Posted on 05/10/2020 5:07:47 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
I read somewhere that Long would challenge in the FDR for the nomination in 36 order to bolster his profile for a run (as a rat) in 1940.
I think Long's plan was to bloody up FDR with a third party run in '36 (where Long himself wouldn't run, but someone who promoted Long's policies would) so FDR then either lost the general to a Republican or retired after a 2nd term. Then Long, having captured nationwide attention in 1936, would be the RAT party "front runner" for an open nomination in 1940.
I'm confused about the role Fr. Charles Coughlin played in all the politics of the era. Historians tag him as "far right" and he was outspoken against communism, marxism, atheism, the federal reserve, and everything New Deal related, vehemently attacking FDR's Socialist policies on the radio.
BUT, its also stated that he was a "close ally" and supporter of Huey Long, and Long was an insane Socialist DemonRat who argued FDR's New Deal didn't go FAR ENOUGH -- Long wanted a nationwide "Share The Wealth" income redistribution program ala modern day Bernie Bros. Furthermore, Fr. Coughlin routinely trashed capitalism and blamed corporations, and had some nationwide "Social Justice" organization (not sure if "Social Justice" in 1936 had the same odious meaning it has now with the thought police fascists)... he was also supposedly a NAZI sympathizer and an anti-Semite, though he vehemently denied both and said he wanted the "good Jews" on his side and his movement was open to all religious views and creeds.
Hard to pin that guy down politically.
In any case, William Lemke ended up being the "third party candidate" against FDR in 1936, and had Coughlin's backing. Aside from bashing Jewish bankers, it sounded fairly good compared to FDR's New Deal and Landon's worthless New Deal Lite. It was weird for the "Union Party" to be anti-Jewish anyway, given that it was a coalition of Catholics and blacks. Given that they opposed the KKK and the New Deal, it seems "wealthy Jewish capitalist voters" would be a natural ally, not an enemy. On the other hand, Jewish voters were probably voting 95% in favor of FDR's socialist policies, so there was little reason to try and woo them away.
I'm reminded a bit of the Le Pen "National Front" loons in France, whom the media tagged as "Far Right" even though they were in fact on the left end of the spectrum and holocast denying wackjobs to boot. Apparently Marine Le Pen has now purged the party of all its former neo-NAZI elements and even go far to rename the party to divorce it of its odious past, but I doubt there is still anything remotely mainstream "conservative" in France. Some FReepers just thought Jean Le Pen was "Conservative" because the media said he was.
In any case, Charles Coughlin and Huey Long seemed to make strange bedfellows. Most likely their whole "alliance" was "we both agree FDR sucks and needs to be taken out".
Here’s a clip of Coughlin ranting against the Federal Reserve though. Interesting. He doesn’t mince words and I can see the populist appeal. You don’t see priests with backbone like that in today’s era, sadly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzLMRAz5G_4
I’m guessing the closest modern example would be Pat Buchanan’s third party bid in 2000, minus the neo-confederate overtones?
Josh short for Joshua has been around forever. You know how many old western movies have characters named Joshua and Caleb?...quite a few conservative Christians have always named their kids after biblical names.
Now the name Dylan on the other hand does indeed merit Freeper scorn...
Dylan should be the male version of “Karen” in terms of those folks “who must always insist on speaking to the manager or always assert more authority than they are worth”!
A competent nominee to point out how much an effing disaster FDR was would’ve dramatically lowered his performance. Republicans running ringers never works. Alfie was a ringer.
However “historians” label someone is often dubious, since so many are leftist, they tend to just throw all ones labeled un-P.C. in the right-wing barrel.
Coughlin was certainly NOT far-right playing footsie with far-left tyrants like Long. He obviously wanted strong interventionism in the country if he agreed with Long, so that makes him a Socialist, too. He just wasn’t an FDR type of Socialist. He also tried marrying populism, religiosity, and nationalism. A lot of that was almost like an Americanized version of National Socialism (minus the attempt to impose a new religion). If Long had gotten into power in 1940, I think Hitler could’ve easily seen him as a potential ally with similar goals (except the Jewish thing, though so many in America were anti-Semitic then, partly as a result of so many Eastern European Jewish coming into the cities and bringing radical Marxist politics with them).
I think ultimately Coughlin was just another prong on the leftist fork fighting for which would be the most dominant (FDR Socialism or Long Socialism).
