Reprint of A Different Time, a Different Leader

Don't Copy MAGA, Copy FDR, Bernie and AOC if We Want to WIn

Introduction

On July 19th, I published “A Different Time, a Different Leader” as a look around the corner of what we Democrats must do if we want to win in 2026. My thesis was what used to be called “the social contract.”

I am reprinting it because the Democratic leadership has been as stuck in the “Third Way” policy themes that brought Bill Clinton to power in 1993, twelve long years for the regressive Reagan policies to take hold, including “The Laffer Curve” that suffers to this day the ridicule it deserves yet abides in the minds of the oligarchy and techbros who want to replace Trump’s oligarchs.

There is little enthusiasm for my two New York Senators, or my NYS House Minority Leader as they continue a lethargic campaign against a heretofore unthinkably successful takeover of all the governmental levers of power. It remains utterly unbelieveable that pathological liars like Trump and the MAGAs in the House, Senate and U.S. supreme court (sic) are marching us towards a totalitarian replaying of societal norms extant before the American Revolution when rich white men ruled the roost singlehandedly and all the rest of us were and still are “others” they judge as unworthy to share power and wealth.

Then there wer Gov. Newsome’s podcasts several months ago when he invited Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon and settled on common ground as if these were MAGA representatives likely to fall in line with Democratic Party programs. Gov. Newsome took heat for these gestures so he changed his tactics and now mimics Trumpspeak.

Neither the D.C. Democratic leadership nor Gov. Newsome deserve congratulations when the utter horror of what they have promoted as winning tactics and arguments are so obviously wanting.

We have the masked ICE gunmen under the budgetary considerations of the Trump administration kidnapping citizens, politicians, naturalized citizens and undocumented immigrants sent all over the place from El Salvador to Alligator Alcatraz and potentially to Uganda without regard for their families or any connection to their assigned destination.

We have American farmlands with produce rotting in the fields because the harvest workers are reasonably afraid of being found by ICE. Furthermore, we pay inflated prices for any food imported because of the tariffs and those prices are beginning to hit now.

We have a politics at every juncture controlled at the top by the most corrupt personnel who have ever served in every one of the three branches,

Return to a Social Contract

It’s up to us.

FDR died about 4 years before I was born but I came into this life a devout fan of his while reserving devout disapproval of his internment of American citizens of Japanese descent during World War 2. He made other mistakes as well but that was the most horrific.

What he did do accomplish was the creatation of a policy infrastructure battling the vested interests of the uber rich at that time, some of whom concocted a conspiracy to overthrow his election. He fought them his entire tenure.

As President, he fought on behalf of those at the bottom of the economic heap.

FDR’s Labor Secretary, Frances Perkins, advocated for workers and created Social Security and the minimum wage. She is credited with being the Architect of the new deal, having worked prior to her government service at the Hull House Settlement House in Chicago.

The story goes that, despite her work on behalf of labor unions, the unionists did not trust her, an odd interpretation of her service devoted to working people. Is it too annoying to point out that she was the first woman appointed to a Presidential cabinet post? Deal with it.

We won’t win by sitting on our hands as the Senate and House leaders have done for the last 44 years and playing nice or by mimicking Trump as Gov. Newsome does.

FDR, Bernie and AOC as well as the Zohran Mamdani, winner of the NY City Democratic mayoral primary have the heat and the overflow crowds while NY City’s donor class supports Andrew Cuomo, who resigned as NYS governor because eleven women came forth with sexual harassment complaints.

Meanwhile, the Rand Corporation updated its 2020 statistical count of how much money has been distributed upward from the 90% to the 1% from $50 trillion to $79 trillion from 1975 to 2023. Perhaps they’ll update again soon.

If we want to win, look at FDR’s “Second Bill of Rights” published on July 19, 2025 Substack story titled “A Different Time, a Different Leader.” It outlines that policy and we need to follow it to the letter because on top of the horrors alluded to above, Trump’s Big Brutal Bill will erase 17 million off of Medicaid AFTER the 2026 midterm election. Additionally, Trump/Musk closed of Social Security offices, created new burdensome paperwork for Social Security benefits and enacted huge SNAP cuts.

