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Betrayal of the Democratic Party

By George Joyce

The “righteous wind” that has propelled the American left to unprecedented success over the last year has forced most of the American right into an underground bunker.  Those few conservative politicians like Dick Cheney who remain topside are blasted with an additional gale force of invective and vitriol.  In the left’s ferocious desire to implement “change” there seems to be little patience for any meaningful dialogue about what America should become.

The leftist onslaught that met Dick Cheney’s recent defense of his country pales in comparison however to the ugly reception Democrat Al Smith received in 1936 when he challenged his own party’s attempt to remake America.  A four term Democratic governor from New York, Smith had lost the 1928 presidential election to Republican Herbert Hoover.  In 1932 Al Smith joined in to support Roosevelt for President but by 1936, despite the immense popularity of FDR, Smith began to panic: his party and his country were becoming unrecognizable to him.

Although many Democrats tried to pin the “treason” label on Al Smith for his stand against the New Deal legislation the dubious moniker had trouble sticking.  Growing up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Smith dropped out of school at 14 in order to support his family after his father’s untimely death a year earlier.  Smith never made it to high school or college but he did manage to develop sensitivity to life on the street while working at a local fish market and at other odd jobs.

When he ran for New York State Assembly at age 30 Smith was known as a spokesman for the working-class immigrant and as a man of the people.  During his political career in New York Smith was known as a staunch progressive who championed workers’ rights, women’s rights, and child labor protections.  Smith was also a leading voice for the rights of minorities and defended the civil rights of all Americans, white and non-white.

Al Smith however was also known as a great believer in upward mobility, self-reliance and in taking advantage of the opportunities afforded by the free-market.  Al Smith, in other words, was an American and a Democrat.  What alarmed Smith in 1936 however was the realization that FDR’s New Deal was in essence something rather anti-American that also threatened the very identity of the Democratic Party.  In Smith’s words:

  “There can be only one atmosphere of government—the clear, pure, fresh air of free America or the foul breath of communistic Russia.”

Despite FDR’s popular acclaim Smith made the decision to warn his fellow Americans and his fellow Democrats by radio address on a cold January evening in our nation’s capitol in 1936.  The title of Smith’s address was “Betrayal of the Democratic Party.”  The dramatic speech contained a series of talking points designed to persuade his countrymen that a new kind of Democratic Party was actively undermining the Constitution and replacing it with something closer to Soviet style socialism.

What were Al Smith’s talking points?  In a word: chilling.  After prefacing his speech by noting that he was “born in the Democratic Party” and expected “to die in it” Smith reiterated his belief that the Democratic Party “belonged to all the plain people in the United States.”  Something, however, had gone terribly wrong:

Partisanship above Patriotism

Smith began his speech by describing his difficult decision to “talk to the American people against the Democratic Administration.”  He was compelled to speak out however because he sensed an alarming threat “to the fundamental principles upon which this Government of ours was organized.”  The most glaring threat in Smith’s estimation was “the arraignment of class against class:”

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By splitting the country along class lines in order to appeal to voters the Democrats were guilty of placing partisanship above patriotism.  “This I know,” said Smith, “that permanent prosperity is dependent on both capital and labor alike.”  By vilifying industry and finance the Democrats were in effect closing the door “to any permanent recovery” in America.  The Democrats’ oversimplified and self-serving strategy of class warfare, in other words, was purchased at the expense of the national interest.

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Smith astutely observed that “the vast building up of new bureaus of government” would drain “resources of our people in a common pool of redistributing them, not by any process of law, but by the whim of bureaucratic autocracy.”  Smith again demonstrates his concern that whereas due process of law is vital for protecting the little guy’s freedom, bureaucratic autocracy would strangle it.

The 1932 Platform

By 1936 it was obvious to Smith that Democrats had been the victims of a bait and switch campaign by the Party elders.  “Millions and millions of Democrats like myself” said Smith, voted for a specific party platform in 1932 but “what we want to know now is why it wasn’t carried out.”  What were those Democratic promises of 1932?  According to Smith, they included the following planks:

First Democratic plank: “We advocate immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures by abolishing useless commissions and offices, consolidating departments and bureaus, and eliminating extravagance to accomplish a saving of not less than 25 per cent in the cost of the federal government.”

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It seems almost surreal to hear a leading Democrat defend the American taxpayer against big government.  But Smith was just warming up:

Another Democratic plank: “We favor maintenance of the national credit by a Federal budget annually balanced on the basis of accurate Federal estimate within revenue.”

Smith was especially incensed at this “balanced budget” promise by Democrats: “How can you balance a budget if you insist upon spending more money than you take in?  Even the increased revenue won’t go to balance the budget, because it is hocked before you receive it.  What is worse than that?”

Smith continued on what he called the “unbalanced budget” theme by predicting that “the great backbone of America” - the middle class - would end up paying off most of this debt:

  “Forget the rich - they can’t pay this debt.  If you took everything they have away from them, they couldn’t pay it - they ain’t got enough. . . . This debt is going to be paid by that great big middle class that we refer to as the backbone and the rank and file, and the sin of it is they ain’t going to know that they are paying it.  It is going to come to them in the form of indirect and hidden taxation.  It will come to them in the cost of living, in the cost of clothing, in the cost of every activity that they enter into, and because it is not a direct tax, they won’t think they’re paying, but, take it from me, they are going to pay it!”

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Another Democratic plank: “We promise the removal of government from all fields of private enterprise except where necessary to develop public works and national resources in the common interest.”

Smith pulled few punches on this particular plank:

  “NRA [National Recovery Administration]! A vast octopus set up by government, that wound its arms around all the business of the country, paralyzing big business, and choked little business to death.  Did you read in the papers a short time ago where somebody said that business was going to get a breathing spell?  What is the meaning of that?  And where did that expression arise? I’ll tell you where it comes from.  It comes from the prize ring.  When the aggressor is punching the head off the other fellow he suddenly takes compassion on him and he gives him a breathing spell before he delivers the knockout punch.”

It’s hard for Americans today to imagine the anti-business climate that saturated FDR’s presidency, especially after his re-election in 1936.  In his marvelous book The Mind and the Market, Professor Jerry Muller noted that most historians have linked the economic slump of 1937 to “Roosevelt’s rhetoric and policies” which “made businessmen reluctant to invest.”  Rather than appeal to and find common ground with American business interests Roosevelt, in Muller’s words, responded to this latest 1937 economic slump by unleashing “the dogs of anticapitalist vilification.”  Muller for example quotes Harold Ickes, FDR’s Secretary of the Interior, who lashed out at “big business Fascist America” which Ickes equated with “an enslaved America.”  Muller sums up the core belief of this remarkable chapter in Democratic Party history:

  “If there was one core belief shared by the diverse policy makers in the New Deal, it was a suspicion of businessmen in general and big business in particular.”

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  When the American businessman is vilified, when bureaucrats rule instead of the law, when taxpayers are robbed to pay for useless federal agencies, when government spends more than it takes in, when the middle class is forced to pay for increasing federal debt, when states rights are disrespected, when socialist intellectuals drive national policy, when Congress cowers in the face of the Executive Branch and fails to read its own legislation no one in America will have a “fighting chance” other than the new Robber Barons leading the Democratic Party.

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Read the whole thing.  Since the Thirties, the Dems have gone even farther to the extreme left, to the point where the present administration threatens the fundamental founding principles of this country.