New Deal Dbq

The roaring twenties was a decade of economic prosperity and dominance for the Republican party. However, this golden era was brought to an abrupt end. Quoting the New York Daily News the day following the market crash, “...the big, barn-like floor where the pure strings of the world are pulled, experienced the biggest panic, if not the wildest and most desperate, in the history of the world yesterday” (NYDT 1), as a result of lenient financial regulation, the market crashed. This left millions of Americans without a job and looking for executive leadership to guide them out of economic depression. Unfortunately, the incumbent President, Herbert Hoover, was unable to attack the economic crisis. Under his administration, the crisis worsened,

although he did create the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which, according to the White House, which was meant to, “aid business, additional help for farmers facing mortgage foreclosures, banking reform, a loan to states for feeding the unemployed, expansion of public works, and drastic governmental economy” (WH.gov 1). The creation of this government program would prove to be ineffective during his final years of the presidency and a majority of the population blamed him for the economic recession.

Not only did his presidency destroy his odds maintaining office, but it also marred the Republican party, as they too were in association to the causes of the Great Depression. The outcome of the election of 1932 marked a pivotal turning point in the history of the United States. President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democrat from New York, pledged to the American people that he would attack the Great Depression and get people back to work with his “New Deal Coalition.” It was his coalition that changed the Democratic party, forever. The party became nationally accepted as the progressive party of the United States. With the expansion of the size of the government under the New Deal, quoting political science professor and author of FDR, Jean Edward Smith, “it was the first time that Americans thought of their government as a solution to the problems that individuals and society at large were experiencing” (Smith 21). Government was no longer the problem, they were the problem solvers, aiding the American people and stimulating the market economy during the

process. While, at the same time, changing the opinion of minority voters. The Democratic party was no longer known as the party of white supremacy, they were now the party of change and big government. The true importance of the New Deal and the Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, however, with regards to the transition of political ideologies between the two parties, was that the traditional voting patterns that had existed for a little under a century began to change. Democratic and Republican voting strongholds were gradually flipping, due to ideological change.