So let’s look beyond the first 100 days. Biden could still emulate FDR in another crucial way. It is said that a group of civil rights activists and labor leaders, including A. Philip Randolph, once met with Roosevelt prior to the start of World War II to insist he use the power of the presidency to take action against discrimination in the workplace. “You’ve convinced me,” FDR responded, having listened to them lay out their demands. “Now go out and make me do it.”
The story is almost certainly apocryphal (though, to be fair, singer Harry Belafonte claimed to have heard a version of it from Eleanor Roosevelt herself.) True or not, the point of the story is clear: Politicians inside the system need allies outside of it; outsiders willing to publicly pressure them and, on occasion, provide cover for bold, outside-the-box moves. To quote essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates: “Politicians respond to only one thing — power. This is not the flaw of democracy, it’s the entire point. It’s the job of activists to generate, and apply, enough pressure on the system to affect change.”
So let’s look beyond the first 100 days. Biden could still emulate FDR in another crucial way. It is said that a group of civil rights activists and labor leaders, including A. Philip Randolph, once met with Roosevelt prior to the start of World War II to insist he use the power of the presidency to take action against discrimination in the workplace. “You’ve convinced me,” FDR responded, having listened to them lay out their demands. “Now go out and make me do it.”
The story is almost certainly apocryphal (though, to be fair, singer Harry Belafonte claimed to have heard a version of it from Eleanor Roosevelt herself.) True or not, the point of the story is clear: Politicians inside the system need allies outside of it; outsiders willing to publicly pressure them and, on occasion, provide cover for bold, outside-the-box moves. To quote essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates: “Politicians respond to only one thing — power. This is not the flaw of democracy, it’s the entire point. It’s the job of activists to generate, and apply, enough pressure on the system to affect change.”
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/joe-biden-no-fdr-if-he-keeps-listening-progressives-he-n1265720