Those no good communists and Fascists supported by Moscow and Berlin. They can't stand our freedom and prosperity so they seek to kill the man who will make us greater than ever before, and we can't have that.
To Kill a Kingfish
- Thread starter King of the Uzbeks
- Start date
While cute, I think your (implied?) similarities between Trump and Long are unwarranted. Huey Long might have been underhanded and authoritarian but he was not a psychotic man-child.
Actually I tried to avoid looking like I was comparing him to Trump. I just wanted humor, not to drag current politics into this.
Yes, it is true that Wheeler and a few other progressives made a few noises in early 1935 about a third party. But that was before the Wagner Act guaranteed labor union support for FDR. You can't have a successful Farmer-Labor movement without labor! And it was also before FDR's attack on public utility holding companies--a subject dear to Wheeler's heart. And btw, Wheeler would have done poorly in the New Hampshire and Wisconsin primaries. New Hampshire Democrats had little use for western populists. As for Wisconsin, yes, Wheeler carried it in 1924--*as La Follette's running mate.* That hardly shows he would have been that strong in his own right in a general election, let alone in the Democratic primary. In fact he would have had a hard time in the Democratic primary, which was dominated by ethnic voters from Milwaukee and other cities. To indicate how popular FDR was with such voters--in 1936 FDR got 78% (!) of the vote in Milwaukee, compared to "only" 67 percent in 1932. https://books.google.com/books?id=QkjbBUiz7L8C&pg=PA55 Milwaukee was in fact his best major city outside the South.
The whole thing is academic, anyway, because while Wheeler liked Long, he would not have embarked on a quixotic third party (or even primary) campaign against FDR. He did not break with the New Deal until the court-packing plan of 1937.
BTW, people who think a major populist third party was possible in 1936 often note that FDR was worried because a secret poll commissioned by Jim Farley in early 1935 showed that Long could get as many as four million votes. https://books.google.com/books?id=UQlEq9GILRgC&pg=PR98-IA113 But in the first place we now know that even had Long or any Long-supported candidate gotten that many votes it couldn't possibly have changed the outcome, FDR having defeated Landon by over eleven million votes (and this is even assuming that all of Long's/Wheeler's/whoever's votes would come from FDR). Second, it is extremely unlikely that Long or Wheeler would in fact get anything like that four million votes. In general, third party candidates do worse in actual elections than in polls, especially polls taken several months before the election. (The "novelty factor" wears off and the "it's a wasted vote because he can't win" argument becomes more widely accepted as Election Day approaches.) Furthermore, in this case, there is an additional reason to expect third party support to decline--the economy improved tremendously between the time Farley's poll was taken in 1935 and Election Day of 1936:
"The U.S. recovery from the Great Depression was nearly as exceptional as the Depression itself. After falling 27 percent between 1929 and 1933, real GDP rose by 43 percent between 1933 and 1937. Indeed, the economy grew more rapidly between 1933 and 1937 than it has during any other four year peacetime period since at least 1869.1 *The most rapid growth came in 1936, when real GDP grew 13.1 percent and the unemployment rate fell 4.4 percentage points.*" [emphasis added--DT] http://tippie.uiowa.edu/economics/tow/papers/hausman-fall2012.pdf If you want FDR dfefeated in 1936, with or without a third party, IMO you would have to somehow stop the economic expansion of 1936.
And incidentally, Burton Wheeler had no illusions of his friend Huey Long's vote-getting appeal (for himself or for others). When Long told Wheeler about the crowds he got, Wheeler replied "Huey, they come to see you as a curiosity." https://books.google.com/books?id=rwb_SXNFGi4C&pg=PA95 (True, Long replied that maybe that was true but "I keep 'em." But the view that he--or even a candidate he backed--would get all their votes was Long's, not Wheeler's.)
The whole thing is academic, anyway, because while Wheeler liked Long, he would not have embarked on a quixotic third party (or even primary) campaign against FDR. He did not break with the New Deal until the court-packing plan of 1937.
