Forging America: My Campaign Manager is Roosevelt

Chapter 250 - 128: Reagan Democrats (3)

"Quite the opposite. He used these meticulously designed failures and betrayals to perfectly conceal himself, all within his capabilities. He transformed himself from the perpetrator into the protector."

Listening to this breakdown, Leo felt a level of difficulty he had never encountered before.

He was finally realizing what caliber of opponent he was up against.

Russell Warren was not a thug like Martin Carter Wright who only knew how to use arson and executive orders to cause destruction, nor was he a greenhouse flower like Aston Monroe who was raised on polling data.

Warren was a top-tier Washington politician.

He was a master of survival, the kind of man who could roll in the mud and still keep his suit collar perfectly clean.

"Mr. President."

Leo asked in his mind.

’Back in your day, were you fighting people like him?’

"People like him?"

Roosevelt let out a light chuckle.

"Leo, a man like Warren wouldn’t have even cracked the top ten on my list of opponents back in the day."

"I wasn’t just facing a few cunning senators. I was facing the Dupont Family’s chemical empire and Morgan Bank’s financial blockade. I was up against the four old hardliners on the Supreme Court who wanted to dismantle the entire New Deal, and even radical union leaders who didn’t just want bread, but the whole factory."

"You have to balance, you have to compromise. You have to dance between countless daggers and make sure you don’t get cut."

Roosevelt’s voice turned serious.

"That’s why, in the very beginning, I advised you to sacrifice Murphy."

"Because that’s the simplest, safest move in a political calculation—amputating a necrotic limb to save the body."

"But you refused. You chose to save him. You chose the hardest path."

"Now the situation has become complicated, Leo. Once you enter these deep waters, you’re no longer the one calling the shots for many decisions. Your hand is forced."

"Do you think I seemed powerful back in my day? Like an emperor?"

Roosevelt asked in return.

"But every decision I made, even the commands that seemed the most arbitrary and autocratic, had to follow one core principle."

"And that is, I had to ensure I was always on the side of the majority."

"In 1935, I signed the Wagner Act, giving workers the right to strike. Wall Street wanted to tear me to pieces, and the newspapers called me a class traitor. But I didn’t care, because I knew the workers of the entire United States were standing behind me."

"To pass the Agricultural Adjustment Act, I offended consumers in the cities, but I won the ironclad votes of millions of farmers in the Midwest."

"To get the Southern Democrats to support my New Deal, I had to remain silent on the issue of lynching, which offended the liberal intellectuals, but I kept my majority in Congress."

"I had many enemies I could see, but I had even more friends behind me."

"That’s the arithmetic of politics."

Roosevelt sighed.

"And this, precisely, is the Democratic Party’s biggest problem today."

"It’s not that they aren’t trying. In fact, today’s Democratic Party also speaks up for the workers. They also want to send money to the Rust Belt; they wish they could stuff treasury checks directly into the pockets of blue-collar workers."

"But the problem is, the workers see this as an arrogant attempt at class re-engineering."

"When those elites from the East Coast, wearing their custom-tailored suits, walk into the mining districts with subsidies, what the workers see are invaders trying to destroy their way of life."

"Because the labels they carry—liberal, intellectual, beneficiary of globalization—make them inherently untrustworthy."

"They think they represent justice, but when they look back, they find fewer and fewer people behind them."

"They’ve become the minority."

"And Warren, he keenly grasped this. He might be an asshole, but right now, he represents the majority in this land."

"Then what should we do?"

Leo looked at the sea of red on the map.

"Do I have to go get a gun? Do I have to go swear an oath in church?"

"I can’t do it. It’s hypocrisy, and in that arena, I could never out-act Warren."

"No, you don’t need to act."

Roosevelt dismissed Leo’s idea.

"You can’t attack Warren on cultural issues. That’s his home turf, a fortress he’s been building for thirty years. The moment you open your mouth about guns or God, you’ve already lost. He’ll immediately slap the ’arrogant liberal’ label on you, and the workers will kick you out."

"You also can’t say he hasn’t done anything."

"Because he has indeed done some patchwork. He’s helped some factories secure Federation relief, and he’s helped repair some community roads. It’s not much, but it’s enough for him to brag about."

"What you need to do is completely destroy his public persona."

"You need to prove that he’s a fraud."

Roosevelt’s voice grew sharp.

"You have to prove that his so-called protection is a complete and utter sham."

"You need to tell those workers: The so-called jobs Warren has given you are fake jobs."

"’Fake jobs?’" Leo repeated the words.

"That’s right."

Roosevelt instructed.

"Go look at the projects he’s spearheaded. See where that money really went."

"Go see if the workers’ wages have gone up. Have their benefits increased? Has their work environment improved?"

"Or did that money become year-end bonuses for executives? Dividends for shareholders? Funding to buy automated equipment for layoffs?"

"I want you to tear off his mask."

"You need to tell the workers: The subsidies Senator Warren fought so hard for in Washington didn’t save your jobs. They only saved your bosses’ profits."