Chapter Seven - Enemies to the Left and Right

CHAPTER SEVEN

Enemies to the Left and Right

IT DIDN’T TAKE long for the backlash to show up. When you move fast, you make enemies. And Roosevelt had no shortage of either.

Big business hated him. They didn’t like the taxes, the regulations, or the idea that Washington could tell them how to run their factories. They called him a traitor to his class. They said the New Deal was creeping socialism. They called him a dictator in a nice suit. He smiled through it and kept signing bills.

But the loudest threats didn’t always come from the right.

Some of the most dangerous voices came from inside the tent. From people who thought Roosevelt wasn’t going far enough.

Huey Long was one of them. The former governor and current senator from Louisiana, Long was everything Roosevelt wasn’t. Loud. Blunt. Populist to the bone. He talked like a preacher and ruled like a warlord. He built his own empire in the South, and he made no secret about wanting the whole country next.

His pitch was simple: “Share Our Wealth.” Cap fortunes. Give every family a guaranteed income. Tax the hell out of the rich. He said FDR was too soft, too slow, and too scared to really fix inequality. People listened. He had a national radio audience and an army of followers. Roosevelt knew he was dangerous. Not because he was wrong, but because he was charismatic.

If Long hadn’t been assassinated in 1935, he might’ve run against Roosevelt. And it might’ve worked.

Then there was Father Coughlin. A Catholic priest with a national radio show, he started as a Roosevelt supporter and ended up one of his most unhinged critics. Coughlin blamed the banks, the Jews, the communists, whoever fit the outrage cycle that week. His broadcasts reached millions. He turned political rage into spiritual theater.

FDR couldn’t ignore these guys. He didn’t attack them directly, but he adjusted. He moved to cut off their oxygen. More social programs. More federal guarantees. More progressive tax talk. He was constantly calibrating. Not to keep everyone happy, but to stay in control.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court started chopping the New Deal to pieces. They struck down some of the biggest programs like the NRA and AAA, calling them unconstitutional. The legal argument didn’t matter to most people. What mattered was that unelected judges were standing in the way of jobs, food, and progress.

FDR seethed. But he waited.

He wasn’t going to lose the war over a few lost battles. Not yet.

His political instincts were still sharper than anyone else’s. He knew how to sell the vision, how to time the punch, and how to survive pressure from every direction. He wasn’t trying to be loved. He was trying to win.

And he kept winning.

By the end of his first term, the country wasn’t fixed. But it was moving again. The people trusted him. The programs were real. And the machine was humming.

He wasn’t finished.

Not even close.