On election eve 1932, it was pretty obvious that the Great Depression would make Herbert Hoover a one-term president.
On this election eve, it’s not clear that the same fate awaits Donald Trump for his callous failure to take decisive presidential leadership against the coronavirus pandemic that has killed 231,000 Americans, including more than 1,500 Kentuckians.
Hoover apparently never said “prosperity is just around the corner.” But on May 1, 1930, when the country was plunging deeper and deeper into the Depression, he told Americans, “While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed the worst and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover.”
We’re 10 months into the coronavirus pandemic. As many as 31 states reported at least one record-high day of new COVID-19 cases in October, says Johns Hopkins University.
Hoover ultimately took some action, said Murray State University historian Bill Mulligan. “He initiated a lot of federal construction projects. He was hindered by his view on the federal budget and deficits – which [Democratic candidate Franklin D.] Roosevelt shared during the campaign. But that is another story.”
At any rate, the public blamed Hoover for not doing enough to fight the Depression. The jobless rate was heading for 24 percent when the country went to the polls in 1932 and elected FDR in a landslide.
Trump seems content to spout nostrums like,”We are turning the corner. We are rounding the curve, we will vanquish the virus.”
While polls show Democrat Joe Biden leading nationally and in most battleground states, the latter numbers show Trump is still competitive. Hence, many Democratic stomachs are churning.
“Trump’s chances of winning are the result of a number of things,” Mulligan said. “From 1968, with [President Richard] Nixon’s ‘Southern Strategy,’ the Republicans began focusing on disaffected white voters in the South and began isolating moderate to liberal Republicans.
“Reagan expanded this nationally to use race to appeal to the disaffected. His riffs on welfare queens driving Cadillacs was hard-core racism. He added a mocking of government and experts. He also began shifting the tax burden from the wealthy and corporations. Race led many to vote against their own interests, which has been an aspect of American politics since Reconstruction.”
Reagan’s winning two terms was “one of the motivations for Clinton’s ‘New Democratic Party,’ which moved significantly away from social and racial justice issues,” according to Mulligan.
He also cited the current silo effect of news coverage. “People do not get much balanced news unless they make an effort. Fox News has reinforced Trump’s lies and covered up his ineptitude. In defending a libel suit, Tucker Carlson admitted he does not tell the truth and argued his listeners know he does not tell the truth.”
Mulligan, too, pointed to what he called the tribalization of political parties. “I would argue, most strongly among Republicans. The Democrats are still divided on many issues.
“There is a limited interest in truth because as many have pointed out, Trump hates the people they hate, and he makes it respectable. Mocking the handicapped, demeaning women, puerile insults, etc., empowers many of his followers. There is more. Abortion is a factor and the rise of powerful women, which (the latter) is threatening to older, less educated males.”
Murray State history Professor Brian Clardy also singled out Trump’s “advantage of instant communication with Instagram and Facebook” to connect him with his “die-hard followers, which, honestly are the remnants of the old [George] Wallace-Dixiecrats.”
Added Clardy: “Trump has been able to reframe the coronavirus narrative with his followers – that’s it’s no big thing, like the flu, and that the coronavirus is a hoax. Tell that to the families of more than a quarter of a million people who have died of coronavirus, a couple of whom I know.”
Wrapping up, Clardy predicted that the Trump faithful “will come out tomorrow in droves. They will back their candidate. They will have that show of force.”
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