Let me show you something.
You think you know your heroes?
Here's a little progressive history lesson.
FDR betrayed blacks and the progeny of abolitionism. It was over 50 years before that three constitutional amendments had been created protecting the rights of African-Americans. Yet at the KKK's height more than 1% of the country was member and lynchings were common, though declining by 1935.
In 1935, members of Congress proposed a new bill, The Costigan-Wagner Act, which attacked one of the main aspects of lynching. The legislation proposed federal trials for any law enforcement officers who failed to exercise their responsibilities during a lynching incident.
Roosevelt refused to speak out in favor of the bill. He argued that the white voters in the South would never forgive him if he supported the bill and he would therefore lose the next election. The Costian-Wagner Act received support from many members of Congress but the Southern opposition managed to defeat it (Sen Richard Russell, GA, filibustered with 6 days of non-stop talking!)
Again, the bill was defeated despite overwhelming public support. A national poll taken in 1937 that "found 65 per cent of all southerners supported legislation that would have made lynching a federal crime" (Tolnay and Beck, p. 202.) However, the national debate that took place over the issue helped to bring fresh attention to eliminating the crime of lynching.
Even racist northern whites usually thought of themselves as above a nation of the noose. These anti-lynching numbers are oddly comparable to support to a public option. Why did FDR sell out when he had a popular mandate? Meanwhile, despite the cultural flourishing and a tiny few steps forward, the 30s and 40s wasn't the greatest time for African-Americans. Thank FDR.
Sure, you lionize FDR now. Most of you weren't even born during--let alone witnessed--his presidency. It wasn't just race. How about progressive economics--Social Security?
No self-respecting liberal today would support Franklin Roosevelt's original Social Security Act. It excluded agricultural workers -- a huge part of the economy in 1935, and one in which Latinos have traditionally worked. It excluded domestic workers, which included countless African Americans and immigrants. It did not cover the self-employed, or state and local government employees, or railroad employees, or federal employees or employees of nonprofits. It didn't even cover the clergy. FDR's Social Security Act did not have benefits for dependents or survivors. It did not have a cost-of-living increase. If you became disabled and couldn't work, you got nothing from Social Security.
And it didn't take effect for years.
The Depression killed people. Lynchings killed people.
By 1934, FDR had 69 senators and he was still appeasing and triangulating between the Huey Longs and the Taft, Jrs. Since historical amnesia works most forcefully when people have a vague notion or memory of how things were, let's move to a more recent example.
LBJ's most famous use of arm-twisting is the Civil Rights Act of 1964. LBJ had been a legislator going back a quarter century, and used decades of inside baseball and dirt against his opponents--not to mention a giant stature and wide girth.
However, Johnson repeatedly sold out minorities on civil rights, going back to his days working in the New Deal, National Youth Administration when he ignored surging Chicano unemployment:
...Johnson stood to politically gain little from helping them.
Johnson, the ultimate politician?
The Civil Rights Movement reached its praxis in the 1950s, but not Congress on civil rights. LBJ supported vocally the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954--which desegregated schools--but how was the actual enforcement of it when it mattered?
- 2 whole years later. Congress took up civil rights legislation. And Johnson killed it shamelessly.
You could argue with a straight-face that at the next venture a year later, LBJ obliterated desegregation when he turned the Civil Rights Act of 1957 into a milquetoast compromise.
This dilution made fellow Southerner President Eisenhower’s bill into a largely unenforceable voting rights law. The part of the bill, which allowed federal government to promote integration in schools, was lost, due to the hostility BROWN and BROWN II had received in the South.
It was the courts who moved, and Eisenhower who chose to send the National Guard to Little Rock that year.
LBJ would get elected VP in 1960, close to a year after the sit-ins. The year before, he killed the Civil Rights Act.
As the Eisenhower Administration prepared to leave Senator Johnson then helped pass another, better CRA of 1960. But people were still dying. An enforced standard of voting rights was non-existent.
1964 and 65 happened for several reasons. First, LBJ now had 30 years of political experience with a huge amount of dirt and information on his opponents. Dirt that no Hillary, Edwards or Obama would have [now] at this point. Secondly, the nation was in profound shock after JFK was assassinated, even in 1965. Thirdly, there were liberal Republicans. (Crazy Goldwater ran for president the year before. Nixon and any other cynical "smart" Republicans knew the election would be a bloodbath, with the grief of JFK so near.) It took the maximum moment of sympathy to Democrats and still it wasn't what people are off-handedly evoking today:
The bill didn’t pass unhindered. There were doubters in Congress and it also had to overcome the longest obstruction in Senate history. Its final passing owed much to Kennedy, who had won over the Republican minority before his death. Johnson was sure the bill would have passed if Kennedy were still alive but that it would have been diluted like Eisenhower’s bills. Johnson must also receive credit as he devoted a staggering amount of his time, energy and political capital to ensure the passage of the bill in it original state. He used... Kennedy's death, appeals to Southerner’s self- interest and his Southern background to get what has been described as the most important piece of civil rights legislation passed.
This was 11 years after the original Brown vs. Board of Education decision. 9 years since Little Rock. Children who'd seen Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks and the NAACP in action were already adults.
To say nothing of history. Marcus Garvey was telling black Americans they didn't have to put up with this tired routine back in the 20s, that they could create a better, equal world in Africa. Whites and blacks were criticizing Gone With the Wind for distasteful or bigoted representation of African-Americans, even Walt Disney's Dumbo (one of its first movies) and Song of the South. This was in a line going back to Booker T. Washington who had the audacity to eat with Teddy Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass of the 19th century.
And here came dithering Johnson, worrying his pretty little head over what Al Gore, Sr. and Strom Thurmond wanted.