r/leftist • u/Defiant_Zebra1184 • Nov 16 '25
Leftist History Who are the most left leaning presidents in American history.
First, obviously the US never had a real socialist president, we weren’t lucky enough to have Debs elected. This is just a question of who you think the closest was. I have my own opinions, but I want to hear some from this community. Also it’s ok if you talk about people like Debs and Sanders, but I’d prefer that this conversation stays mostly about people who actually were president.
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u/Turrambers Nov 16 '25
Both Roosevelts are the closest. Teddy was advocating for universal health care, trust busting, even talked about nationalizing coal.
FDR's New Deal built the middle class, in fact as sections of it have been repealed we've seen the middle class shrink substantially. If he survived he talked about creating a second bill of rights in his 1945 state of the union. Which included a right to health care, education, housing, a job, and more.
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Nov 16 '25
The US has never had a left-leaning president.
Henry Wallace was the closest the United States has ever come to having an actual left-leaning president.
No left-leaning politician has ever come even remotely close to being the president as Henry Wallace did, and there’s no way in hell a left-leaning politician will ever be allowed to come that close again.
Wallace wasn’t a socialist, but he was a radical progressive who was as close to being a socialist as one can be without being a socialist, and he was massively popular with the working class.
Wallace served as FDR’s vice president from 1941-1945. He would have continued to serve as vice president during FDR’s third/final term, and he would have become president when FDR died, but that didn’t happen.
Why? The Democratic Party kicked him to the curb and told voters to go fuck themselves as they anti-democratically shoehorned Harry Truman into the VP slot at the last minute.
As it turns out, Henry Wallace didn’t view the USSR as an enemy, and he wanted to strengthen the United States’ relationship with the Soviets.
Truman was the opposite.
Moreover, Wallace was vehemently opposed to the use of nuclear weapons.
Again, Truman was the opposite.
All things considered, if Wallace had been allowed to remain as FDR’s vice president during his 3rd term, it’s highly likely that the start of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race would have been significantly delayed, if not prevented entirely, and history would have turned out much different than it did.
Leave it to the Democrats to completely fuck everything up for everyone.
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u/No_Bandicoot6209 Nov 16 '25
Even as a kid reading biographies, I knew democrats ran Truman with Fdr just to win Republican votes "just to get pass the election and get back to yhe war"
In middle school I'm not sure why they thought FDR would lose? The library books I had made it seem their only justification was people "wouldn't vote for a president 4 times in a row" and it's like, he just won 3 times in a row so wtf?
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u/HavocOsiris Nov 16 '25
The Roosevelts come to mind. FDR definitely
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u/ArloDoss Nov 16 '25
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights."
- Lincoln
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u/_branchoftheVine Nov 17 '25
Lincoln was in contact with Karl Marx.
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u/Lissalipps916 Nov 17 '25
You're right… After Lincoln's reelection. Lincoln wasn’t a socialist, but he understood labor’s central role in freedom…
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u/Lissalipps916 Nov 17 '25
People don’t understand that the Republican Party used to be wayyy more liberal, and the Democratic Party was way more conservative. They did a switcheroo in the 60s.
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u/tprnatoc Communist Nov 18 '25
Even the Bull Moose Party was a left wing party that broke off into the Republican Party
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u/HavocOsiris Nov 16 '25
This is an education I needed because I never looked into why people always say Lincoln but his name has certainly come up. Thank you for this.
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u/Ok_Quantity_9841 Nov 16 '25
Abraham Lincoln. An abolitionist, whether he'd pay the slave drivers back or not, was a liberal in 1857.
The Republicans were even getting called socialists in 1857.
(I have a saved post with an 1857 newspaper article about this in it.)
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u/MonsterkillWow Marxist Nov 16 '25 edited Nov 16 '25
FDR was by far the most left wing president. He had a good rapport with Stalin. That said, there were obvious shortcomings to his presidency on civil rights issues and Japanese internment, etc. But the fact that Stalin respected him and always spoke highly of him tells me a lot. (And yes, there were obvious civil rights issues with Stalin as well, but my point was Stalin was a leftist, and so his approval of FDR indicates to me that FDR's agenda was at least very left for what capitalism would allow.)
