“The democrats have changed” is a popular meme among people abandoning that party, but the simple truth is they have not changed very much at all, they’ve gotten only slightly worse over the last few decades.Ronald Reagan saw the light after being a labor democrat as late as 1948....”
People seem to forget - or have never been taught, more likely - that FDR’s first VP, Henry Wallace, was an OPEN socialist, made no bones about it. And FDR often expressed a lot of admiration for the Soviet Union and its policies.
Further back, Woodrow Wilson was a “proud Progressive” as well.
It’s not so much that they “changed” as much as it is they just let the more radical elements get into full control.
When I was growing up in Philly, most of the folks were Democrats there; they sure as hell weren’t communist or socialist; most of them were WWII and Korean War vets. But they had no clue who they were really voting for.
Reagan won those same people over in two landslides. Pretty sure Nixon did too.
Different times, with different people. This truly ISN’T grandma’s Democrat party anymore.
As for Piscopo and others “moving rightward”... well, anything less than full blown communist will look “right” these days...
Worse, Wallace was an open Soviet sympathizer as VP. Way past Socialist. He was a very odd man and a bit of a flake. Started out as a Republican liberal (his father was an Agriculture Secretary under Harding & Coolidge until his death in 1924). He was still a Progressive Republican when FDR hired him to take his father’s job 9 years later, then switched to the Democrats.
He moved to the far left within a decade by the time he replaced Jack Garner as Vice-President in 1941, but was seen enough as a potential liability for FDR (especially worries over his health that he would not survive another term and didn’t want him in the Presidency) that he was replaced after just 1 term. He was immediately given Commerce Secretary as a consolation prize (not entirely a worthless post, since Herbert Hoover went from it straight to the Presidency). He served only a year and a half before resigning and ginning up a new political party, the ultraleft Progressive that was pro-Soviet. After the drubbing he got, he didn’t return to office, though he gradually moved back to the political center by the 1950s, writing a mea culpa about his leftist stances and by the 1960s, was back to being a Republican again (having endorsed both Ike in 1956 and Nixon in 1960).