Thread by @LarryGlickman

Why the divergence between perception and reality? Lots of reasons but it partially has to do, IMO, with the success of anti-New Deal free enterprisers transmuting their ideology into an invented tradition a kind of common sense.

Here’s a link to the excellent piece by @DLeonhardt, summarizing research by the economists, Alan S. Blinder and Mark W. Watson. /2

nytimes.com/2021/02/02/opi…

It calls to mind the statement often attributed to Harry Truman (and here in 1952 to Adlai Stevenson) that, "If you want to live like a Republican these days, you have to vote for a Democrat." /3
newspapers.com/clip/69164274/

In 1952 Truman said to the ADA, "Under the liberal policies of the Democratic administration, our country has grown strong and prosperous....this has been true for [so long] that people tend to forget what things were like under the Republicans."/4
trumanlibrary.gov/library/public…

Here's a link to my book, in which I analyze how the contested and evolving language of free enterprise, first popularized by abolitionists, transformed and hardened in the New Deal era into a powerful oppositional political tradition./5
yalebooks.yale.edu/book/978030023…