In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was starting the third year of the New Deal programs to tackle the Great Depression. His party, the Democrats, had gained a resounding mandate in the midterm elections, winning 9 seats in the House of Representatives and 9 seats in the Senate, the best performance ever for a sitting President in the first midterm election after being elected!
1935 also saw a major attack by big business corporations, declaring “war” on the New Deal as socialistic, and dangerous to American freedoms and liberty. They formed the American Liberty League and allied with right wing groups to attempt to stop the New Deal in its tracks! The nerve of the President to promote regulation and want to tax wealthy people was their rallying cry!
Now we are in the year 2010, and big business is early in beginning its attack on President Obama on the same grounds and using the same propaganda! The fact that financial regulation has just passed the Senate infuriates big business and conservative interests, which have now been responsible for having created the economic conditions that caused the Great Depression and the Great Recession! 🙁
Now the Supreme Court has made it easier for big business to get involved in political action designed to undermine the Obama Administration, and these interests are, therefore, not waiting until past the midterm elections, as they want to influence those results, and insure that nothing like 1934 occurs!
Big Business has made profits even in these difficult times, but refuses to spend to hire people and promote the economy, and it makes one wonder if the purpose is to insure that economic conditions are so bad four months from now as a method to insure the failure of the Obama agenda in the next two years!
Just as FDR faced an antagonistic Supreme Court in the 1930s, Obama has a Court determined to promote big business now during his time in office. The common themes of FDR’s time and Obama’s time are a reality, but the battle for Obama to maintain enough support to gain passage of the rest of his agenda goes on! 🙁