbryce]

The Roosevelt/La Guardia alliance made another contribution to America’s political culture: the figure that became known as the “New York liberal.” As a Republican, La Guardia faced stiff opposition from Tammany Hall, from conservative Democrats, and from elements within his own party who disliked his close ties to FDR.

To maintain power, the mayor used his considerable organizational abilities to assemble coalitions from a wide range of diverse voting groups: New Deal Democrats, garment unions, professional civil servants, Jewish socialists, and Italian- and African-American communities. (Communists, with what Williams calls their “capacity for ruthlessness and subversion,” were left out of the coalition.) The alliance that emerged consisted of socially progressive (for the time), multi-ethnic, pro-union interventionists who could be either Democrats (Bella Abzug, Ed Koch) or Republicans (Nelson Rockefeller, Michael Bloomberg).

That alone, helping create the godforsaken, misbegotten political entity known as the New York Liberal, provides enough fodder to justify FDR's political reputation as one that was harmful to America's best interests.

[2banana]

Basically - the free sh*t army votes for people that give out the free government cheese...

[scrabblehack]

Bloomberg didn’t become a Republican until 9/11, no?

[Ditto]

The Power Broker, a massive tome that thoroughly examines the life and career of Robert Moses. Moses, who in his various posts was perhaps the most powerful unelected public official in the history of 20th-century New York ...

Robert Moses is why the Dodgers are in LA and not Brooklyn today.The man had pretty much doctoral power, and he used it.