I don’t think the fact that it took gearing up for a massive war to end the economic crisis indicated a smashing success. A qualified success at best. It certainly gave a lot of people work and it generated some beneficial infrastructure. I don’t think all of it was bad. But it did not lift the country out of the depression. I think it helped extend it, on whole.

I thoroughly disagree with your assessment of his attempt to pack the court. Fortunately, so did many other dems at the time. Abiding by the courts is not optional. That’s the point I constantly make to Trumpies about their evident view that if they disagree with the judiciary, they can ignore it. All you really said was the same thing - the court was in FDR’s way, and he had been elected convincingly, so he was justified.

He wasn’t. A unanimously elected president still needs to abide by the Constitution. That’s the nature of guardrails - sometimes, they prevent you from going where you want to go. But if we support the importance of them, we have to abide by them when they get in our way too.

The best thing about FDR’s attempts to jump the guardrails on our democracy is that they failed. The guardrails held. Just like they did against Trump.

We’re both concerned about whether they’ll continue to hold, I think. The fact that they are not optional is the most important element of that.