QOTD -- Reconstruction Not Restoration

 

"... To borrow from the architect of the Democratic Party’s most enduring platform, any recovery that simply restores things as they were will see us all right back where we are now before too much time has passed. Franklin Roosevelt argued in 1934 that the nation needed not merely recovery but 'reform and reconstruction . . . much of our trouble today and in the past few years has been due to a lack of understanding of the elementary principles of justice and fairness by those in whom leadership and business and finance and public affairs was placed.' Reconstruction—Roosevelt was well aware of the word’s legacy after the Civil War—meant that leadership, and the conditions that kept them in place, 'had to be corrected.'

"But the sort of people who sustain themselves in leadership despite repeated failures are not the kind who take easily to correction. Roosevelt again: 'It is true that the toes of some people are being stepped on and are going to be stepped on. But these toes belong to the comparative few who seek to retain or to gain position or riches or both by some short cut which is harmful to the greater good.'

"Those are the toes it should prove safe for a Democratic leader to step on, and to call attention to their intention of stepping upon them. Their owners, still a comparative few, are conspicuously lacking in public spirit; you might say they’re corrupt. Roosevelt was confident in the electoral success of this message because, he said, he aimed at “the primary good of the greater number.” And it’s the greater number that wins elections, in countries where they happen..." -- Eric Rauchway, FDR scholar and Distinguished Professor of History, University of California - Davis, on why we need reconstruction rather than restoration after the Malignant Fascist's rule ends.  We need leadership in the Democratic Party like FDR, who wasn't afraid to step on powerful toes;  we need junkyard dogs that will be unafraid to challenge the established order -- the political system, certainly, but also the corrupt world of oligarchs and "Epstein class" elites and the justice delayed judicial system that allowed the Malignant Fascist to escape his crimes (looking at you, SCOTUS and the Aileen Cannons of the court system).  It's a years-long project that has to be sustained with more determination than that of those who have sought to bring our democracy to its knees, as well as the out-of-touch Democratic leadership that has been a day late and a dollar short on so many battles.