Why Biden should welcome their hatred

I have only one morsel of advice to Joe Biden as he prepares for his first debate with Trump, one week from tonight: Channel Franklin D. Roosevelt by excoriating corporate America and explaining that Trump is a flack for the moneyed interests.

Eighty-eight years ago this month, on June 27, 1936, Roosevelt delivered his speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president. That happens to be the same day Joe Biden will be debating Donald Trump.

FDR’s speech is as relevant today as it was then. We’re at a time like the 1930s, when the super-wealthy and big corporations were seeking to oust an incumbent Democrat who was working for the people rather than for them.

On June 27, 1936, FDR dubbed the moneyed interests “economic royalists” who “governed without the consent of the governed” and “put the average man’s property and the average man’s life in pawn to the mercenaries of dynastic power.”

They used their economic power, FDR charged, to create “a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction … The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor — these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship.”

He warned against giving these economic royalists the political power they craved. “If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place. These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power.”

Then, on the eve of his second election — on October 31, 1936 — FDR delivered his coup de grace, explaining the stakes in his fight with the moneyed interests.

“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace — business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.
I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.”

Today’s economic royalists are backing Trump, and the fight is much the same.

The high mavens of Silicon Valley held a fundraiser for him last week. The Business Roundtable (the voice of big corporations in Washington) is preparing to pump an eight-figure sum into the Trump campaign.

Jamie Dimon, chair and CEO of the biggest and most influential bank in the United States and for years the spokesman for corporate America, is coming around to Trump. Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, is turning his X platform into a weaponized outlet for Trump.

Tump has asked the robber barons of Big Oil for $1 billion as an advance quid pro quo for rolling back environmental regulations. Miriam Adelson, heir to the casino magnate, has pledged $100 million to Trump.

Today’s moneyed interests are far richer in proportion to average Americans and the American economy as a whole than they were when FDR took them on. Corporate profits are near record levels, and many big corporations are keeping prices high in order to reap even more. CEO pay is through the stratosphere. The stock market is hitting record highs.

The moneyed interests have done wonderfully well under Joe Biden, despite Biden’s support for labor unions and his crackdown on monopolies.

But it’s apparently not enough for them. They want additional tax cuts and regulation rollbacks and are willing to support Trump — and flush democracy down the toilet — in order to get them.

They are also more politically potent today than they were in the 1930s, when the Great Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression had discredited them.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to pose as a hero of the working class who will fight for average working people. He is not, of course. He is a stooge of the moneyed interests.

Which makes it doubly important for Biden to channel FDR a week from tonight and speak the truth — that only once before, 88 years ago, have the moneyed interests been so united against one candidate as they stand today against Joe Biden.

They hate Biden — and Biden should welcome their hatred.

Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.