BTW, people who think a major populist third party was possible in 1936 often note that FDR was worried because a secret poll commissioned by Jim Farley in early 1935 showed that Long could get as many as four million votes. https://books.google.com/books?id=UQlEq9GILRgC&pg=PR98-IA113 But in the first place we now know that even had Long or any Long-supported candidate gotten that many votes it couldn't possibly have changed the outcome, FDR having defeated Landon by over eleven million votes (and this is even assuming that all of Long's/Wheeler's/whoever's votes would come from FDR). Second, it is extremely unlikely that Long or Wheeler would in fact get anything like that four million votes. In general, third party candidates do worse in actual elections than in polls, especially polls taken several months before the election. (The "novelty factor" wears off and the "it's a wasted vote because he can't win" argument becomes more widely accepted as Election Day approaches.) Furthermore, in this case, there is an additional reason to expect third party support to decline--the economy improved tremendously between the time Farley's poll was taken in 1935 and Election Day of 1936:
"The U.S. recovery from the Great Depression was nearly as exceptional as the Depression itself. After falling 27 percent between 1929 and 1933, real GDP rose by 43 percent between 1933 and 1937. Indeed, the economy grew more rapidly between 1933 and 1937 than it has during any other four year peacetime period since at least 1869.1 *The most rapid growth came in 1936, when real GDP grew 13.1 percent and the unemployment rate fell 4.4 percentage points.*" [emphasis added--DT] http://tippie.uiowa.edu/economics/tow/papers/hausman-fall2012.pdf If you want FDR dfefeated in 1936, with or without a third party, IMO you would have to somehow stop the economic expansion of 1936.
And incidentally, Burton Wheeler had no illusions of his friend Huey Long's vote-getting appeal (for himself or for others). When Long told Wheeler about the crowds he got, Wheeler replied "Huey, they come to see you as a curiosity." https://books.google.com/books?id=rwb_SXNFGi4C&pg=PA95 (True, Long replied that maybe that was true but "I keep 'em." But the view that he--or even a candidate he backed--would get all their votes was Long's, not Wheeler's.)
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No. I am a lawyer (which may have taught me some things about research).
BTW, Wheeler did not run as a third party candidate in 1940, when there was talk of a Wheeler-Lindbergh isolationist ticket. https://books.google.com/books?id=9ZUniR1uQcUC&pg=PA150 This to me makes it very unlikely he would run in 1936, when his differences with FDR were much less marked.
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If you want a major populist party in 1936, IMO what you need is for FDR in 1935 to go all Liberty League, to convince himself that to restore "business confidence" he must cut back on the New Deal and reconcile with conservative Democrats. (In OTL he did exactly the opposite, supposedly to "steal Long's thunder"--with the wealth tax, the public utility holding company bill, the Wagner Act, etc. Just how much influence fear of Long had on these "second New Deal" measures has been debated by historians, many of whom argue that FDR would have backed these measured even had there been no Long. But see http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~ea3/Stolen Thunder ASR 1994.pdf for an argument that Long did have some influence on the second New Deal.)
It is hard, though, for me to see someone as politically astute as FDR doing this; he knew how few people the Liberty League spoke for...
It is hard, though, for me to see someone as politically astute as FDR doing this; he knew how few people the Liberty League spoke for...
My own idea of a plausible third party candidate who might be (marginally) stronger than Lemke was in OTL: Have Bronson Cutting survive his plane crash in 1935. It's surprisingly easy:
***
It turns out that Cutting didn't have to die.
By that I don't mean simply that he might not have boarded the fatal
flight, but that even if he did board it and even if it did crash as in
OTL, he didn't have to die--eight of the thirteen people on board the
plane survived, and of them five had only minor leg and rib fractures.
His fatal mistake was probably changing seats:
"All fatalities were seated in the extreme front of the craft. From the
way the plane hit the ground, passengers in the right front must have been
killed instantly, as was the copilot. Cutting was assigned seats 9 and 11
in the rear of the plane where no one was seriously injured. Where Cutting
was sitting at the time of the accident was unclear. His younger sister,
who compiled a memorandum on the accident explained, 'It is practically
impossible to account for the injuries sustained unless he had been
sitting right behind the pilots.'
