Before getting to the legal, political, and cultural ramifications of the “not guilty” verdicts in the Kyle Rittenhouse case, I want to note that Friday’s passage of the Build Back Better bill by the House is a BFD. And that’s especially true when living descendants of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration—like James Roosevelt Jr., Henry Scott Wallace, June Hopkins, and Tomlin Perkins Coggeshall, all writing for The Hill, say that it is. Our group of New Deal descendants first started corresponding with Biden (as two of us described in this publication) when he made clear in spring of 2020 that he was planning an “FDR-sized presidency.” He said that the crises that would confront the next president were big enough to “eclipse what FDR faced.” After taking office, Biden sat down with prominent historians to discuss lessons from the New Deal and proposed a Civilian Climate Corps modeled on FDR’s wildly successful Civilian Conservation Corps. He seems to love the FDR comparisons and has FDR’s portrait in the place of honor above the fireplace in the Oval Office. Candidate Biden couldn’t have been clearer about his New Deal-scale ambitions, and he proceeded to win by seven million votes. Though a few cautious members of his party may now be getting nervous, the fact is, we are still in a New Deal moment. We still have a health crisis and accompanying economic crisis, with a climate crisis and a democracy crisis thrown in for good measure. The American people didn’t just vote for a bland “return to normalcy” (the campaign slogan of Warren Harding in 1920, whose presidency is memorable only for its corruption). They voted for, and deserve, big bold action that will improve their daily lives. And history shows, this boldness will be rewarded. FDR’s leadership to rebuild the U.S. economy, create jobs and improve Americans’ economic security earned him victory in his first midterm election, adding seats in both the House and Senate — an extremely rare occurrence. To be sure, FDR’s administration deserves more than a few withering criticisms, for reasons that have been discussed at Daily Kos many times. But FDR’s administration was also politically ambitious on many fronts (as those times dictated). And I’m sure that few people understand the legislative obstacles that face President Joe Biden better than this quartet of descendants; they’re legislative obstacles that their illustrious ancestors (by and large) did not have to face. Read more