The modern American welfare state was also reactionary and bigoted towards black people and minorities. It’s important to recognize that much of the social programs explicitly excluded people of color and then used their understandeable lower quality of life due to lack of safety nets as a justification for further racism. Black people have bad neighborhoods, but of course black people didnt get government housing assistance to repair anything, because the federal programs for that explicitly excluded them.

The same FDR signed Executive Order 8802, forbidding ethnic and racial discrimination in the defense industry and federal government.

And yet the federal housing administration continued to explicitly respect racist homeowner association laws (btw homeowner associations were originally created to enshrine into bylaws that no black people may rent or purchase a property), continued to offer lesser or worse terms, or would broadly consider black people too risky, until congress passed the fair housing act of 1968, decades later.

It was nonetheless the first time the Federal Government prohibited racial/ethnic employment discrimination, and was the first civil rights executive order since Reconstruction.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson helped found the US and gave the world ideas of democracy. They also both owned slaves, imagined democracy as just for white male landowners, and under nearly any modern interpretation of the power dynamic Thomas Jefferson raped and fathered children with his slaves.

Maybe we should stop pretending these people who did some good things for the country were perfect gods. You can praise their accomplishments while still pointing out their flaws.

I think there is also a obsession with presentism and applying modern morals to the past. It is almost as if the point of historical study is to sit in judgement, opposed to understand how the world worked and changed.

Ask most people what the defining characteristics or deeds of Washington of Jefferson and they respond with the points above.

Are those the most impactful or noteworthy characteristics of those individuals? I don't think so. Perhaps they are interesting context for understanding their other deeds or the human condition, but certainly not the primary impact they had on history.

I've never met anybody who thinks FDR was a "perfect god". Abe or Washington, sure, but no such personality cult exists for FDR. So what are you even responding to? I have not criticized anybody for pointing out FDR's flaws (which were numerous and are widely acknowledged.)

The New Deal coalition included the entire Jim Crow southern democratic establishment.

They weren't the opposition, they were a key part of the coalition.

True. But the broader point is that transposing political positions from 100 years ago into modern politics is always verging on anachronism. In many ways the modern American welfare state and the modern Democratic Party both originate in the South through the populist movement and William Jennings Bryan. But consider: does William Jennings Bryan's opposition to teaching evolution in public schools have anything to do with agricultural subsidies or inflationary monetary policy? He very publicly advocated for all of these positions, but trying to bring this association into modern debates about interest rates or public education is a distraction.

It's interesting to consider the trajectory of ideas/movements.

Lots of professional-class liberals today consider "populism" to be a dirty word. Would they have been Hoover Republicans in that era?

Maybe. Hoover was a politically moderate, 54 year old, Stanford educated engineer from the West with a successful career in both industry, and civil service administration? Sounds like a great candidate on paper (honestly sounds better than the current front runners for 2024 at any rate). We often forget that he was actually very successful/effective in every previous post he had served in prior to the Great Depression. Hoover's reputation has been badly tarnished by his response to the Great Depression (which was totally inadequate to the magnitude of the task at hand). He could have and should have done a lot of things differently but instead he made ideologically motivated policy decisions that did not pan out. But to be fair, it is also not entirely his fault that he took office on the eve of the largest global economic catastrophe in history. He would probably be remembered much more fondly had he taken office in place of Harding or Coolidge 8 years prior.

Yeah I too wouldn't describe FDR's coalition as reactionary. As well that coalition was deeply weird. Included the Industrial Labor, Socialists, the old southern Aristocracy and Blacks.

Random observation. The US has almost forgot that before WWII that Pols, Italians, eastern Europeans, Irish, etc were distinct. And Asians were even farther out.

I know for a fact that my silent generation dad feels prejudice against Chinese. Even though he hates it's there. My grandmother was an antisemite though oddly not prejudiced against Mexicans or blacks. That whole family was salt of the earth. And half were unreformed bigots as well.

People are weird. The past is not the present.