Word: farmer-labor
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Without abolishing the primaries, as Barry Goldwater has proposed, the role of party leaders and officeholders can be increased. Minneapolis Attorney David Lebedoff, a longtime activist in Minnesota's Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, asks: "If we have representative government, why can't we have representative politics? No one says that there should be a town meeting of 100 million people through two-way TV for a vote on the SALT treaty." Everett C. Ladd of the Social Science Data Center at the University of Connecticut argues that the alleged glories "of participatory democracy have neutralized representative democracy...
...unjustly accused of being a draft dodger by John Kennedy's supporters.) He served as Minnesota state director of war-production training, and in 1943 ran for mayor of Minneapolis. He lost, largely because the liberal vote was split between the Democratic Party and the Farmer-Labor Party. After the election Humphrey brought the two together in a merger that has dominated Minnesota politics ever since. Later he pushed out the Communists, who had become influential in the new Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, thereby earning the enduring enmity of the far left...
Populism aimed to free the small farmer from debt, and it inspired William Jennings Bryan's free-silver policy, which was designed to put more money into circulation. From Populist roots grew the Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota, the Non-Partisan League in North Dakota and the Progressive Party headed by Wisconsin's Senator Robert La Follette. The movement also developed its ugly side, later serving as a power base for such back-country bigots and racist leaders as Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo, Georgia Governor Eugene Talmadge and, eventually, Tom Watson. Today, however, Southern Populism is rural liberalism...
...most notable was the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party that Hubert Humphrey helped nail together in 1944 just before he became mayor of Minneapolis. The Farmer-Labor Party was radical in its origins, with mostly rural, Scandinavian Protestant members and roots in the antimonopolist, Greenback and Populist movements. The Democrats were mostly urban and more conservative, with strong Irish, German and Catholic elements. Within a decade of the merger, the D.F.L. emerged as the dominant force in Minnesota politics, breeding a remarkable collection of national figures like Humphrey, Orville Freeman, Eugene McCarthy and Walter ("Fritz") Mondale...
...state after state, leaving the regular party workers stunned and sometimes apoplectic. In a sense, the McGovernites are, abruptly, the party's establishment now, and some of them, more intransigent and radical than their candidate, have grown abrasive in dealing with the regulars. At Minnesota's Democratic Farmer-Labor Party convention, McGovern zealots pushed through platform planks calling for legalized marijuana, unconditional amnesty and homosexual marriage. Idaho Democrats suddenly found their platform calling for abortion, abolition of the death penalty, amnesty and withdrawal from Viet Nam within 90 days...