As the presidential campaign of 1936 neared the new

As the presidential campaign of 1936 neared, the New Dealers were on top of the world.
They had achieved considerable progress, and millions of “reliefers” were grateful to their
bountiful government. The exultant Democrats renominated Roosevelt on a platform squarely
endorsing the New Deal. The Republicans were hard-pressed to find someone to feed to “the
Champ.” They finally settled on the colorless but homespun and honest governor of the
Sunflower State of Kansas, Alfred M. Landon. Landon himself was a moderate who accepted
some New Deal reforms, although not the popular Social Security Act. But the Republican
platform vigorously condemned the New Deal of Franklin “Deficit” Roosevelt for its radicalism,
experimentation, confusion, and “frightful waste.” Backing Landon, ex-president Hoover called
for a “holy crusade for liberty,” echoing the cry of the American Liberty League, a group of
wealthy conservatives who had organized in 1934 to fight “socialist” New Deal schemes.
Roosevelt gave as good as he got. Angry enough to stretch sheet iron, the president took to the
stump and denounced the “economic royalists” who sought to “hide behind the flag and the
Constitution.” “I welcome their hatred,” he proclaimed.
A landslide overwhelmed Landon, as the demoralized Republicans carried only two
states, Maine and Vermont. This dismal showing caused political wiseacres to make the old

adage read, “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont. The popular vote was 27,752,869 to
16,674,665; the electoral count was 523 to 8—the most lopsided in 116 years. Democratic
majorities, riding in on Roosevelt’s magic coattails, were again returned to Congress. Jubilant
Democrats could now claim more than two-thirds of the seats in the House and a like proportion
in the Senate. The battle of 1936, perhaps the most bitter since Bryan’s defeat in 1896, partially
bore out Republican charges of class warfare. Even more than in 1932, the needy economic
groups were lined up against the so-called greedy economic groups. CIO units contributed
generously to FDR’s campaign chest. Many left-wingers turned to Roosevelt, as the customary
third-party protest vote sharply declined. Blacks, several million of whom had also appreciated
welcome relief checks, had by now largely shaken off their traditional allegiance to the
Republican party. To them, Lincoln was “finally dead.” FDR won primarily because he appealed
to the “forgotten man,” whom he never forgot. Some of the president’s support was only
pocketbook-deep: “relievers” we're not going to bite the hand that doled out the government
checks.No one, as Al Smith remarked, “shoots at Santa Claus.”
But Roosevelt in fact had forged a powerful and enduring coalition of the South, blacks,
urbanites, and the poor. He proved especially effective in marshaling the support of the
multitudes of “New Immigrants”— mostly the Catholics and Jews who had swarmed into the
great cities since the turn of the century. These once-scorned newcomers, with their now-