Campaign Funds in the Presidential Election of 1936

1937 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Overacker

A study of the financing of the 1936 campaign is particularly interesting since it may show what, if any, effect the “New Deal” program has had upon political alignments. Eventually, any radical shift in the support of a political party must be reflected in the sources from which it draws its campaign funds.In 1928, both major parties depended largely upon bankers and manufacturers for their contributions, although the Republicans received a larger proportion of their fund from manufacturers than did their rivals. In 1932, although the proportion of the Democratic fund coming from manufacturers dropped appreciably, Roosevelt's promises of a New Deal had no apparent effect upon the support of the bankers, who contributed as heavily as in 1928.

1995 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harvey C. Mansfield

THE AMERICAN ELECTION OF 1994, A SMASHING NATIONAL victory for the Republican Party, was both unusual and momentous. It produced a result of startling clarity, which is unusual in the American constitutional scheme, especially for a non-presidential election; and it promises enduring dominance for the Republicans, which is momentous. The change that President Bill Clinton said he would bring in 1992, and did not bring, has been imposed on him.Not since 1946, when Harry Truman was presented with a Republican Congress, has an incumbent president been treated so roughly by the voters. But Truman lived in the era of New Deal dominance and was able to recover and be re-elected in 1948. The better analogy for the 1994 election, unfortunately for the Democrats, is probably 1930, when Herbert Hoover was repudiated by the voters and a new Democratic Congress become the prelude to the New Deal dominance that began in 1932 and now seems to have come to an end.


1992 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-368
Author(s):  
John B. Taylor

American political history is often conceived as a series of stable eras, controlled by dominant party coalitions and demarcated by realigning elections, most often identified as those of 1828, 1860, 1896, and 1932. Since there is a lag in the corresponding reconstitution of the Supreme Court, it is often deemed a countermajoritarian drag on the workings of electoral democracy. An examination of judicial review in relation to political eras shows that view to be correct only in the New Deal era. Judicial review most commonly occurs within eras rather than across them, with a Court reconstituted by the prevailing coalition negating legislation passed by that coalition. This reality significantly alters the normative question of the Court's role in a democracy, and it raises questions about the concept of stable eras. The current trend of political party dealignment calls into question the continuing validity of the critical-elections approach.


2001 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONATHAN A. COWDEN

Many scholars and pundits believe that the 1964 presidential election between Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson disrupted the New Deal order and ushered in a sixth party system anchored in part by race issues. But, curiously, the conventional wisdom has not fared well empirically. In this article, I employ disaggregated survey data and novel methodological tools to identify temporal patterns in the relationships between partisanship, New Deal issues and race issues. My conclusions are as follows: (1) the association between race issues and partisanship has switched signs in the South; (2) a racial axis of cleavage has opened up outside the South; (3) the New Deal issue axis has grown in the South; and (4) New Deal issues continue to cleave partisans outside the South.


2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 497-524 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONATHAN BELL

In the 1950s the Democratic Party in California grew from a struggling, rump organization into the major political party in the state. This was in large part due to the activities of a network of liberal activists in the California Democratic Council, a group formed in 1953 to encourage the creation of local Democratic ‘clubs’ across California in which those interested in left-of-centre politics could debate issues of the day and campaign for Democratic candidates in elections. This article argues that the rise of the Democrats in the Golden State was predicated on the espousal by both amateur activists and party politicians of an explicitly social democratic ideology that provided a bridge between the policies of the New Deal in the 1930s and the more ambitious goals of the Great Society at the national level in the 1960s. The article examines the ideas embraced by liberal politicians in the 1950s and looks at how those ideas underpinned a massive expansion of California's welfare state in the early 1960s.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-281
Author(s):  
Sylvia Dümmer Scheel

El artículo analiza la diplomacia pública del gobierno de Lázaro Cárdenas centrándose en su opción por publicitar la pobreza nacional en el extranjero, especialmente en Estados Unidos. Se plantea que se trató de una estrategia inédita, que accedió a poner en riesgo el “prestigio nacional” con el fin de justificar ante la opinión pública estadounidense la necesidad de implementar las reformas contenidas en el Plan Sexenal. Aprovechando la inusual empatía hacia los pobres en tiempos del New Deal, se construyó una imagen específica de pobreza que fuera higiénica y redimible. Ésta, sin embargo, no generó consenso entre los mexicanos. This article analyzes the public diplomacy of the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, focusing on the administration’s decision to publicize the nation’s poverty internationally, especially in the United States. This study suggests that this was an unprecedented strategy, putting “national prestige” at risk in order to explain the importance of implementing the reforms contained in the Six Year Plan, in the face of public opinion in the United States. Taking advantage of the increased empathy felt towards the poor during the New Deal, a specific image of hygienic and redeemable poverty was constructed. However, this strategy did not generate agreement among Mexicans.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-254
Author(s):  
Andreu Espasa

