Michael Barone: New Deal Appeal Grows Stale

Michael Barone is senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner.

...To understand the lessons of the 1930s, you need to read the election returns. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s big victory in 1932 was a massive rejection of Republicans across the board. Republicans lost huge ground in urban and rural areas, even in their few redoubts in the South.

In 1936, FDR won re-election by a slightly larger margin, but with a different coalition. The rural and small town North returned to its long Republican allegiance, while Democrats made further big gains among immigrants and blue-collar workers in big cities and factory towns.

The New Deal historians attributed these gains to Roosevelt’s economic redistribution measures. The problem with the historians’ claims is that the shifts in the electorate apparent in 1936 also are apparent in the 1934 off-year elections. Democrats won big that year, but compared to 1932, they lost ground in rural areas and small towns and gained much ground in cities....

So why should voters be leery of economic redistribution in times of economic distress? Perhaps because they realize that they stand to gain much more from a vibrantly growing economy than from redistribution of a stagnant economic pie. Redistribution edges toward a zero-sum game....