[GeronL]

As for the Democrat party, most were actual liberals in the JFK mold

FDR was their guy and he was very very leftist!

[Hugin]

The far left weren’t fans of FDR at the time. They “blamed” him for saving capitalism from communist revolution. Of course FDR’s administration was full of communist agents, but that wasn’t widely known. A lot of it’s a matter of perspective. Leftists consider RINOs to be “right wing extremists”.