WW2 would’ve unfolded in a different manner under President Long. It’s quite possible Long would’ve remained neutral or not unfriendly to Germany. The U.K. would’ve been defeated early on with no Lend-Lease and Hitler might’ve appealed to Long to help wipe out the Soviets. As Japan would not have been able to ally with Germany on good terms with Long, they would’ve had to find another way to deal with their own personal issues and animosity against the U.S. (perhaps Hitler would’ve brokered an arrangement to smooth over any hard feelings). With Japan occupying a good chunk of China (Manchuria) and the Germans and perhaps Americans leaning on the Soviets would’ve lead to the Communist capitulation.
Then, of course, we’d have to contend with the outcome of that situation. An Imperial Japan dominating the bulk of Asia, a new German Empire with Mohammadan constituent states in the Middle East in between and a National-Socialist America under Long.
Ooops. Three ‘authors’. Guarenteed lies.
Why does every ‘news’ article from the AP read like opinion pieces?
All FDR needed to do was remind people he was still better than the effing disaster that was Herbert Hoover.
Hoover was a Wilsonian Progressive who switched to the GOP before the 1920 elections because he knew he’d never be able to win as a Dem in that election. FDR ended up making Hoover look like Washington, and for all Hoover’s negatives, he didn’t turn into a megalomaniacal totalitarian Socialist tyrant who allowed Soviet infiltration of our government and institutions and took a bad recession and made it into the worst economic fiasco in the history of America. That, just for starters.
Hire Stalinist Demonrat propagandist beta cucks and hipsters out of “journalism sckrools” and expect that level of quality from them.
Democrats and leftists today don’t hate Ike, that tells you all you need to know, he wasn’t all bad (interstates) and I hate to rate him poorly but...
Translation: “Our plan seems to be on track.”
They have no idea what’s coming.
I’ll take this oppo to recap what ended up happening in “The Plot against America”
Walter Winchell gets fired from the radio and makes a very early run for the rat nomination in 1944. He draws bigs crowds and counter-protesters who are 100% at fault for stirring up riots wherever he goes. Eventually he gets his head blown off in Memphis or somewhere.
The pro-Lindy Rabbi (a Southern Jew who’s people have been in the country for a long time) has an idea to send Jews to places like rural Kentucky and Billings Montana (where they probably would have great trouble attending Temple so WTF?). It’s supposed to be voluntary but they get companies to move the jobs, the Jews can go or lose their jobs.
Waves of antisemitic violence for seemingly no reason (Jewish woman in Kentucky is burned alive in her car for no reason). Lindy does nothing, gives a one sentence speech about the good economy and flies off. His plane goes missing. In the show this presented as British intelligence assassinating him cause VP Wheeler can be beaten in 1944.
There’s a conspiracy theory though that Hitler was blackmailing him all along (Nazis kidnapped his son, before they ever came to power for some reason, awesome long term planning!) and he was nabbed by Germany so Wheeler could take over cause Lindy was doing the bare minimum of being pro-Nazi. Only pro-Lindy people voice this theory and are looked at like they are crazy.
Wheeler is Acting President, closes the border with Canada (where Jews are fleeing) and has Lindy’s wife put in an asylum and the pro-Lindy Rabbi arrested.
Mrs. L escapes and gives a pirate radio address denouncing Wheeler, antisemitism and calling for “Congress” to remove him and authorize a special election for President in 1942. No mention that an amendment would be needed. For some reason the political establishment is now shamed and a supposedly GOP Congress agrees to gives the democrats a chance to take back the White House early.
The GOP Ticket (based on election signs) is Henry Ford (Sec of the Interior, and I guess he was a real antisemite) and Taft. Rats are FDR and Truman. “Fraud” is depicted, people being told they suddenly aren’t registered and people walking off with ballot boxes, we are to presume it’s the GOP doing this. The a-hole producer put that in as commentary for GOP allegedly oppressing the Black voter today.
In the book, FDR wins and “history gets back on track”. In the show the ending is left up in the air, the radio says some Virginia Beach precincts that went big for Lindy are showing mixed results and then it ends.
The Lindbergh and especially Wheeler estates should sue.
That is just nuts. FDR running in a 1942 “special” ? The only reason he was still in office by that point was due to incumbency and the personal power he had amassed. What had he been doing prior to 1942 in this fictional piece ? Too many other Dems would’ve been contenders. How would Truman have even been Senator in a universe where Republicans were winning the Presidency at that time ? There would’ve been a Republican in Truman’s seat (and in such a fictional/fanciful universe, that Republican might’ve been my cousin, Henry Kiel).
