President Donald Trump is struggling. His approval rating has plummeted historical chaosand his standing with key segments of the electorate that made up his 2024 coalition—including Latinos—has declined significantly. He has been unable or unwilling to turn his attention to the issues that matter most to working Americans, such as affordability and the threat artificial intelligence poses to middle-class jobs. With every move, his administration is undermining Republicans’ hopes of retaining control of Congress, including the Senate, in the upcoming midterm elections. Nothing has caused Republicans more trouble than the president. The only thing that can save them is if a combination of restrictions, restrictions on voting, and the presence of federal troops in the cities can overcome the natural tendency of the democratic will.
And yet, Trump remains an unusually powerful party leader. He has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to maintain solid support within the Republican Party and punish his opponents. In recent primaries, he demonstrated that strength by helping to unseat some Republicans who he believed had crossed him.
In Indiana, his meddling in state races contributed to the defeat of Republican incumbents in the state legislature who refused to comply with his demands for mid-century restrictions. In Kentucky, Trump marched against the opposition to ensure that Congressman Thomas Massie lost his primary, as did Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy—a doctor who voted for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lead the Department of Health and Human Services despite Kennedy’s continued attacks on approved vaccines and treatments.
In the Texas Republican Senate primary, Trump’s endorsement helped secure Attorney General Ken Paxton’s scandal-ridden victory over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, despite many Republicans believing Cornyn had a better chance of defeating Democrat James Talarico.
In other words, Trump did a radical purge and he succeeded. He showed that he holds the party firmly and can move it in any direction he chooses, regardless of the political risks. The paradox of Republicans is that they remain on the lookout for a party leader who does not have their interests in mind and who drags their political brand along with him.
To understand the positions that Trump has on his party, it is good to go back to the middle of 1938, when Franklin D. Roosevelt—one of the most influential presidents in the history of the United States—failed to put his party on the same page. When Roosevelt tried to rid the Democratic party of the conservative Southern congressmen who were blocking his New Deal, the president found himself on the receiving end of the war, empowering the very forces he was trying to stop.
Roosevelt was inside in the middle of his second term when he decided to take people from the South into his party who were hindering his agenda. After 1936, Roosevelt was feeling strong. He had been re-elected in a landslide victory over Republican Alf Landon (who carried a 334-88 House majority and a 77-16 Senate majority), strengthening his New Deal coalition, and had worked with Congress to pass a series of reform bills that greatly expanded the federal government.
But in building this legislative record, Roosevelt had to repeatedly go through deep divisions within his own party. The Democrats were a weak coalition: Northern Liberals who called on the government to create a social safety net, work with unions, and rein in the worst economic waste; Southern Democrats who accepted federal support as long as they could control the administration of these programs to prevent interference with race relations; the working class, ethnic immigrants who had moved to the big cities of the North in the early 20th century; elites and progressives; and Black voters who were beginning to leave the party of Lincoln.
Although Southern Democrats were swayed by the influence of these latter groups that played a role in the 1936 victory, they held disproportionate power in the party because they controlled many key committees in the House and Senate. They had supported much of the New Deal, since poor white agricultural communities were often among the people most in need of federal aid. But they drew a firm line on any plan that would give the federal government control of the labor force or allow unions to take root in the area. This was the main reason, for example, that domestic and agricultural workers were initially left out of Social Security.
Southern European Democrats were increasingly opposed to the president and his agenda. In 1937, they were among the most ardent opponents of Roosevelt’s proposal to expand the Supreme Court by adding justices who would be less hostile to the New Deal, the so-called closure plan. Tensions increased when the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) made a major effort to organize Southern workers, and when Democratic leaders chose Alben Barkley of Kentucky as majority leader in the Senate against the preferred Southern candidate, Pat Harrison of Mississippi. Harrison lost by one vote after the White House pressured members to support Barkley. “We are engaged in a major war against America. The lines are drawn,” warned North Carolina Senator Josiah Bailey. “America’s Socialist Powers Are Not in the Socialist Party.” Roosevelt told Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau that the South was making efforts to create a “Conservative Democratic Party.” Morgenthau he agreedsaying, “There must be war and there must be cleansing.”
Roosevelt decided to take matters into his own hands. Although presidents usually did not participate in their party’s primaries, he chose to intervene, believing it necessary to prevent the party from drifting to the right. During a fire side chat in June 1938, he told Americans that much of the Democratic primary would be about a conflict “between two schools of thought, generally classified as liberal and conservative.” As the “head of the Democratic Party,” Roosevelt explained that it was his duty to defend “a clear declaration of the principles laid down in the Democratic platform of 1936.”