In 2016, I daily drove through the rural countryside for work and the people then favored both Trump and Bernie. Both men spoke the same complaints and spoke in favor of the working class the Democrats betrayed with globalization. The difference is that Bernie has alwys meant what he says on behalf of the working class. It was just another fraud that Trump perpetrated and turned into a deadly hatefest against Democrats and all of us he calls DEI. He has finally unmasked himself.

So now we must decide how to fight back and take control.

We either fight with the heart and moral fiber of FDR, Bernie, and AOC or we stick with wet noodle spines of the last 44 years of Democratic Party’s or a Trump mimic as we again surrender power and further betray what is now the 90%.

Herewith: The Reprint of “A Different Time, a Different Leader”

A Different Time, a Different Leader

FDR’s Second Bill of Rights

Carol L. Clark

Jul 19, 2025

On January 11, 1944, as the Second World War entered another new year, the Allies were making progress against Germany, Italy, and Japan. The Soviets were pushing back the Germans on the Eastern Front, the Western allies advanced up the boot of Italy and plans were being prepared for invading France. The choice for the latter was between entering in Vichy France or Brittany’s English Channel shores.

At some point on that January day, FDR asked the newsreel cameras to film the section of his State of the Union address in which he would outline his initiative presenting a Second Bill of Rights, also known as the Bill of Economic Rights, to Congress.

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He said that the original political rights granted by the Constitution and the 21 Amendments at that time “proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.” He emphasized that these additional rights were for everyone, regardless of “station, race or creed.”

Those additional rights are:

1. Employment (the right to work – not to be confused with today’s anti-union right-to-work laws). The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

2. An adequate income for food, shelter, and recreation – the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

3. Farmers’ rights to a fair income – the right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

4. Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies – the right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

5. Decent housing – the right of every family to a decent home;

6. Adequate medical care – the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

7. Social security – the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

8. Education – the right to a good education.

Roosevelt did not propose further Amendments to enshrine these rights, fearing that he would be treading on the courts’ purview. Instead, he envisioned federal laws to give them effect and then he sent over Executive Branch personnel to work with the appropriate Senate committees. Ironically, while he gave due deference to the courts, his lending Executive Branch personnel to Senate committees signaled the death knell of his proposal. Congress balked and in 1946 passed the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 to fund Congressional staffing for committees.

Mindful of the struggles of the 25% of the population unemployed and destitute during the Depression, largely blamed on the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, Roosevelt aided the Allies by shipping U.S. war materiel through his Lend Lease program. Then he joined the war effort after Japan’s strike at Pearl Harbor while Germany was prevailing on all fronts.

By his efforts, he relit the U.S. manufacturing sector to help both the unemployed at home and the Allies abroad and, by joining the war as combatants, changed the balance of power and changed the war’s trajectory which led to the eventual Allied victory.

As he set these tactics in motion, he set a course for the social safety net programs that would enable the middle class to participate in the nation’s prosperity. One recurring theme throughout FDR’s administration was concern for the well-being of all in the U.S. and abroad. He stated in that 1944 State of the Union address that now was the time to prepare for a better world after the war was over. Nineteen months later, the Allies prevailed.

FDR has been portrayed as a man of an exceptionally good temperament. He paid attention to history. He recalled the 25% unemployment rate in 1933. He quoted an old English real property case that “Necessitous men are not free men,” (Vernon v. Bethell (1792) 28 ER 838), according to Lord Henley LC. He noted further that “People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”

Today’s oligarchs will call these rights socialism or communism. That has been standard response against FDR since he first announced the New Deal and Lend Lease. People have heard these accusations for so long that they believe them, falling prey to the oligarchy’s hidden desires finally unmasked by Project 2025. The lesson here is that a decent education is required not just for the individual but for the country.

We have witnessed the dumbing down of the population including those who sit as Senators and Representatives and those in too many businesses who still think that government, which is checked by the Bill of Rights, is the enemy and corporations, not encumbered by that Bill of Rights, will be our saviors. Many corporations are cognizant of worker satisfaction and customer care. Others, however, are not.

FDR’s Second Bill of Rights remains an excellent template to keep in mind when Trump and Vance out of office. We can then use that template to rebuild what they’ve destroyed.

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