Henry Ford was a Stalwart Democrat and ran for the Senate as one. These guys don’t have much of a grasp on history or any sort of reality.
BTW, the FDR/Truman pairing (2 years early) is dubious on its face. FDR had submitted two names to replace his pro-Soviet VP, and at the top of the list was Justice Wild Bill Douglas with Sen. Truman in second. Supposedly the person who received the “note” switched the names around and pushed Truman instead.
I think they mentioned ex-President FDR making “remarks” a couple times. RINO LaGuardia was also made a speech, at Winchell’s funeral.
You are correct, after getting his ass kicked in what was obviously a landslide (despite them making it seem close on election night to mimic 2016 or something) I can’t imagine his crippled ass being nominated again.
And Truman? Exactly, GOP must have swept Missou, he would not have been a Senator, I doubt they even considered that. I should say “he” cause I think that’s straight out of the novel by Phillip Roth who seems to gone out of his way with the “history back on track” angle despite how utterly unrealistic that is in general.
Interesting that real life rats and in universe party switchers Ford and Wheeler were presented as by far the most pro-Nazi.
As silly as it all is I found myself pretending I was there, loving Lindy, lol.
I rather enjoyed the “showing the average Jewish family in Newark” parts I expect Zoe Kazan to win an emmy for best actress in a mini-series. Morgan Spector was good too as the self-righteous Jewish father. Winona Ryder was eh but also got praised.
Re: Douglas, wow, if FDR really wanted him he should have been more forthright about it. How do you think that would have gone?
Other than Henry Wallace being seen as a liability in 1944, I think any other choice than Truman would’ve had little impact in changing the outcome. Since Douglas never ran a political campaign, it’s hard to determine how he would’ve approached it. Personally, he was a cad and dumped his first wife while he was on the court (and openly pursuing another). The media, of course, protected these elites from the public, so that might not have come to light. Whether he would’ve survived 1948 is up in the air, given how well he’d have related to the public.
FDR wouldn't have been vulnerable to such a tactic because he spent the entire election season insisting he was vehemently against the U.S. taking sides in the war, and the voters bought the argument (he even went so far to tell one woman "Madame, I have seen war and I hate war, and I can promise you that as long I remain President of the United States, your boys will never fight on foreign soil.")
Of course, Pearl Harbor immediately changed all that.
Had FDR's involvement with World War II been more akin to Bush's "War on Terror" strategy c. 2002 (which was the SLOWEST "rush to war" I've ever seen), THEN Lindbergh could have made the 1940 election a referendum on war.
A much more interesting "alternate history" scenario for me is Charles Evans Hughes defeating Wilson in 1916... and since Woody BARELY won re-election in real life, its much easier to come up with a plausible "Wilson loses in 1916" scenario than an "FDR loses in 1940" scenario.
Basically, all Hughes had to do was win a handful of more votes in California, and not do so lousy in the rocky mountain states.
As for Linbergh 1940, you really can't use the actual results from the 1940 FDR vs. Wilikie map as a starting point, as Lindbergh would have been running a completely different kind of campaign, issues, and tactics, so the voters and demographics he appealed to would be different. I agree its almost impossible any candidate with an "R" next to his name would have won a state in the deep south back in 1940 though, even in a Worst Case Scenario for FDR where he loses re-election in a landslide.
And, of course, there's the easiest "alternate history" scenario: Nixon wins in 1960. Easy because he already DID in real life. Just throw out the dead votes in Crook County, Illinois, and the illegal alien votes in Texas, both states would have cast their electoral votes for Nixon and he would have defeated Kennedy nationally. Of course, rather than see an "alternate history" story of the election itself, I'd like to see an "alternate history" movie focused on what happened AFTERWARDS when we didn't have 8 years of Kennedy-Johnson New Frontier-Great Society garbage destroying this country. Should be required reviewing for the "JFK would be a Republican today" delusional crowd on here.
Nevertheless, the author attempted to rank not only how good the actual Presidents were, but how good the LOSING major party presidential candidate would have fared, making an educated guess from their background, issues they ran on, and what type of stuff they would have encountered during their term.
Not surprisingly, he has several examples where the losing candidate would have made a better president than the actual person who was elected.
There's also extremes on each end, he ranked both Abraham Lincoln and his opponent Stephen A. Douglas as "Excellent" choices in 1860, concluding we would have been in good hands with either man. On the flip side, he ranked both U.S. Grant and his RAT opponent Horace Greeley as "Likely failures" in 1872, basically concluding voters were screwed no matter who which man that election.
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