De forma un tanto paradójica, a finales de los años treinta, las relaciones entre México y Estados Unidos sufrieron uno de los momentos de máxima tensión, para pasar, a continuación, a experimentar una notable mejoría, alcanzando el cénit en la alianza política y militar sellada durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. El episodio catalizador de la tensión y posterior reconciliación fue, sin duda, el conflicto diplomático planteado tras la nacionalización petrolera de 1938. De entre los factores que propiciaron la solución pacífica y negociada al conflicto petrolero, el presente artículo se centra en analizar dos fenómenos del momento. En primer lugar, siguiendo un orden de relevancia, se examina el papel que tuvo la Guerra Civil Española. Aunque las posturas de ambos gobiernos ante el conflicto español fueron sustancialmente distintas, las interpretaciones y las lecciones sobre sus posibles consecuencias permitieron un mayor entendimiento entre los dos países vecinos. En segundo lugar, también se analizarán las afinidades ideológicas entre el New Deal y el cardenismo en el contexto de la crisis mundial económica y política de los años treinta, con el fin de entender su papel lubricante en las relaciones bilaterales de la época. Somewhat paradoxically, at the end of the 1930s, the relationship between Mexico and the United States experienced one of its tensest moments, after which it dramatically improved, reaching its zenith in the political and military alliance cemented during World War II. The catalyst for this tension and subsequent reconciliation was, without doubt, the diplomatic conflict that arose after the oil nationalization of 1938. Of the various factors that led to a peaceful negotiated solution to the oil conflict, this article focuses on analyzing two phenomena. Firstly—in order of importance—this article examines the role that the Spanish Civil War played. Although the positions of both governments in relation to the Spanish war were significantly different, the interpretations and lessons concerning potential consequences enabled a greater understanding between the two neighboring countries. Secondly, this article also analyzes the ideological affinities between the New Deal and Cardenismo in the context of the global economic and political crisis of the thirties, seeking to understand their role in facilitating bilateral relations during that period.


Author(s):  
Nancy Woloch

This chapter traces the changes in federal and state protective policies from the New Deal through the 1950s. In contrast to the setbacks of the 1920s, the New Deal revived the prospects of protective laws and of their proponents. The victory of the minimum wage for women workers in federal court in 1937 and the passage in 1938 of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which extended labor standards to men, represented a peak of protectionist achievement. This achievement rested firmly on the precedent of single-sex labor laws for which social feminists—led by the NCL—had long campaigned. However, “equal rights” gained momentum in the postwar years, 1945–60. By the start of the 1960s, single-sex protective laws had resumed their role as a focus of contention in the women's movement.


Author(s):  
Landon R. Y. Storrs

The loyalty investigations triggered by the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s marginalized many talented women and men who had entered government service during the Great Depression seeking to promote social democracy as a means to economic reform. Their influence over New Deal policymaking and their alliances with progressive labor and consumer movements elicited a powerful reaction from conservatives, who accused them of being subversives. This book draws on newly declassified records of the federal employee loyalty program—created in response to fears that Communists were infiltrating the U.S. government—to reveal how disloyalty charges were used to silence these New Dealers and discredit their policies. Because loyalty investigators rarely distinguished between Communists and other leftists, many noncommunist leftists were forced to leave government or deny their political views. This book finds that loyalty defendants were more numerous at higher ranks of the civil service than previously thought, and that many were women, or men with accomplished leftist wives. Uncovering a forceful left-feminist presence in the New Deal, the book shows how opponents on the Right exploited popular hostility to powerful women and their “effeminate” spouses. The loyalty program not only destroyed many promising careers, it prohibited discussion of social democratic policy ideas in government circles, narrowing the scope of political discourse to this day. This book demonstrates how the Second Red Scare undermined the reform potential of the New Deal and crippled the American welfare state.


Author(s):  
Amy C. Offner

In the years after 1945, a flood of U.S. advisors swept into Latin America with dreams of building a new economic order and lifting the Third World out of poverty. These businessmen, economists, community workers, and architects went south with the gospel of the New Deal on their lips, but Latin American realities soon revealed unexpected possibilities within the New Deal itself. In Colombia, Latin Americans and U.S. advisors ended up decentralizing the state, privatizing public functions, and launching austere social welfare programs. By the 1960s, they had remade the country's housing projects, river valleys, and universities. They had also generated new lessons for the United States itself. When the Johnson administration launched the War on Poverty, U.S. social movements, business associations, and government agencies all promised to repatriate the lessons of development, and they did so by multiplying the uses of austerity and for-profit contracting within their own welfare state. A decade later, ascendant right-wing movements seeking to dismantle the midcentury state did not need to reach for entirely new ideas: they redeployed policies already at hand. This book brings readers to Colombia and back, showing the entanglement of American societies and the contradictory promises of midcentury statebuilding. The untold story of how the road from the New Deal to the Great Society ran through Latin America, the book also offers a surprising new account of the origins of neoliberalism.


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