"Why did Cutting change his seat? In the single seat at the back sat a
woman with a baby whose crying kept him awake. Thus it seems probable
that Cutting moved to a vacant seat in the front of the plane in order to
sleep. When the pilot light, a sign to fasten seat belts, came on shortly
before the crash, Cutting did not comply, indicating that like most
passengers he was probably asleep. His injuries were confirmed by a
doctor at the Samaritan Hospital at Macon, Missouri, where the injured and
dead were taken. Limited to his head, they indicated that death was
instantaneous.
"Joe Breeson, one of the first persons to reach the scene, saw eight
people lying on the ground. With the assistance of a couple of farmers, he
pulled away the debris and entered the cabin. In the plane, there were
three people one of whom was Cutting. He was dead on the floor up near the
front of the cabin. His head was crushed; his body was wedged in between
two seats. Only after considerable prying did rescuers finally release
his body. One of the survivors believed 'that Senator Cutting died
without awakening or knowing what had happened,' reinforcing the
conclusions of the doctor who viewed his body at Samaritan Hospital."
Richard Lowitt, *Bronson M. Cutting: Progressive Politician* (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1992), pp. 308-9.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/_5sf-smj9Nk/UDqaCGb71rcJ
***
Something tells me that having survived the crash, Cutting might not be in a very good mood about FDR...
***
It turns out that Cutting didn't have to die.
By that I don't mean simply that he might not have boarded the fatal
flight, but that even if he did board it and even if it did crash as in
OTL, he didn't have to die--eight of the thirteen people on board the
plane survived, and of them five had only minor leg and rib fractures.
His fatal mistake was probably changing seats:
"All fatalities were seated in the extreme front of the craft. From the
way the plane hit the ground, passengers in the right front must have been
killed instantly, as was the copilot. Cutting was assigned seats 9 and 11
in the rear of the plane where no one was seriously injured. Where Cutting
was sitting at the time of the accident was unclear. His younger sister,
who compiled a memorandum on the accident explained, 'It is practically
impossible to account for the injuries sustained unless he had been
sitting right behind the pilots.'
"Why did Cutting change his seat? In the single seat at the back sat a
woman with a baby whose crying kept him awake. Thus it seems probable
that Cutting moved to a vacant seat in the front of the plane in order to
sleep. When the pilot light, a sign to fasten seat belts, came on shortly
before the crash, Cutting did not comply, indicating that like most
passengers he was probably asleep. His injuries were confirmed by a
doctor at the Samaritan Hospital at Macon, Missouri, where the injured and
dead were taken. Limited to his head, they indicated that death was
instantaneous.
"Joe Breeson, one of the first persons to reach the scene, saw eight
people lying on the ground. With the assistance of a couple of farmers, he
pulled away the debris and entered the cabin. In the plane, there were
three people one of whom was Cutting. He was dead on the floor up near the
front of the cabin. His head was crushed; his body was wedged in between
two seats. Only after considerable prying did rescuers finally release
his body. One of the survivors believed 'that Senator Cutting died
without awakening or knowing what had happened,' reinforcing the
conclusions of the doctor who viewed his body at Samaritan Hospital."
Richard Lowitt, *Bronson M. Cutting: Progressive Politician* (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1992), pp. 308-9.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/_5sf-smj9Nk/UDqaCGb71rcJ
***
Something tells me that having survived the crash, Cutting might not be in a very good mood about FDR...
Who was Cutting, exactly? Wikipedia's not very helpful, but I do appreciate the name.
Basically, Cutting was a western progressive Republican who was to the left of FDR. In particular he always lamented that FDR had not used the banking crisis of March 1933 to nationalize the banks. "I think back to the events of March 4, 1933,' Senator Bronson Cutting of New Mexico later wrote, 'with a sick heart. For then...the nationalization of banks by President Roosevelt could have been accomplished without a word of protest. It was President Roosevelt's great mistake.'" https://books.google.com/books?id=mj3VmJ38tHIC&pg=PA5
And he died in a plane crash.
Wow, I never heard of this guy. That's fascinating. I'll mark him down.