I don't think anyone in Lincoln's cabinet considered it a possibility. FDR, on the other hand, had someone sharing a bed AND attending all of his family reunions who continued to tell him it had to happen.
It may be noted that FDR dealt with some of the greatest challenges any American president has ever faced, and did so in a way that defined liberal/progressivism for the next 50 years. He was not perfect (just ask George Takei) but when taken in total FDR's progressive legacy is unmatched.
Truman ultimately integrated the armed forces after the war, but even still it took a decade to enforce. Regardless of FDR's personal feelings on the matter, the military was barely functional in the 1930s due to budget cuts stemming from the Depression, and had much larger problems to contend with in the early 1940s.
211 pages in this thread. If you can find any self-avowed Democrat, like myself, referring to Hillary as a "liberal" anywhere within it, I'll eat my shoe.
Barely 90 minutes ago-
Is she a liberal? She is the most liberal major party candidate running for president this year. On a global political scale, she's probably a centrist. Is she a progressive? I'd say, given the starting point (present day America), her platform is progressive.
And the MWGL forum is a microcosm- there are plenty of Hillary flacks out there touting her "liberal" agenda, often as a cleanup effort to get Sanders supporters on the train.
Sanders, whom I voted for, is by far the farthest left candidate to have a national impact in my lifetime. Also, inflexible leftist ideology has terrifying consequences...Nader 2000. So dry your tears, put your admirable and progressive ideals in practice at the state and local level and do right by your nation and your party this November. And you will...
Blaming Nader for Gore's defeat is a red herring- a partisan Supreme court ultimately installed GWB in spite of overwhelming evidence that Gore had actually won Florida. And, if a third party candidate like Nader could derail a VP coming from a hugely popular administration, maybe the real problem was Gore running a shitty campaign.
As for "inflexible," I would turn that around- it's been the "go-along-to-get-along" moral flexibility of the Democratic party as a whole abandoning their core principles in a vain attempt to win elections in the short term and attract corporate donations that has led to the party's slide into 1980s Republicanism. This is why I registered "UNA" during the Clinton administration (in my state I still get to vote in primaries as a UNA).
I am quite familiar with tactical voting, thank you- been doing it for 20 years. Sanders reminded us all how far the Democratic party has fallen- the question remains, what will we do about it? Just accept Clinton as the best we're ever going to get and turn our backs on FDR, or fight to reclaim liberalism? We do agree on one thing- state and local voting is critical, and often overlooked.