He campaigned to defeat Democrats Walter George of Georgia, Ellison “Cotton Ed” Smith of South Carolina, Millard Tydings of Maryland, Guy Gillette of Iowa, as well as a troubled Northern Democrat—John O’Connor of New York, who chaired the House Rules Committee. Although he did not follow every conservative, a victory against a minority would be enough to send a strong signal to conservatives in his party that they should listen to him more, similar to how the Supreme Court moved to more sympathetic decisions after he threatened to expand the bench.
The president was not smart. At an event in Barnesville, Georgia, celebrating the launch of a new rural electrification program, FDR openly attacked George’s record and said that, if he could, he would vote for George’s opponent. More than 50,000 people packed Gordon Institute Stadium for the event. And As George looked ahead and tried to avoid showing anger, Roosevelt declared, “my old friend, the senior senator from this state, in my opinion cannot be considered of the liberal school of thought – and, therefore, the argument that he has served so long in the Senate is beside the point.”
He did the same inside number of other states. At a short stop during the train ride to South Carolina, Roosevelt said, “I do not believe that any family or man can live on 50 cents a day,” taking a swipe at Smith, who had opposed Roosevelt’s minimum wage bill and, in explaining his position, said that “a man can live on 50 cents a day in South Carolina.”
Michigan Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg warned that the “cleansing” that has “come to America has profoundly negative effects. It is one thing for a political leader to seek sympathetic political followers, but quite another for the president of this still-free republic to seek control of the legislative and judicial branches of constitutional government.”
Based on the book by Susan Dunn Roosevelt’s purgeall efforts were mishandled. Roosevelt approached the war in a scattered fashion, without a solid plan, while his “removal committee,” which oversaw the effort, performed poorly. Most importantly, Dunn writes, Americans did not want the president to interfere in local elections.
The effort did not go well with Roosevelt, who learned the limits of presidential power. The four men against whom Roosevelt campaigned went on to win. The president’s only successful effort came in New York against Connor.
O’Connor’s downfall was not enough to offset the media narrative that Roosevelt had failed miserably. Southern Democrats did very well in the midterm elections, and Republicans also made significant gains in the House (81 seats) and the Senate (eight seats). Later, a conservative coalition emerged, an alliance of Southern Democrats and Republicans that would serve as a bulwark against Roosevelt’s domestic ambitions and against liberalism more broadly in the 1960s.
Roosevelt continued to defend his decision. In 1941 interview and of CollierRoosevelt said that he “was primarily interested in making sure that the Democratic party and the Republican party should not be Tweedledum and Tweedledee to each other. I was more interested in developing the Democratic party as a liberal, forward-thinking and progressive party in America.”
Trump has confirmed himself to be a more formidable figure as a party leader. Much of his success, of course, is due to the fact that both parties have become more closely related since the 1970s. The type of Southern Democrats who caused problems for Roosevelt largely became Republicans after the 1990s. Neither party today has the kind of internal fractures that existed in the 1930s. Additionally, the tools available to presidents to influence primaries, including political action committees, networks of social, and modern computer data, did not exist 88 years ago.
The irony, though, is that, despite his defeat in 1938, Roosevelt ultimately helped build the most enduring Democratic coalition. Over time, liberals within the party gained strength, and by the 1960s they were able to break Southern opposition on several major issues, including the passage of the Voting Rights Act, as well as the creation of Medicare, in 1965. Because Roosevelt remained a popular figure in American politics, the party’s association with him and his legacy helped strengthen it for decades.
Trump, by contrast, has aligned his party with an unpopular leader and agenda. The GOP now finds itself in a situation where individual members cannot easily break free from the president’s grip; doing so means that losing the next election is almost guaranteed (see Wyoming’s Liz Cheney). He shows little concern for the long-term future of Republicans and is willing to take actions that will hurt them in the short and long term.
While to this day many Democrats will still proudly claim Roosevelt’s legacy, it is far from clear that Republicans will do the same with Trump decades down the line. Instead, they may be looking at a man of extraordinary influence who used his position within the party to make decisions and engage in infighting that undermined the gains the GOP would have made if it had sealed its fate with a leader who had the long-term vision to build a broad Republican coalition and who focused on legislation that would create a lasting mark. Roosevelt’s instincts led to programs that have remained extremely popular and have been the reason Democrats can rely on their voter base. In a few years, will Republicans do the same?