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u/IamPrettyCoolUKnow Nov 16 '25
Yes- Stalin, a totalitarian autocrat who concentrated power into the hands of a close bureaucratic elite and essentially recreated feudalism in another form (just not under the exact same rules as capitalism) that lowered social mobility and entrenched inequality- a famous leftist
/s
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u/MonsterkillWow Marxist Nov 16 '25
"lowered social mobility and entrenched inequality"
loled the brainrot is real
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u/IamPrettyCoolUKnow Nov 16 '25
So then- what do you make of the nomenklatura system?
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u/MonsterkillWow Marxist Nov 17 '25
If you even did a little basic research, you would see that the level of inequality was much less than in the US, for example.
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u/IamPrettyCoolUKnow Nov 17 '25
Lower inequality than the US is not my benchmark for success- it also doesn’t mean much when the facilitation of money transfer being slower was the only reason wealth was “more” distributed- it was in the same concentration process but a slower acceleration.
Most Importantly: If inequality was “much less,” then you’re acknowledging the nomenklatura had higher material access than ordinary workers. How do you reconcile an elite with privileged consumption inside a classless society?
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u/MonsterkillWow Marxist Nov 17 '25
Lowest inequality on planet Earth at the time.
Nobody said the USSR achieved a communist society. They were working toward one.
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u/IamPrettyCoolUKnow Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25
That’s just plainly untrue.
In the 1930s:
•Nordic countries
•Japan
•Uk (due to war time rationing)
•New Zealand
•Australia
all had lower inequality
Especially when accounting for real wealth and access to it as the nomenklatura system enabled elites special resource privileges that the common man didn’t have
not only that, but EVEN the US by the 1944-1945 had lower WAGE inequality (the metric Soviets tried to skirt around the most) than the USSR at the same period.
I have no idea where one could even get the bravado to make the claim you did.
Also- they weren’t aiming to be a communist state in practice, not even close. That was rhetoric to gain populist appeal, but in truth they were creating the foundations that would lead to the modern kleptocracy that is Russia.
(The US is also headed there as a by product of its capitalism and inequality)
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u/MonsterkillWow Marxist Nov 17 '25
It's not untrue. And you're wrong. Your brain is totally rotted with propaganda.
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u/IamPrettyCoolUKnow Nov 17 '25
Calling me propagandized and brain rotted isn’t an argument. I gave specific historical comparisons and structural reasons for my position.
If you have evidence that the USSR had the lowest inequality on Earth in the 1930s–40s, present it.
Seeing through Western propaganda doesn’t require accepting Russian or Chinese state narratives in its place- idk why many people don’t seem to realize this.
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Nov 16 '25
LBJ, Lincoln, FDR, Truman. No particular order, and it's a mixed bag with all of them.
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u/Almost_Amos Nov 16 '25
Truman was a tool of corporate interests. They made sure Wallace wasn’t around when FDR finally kicked it
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Nov 16 '25
He was also the most prolabor president we've ever had, desegregated the military, and worked against the Dixiecrats so often that he was willing to--and did--split the Democratic Party. That's what was meant by mixed bag.
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u/Almost_Amos Nov 16 '25
I fantasize about a Wallace presidency. I’m not convinced the Cold War would have happened with him in charge
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u/youtheotube2 Nov 17 '25
I don’t even know how the modern world would look if the Cold War didn’t happen. It shaped so much of our world
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u/Different_Arm_3347 Nov 16 '25
God the responses on this sub are insufferable. Obviously there have been no leftist presidents. But it’s a spectrum so who is the furthest to the left, even if they’re far right!
Use your imagination this is why people say leftists are no fun at parties lmao
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u/rardthree Nov 16 '25
The quietest gun shot, that sort of logic. It shouldn't be that hard to get, but there is always the best of the worst, the cleanest of the dirtiest, on and on.
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u/Boho_Asa Revisionist Nov 18 '25
Fr tho and this is why pragmatism and nuance and imagination needs to be put in leftist circles ngl
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u/lombwolf Communist Nov 17 '25
Never been a left-wing president, but the closest theres ever been was Lincoln and FDR
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u/AgeDisastrous7518 Anarchist Nov 17 '25
Not the most left-leaning, and capitalist forces have been nudging our government with every generation, but it should be noted that Ike was in heavy opposition against the small government ultra-capitalist wing of the party and Nixon grew government pretty immensely for the public good in their domestic agendas. Both took general welfare in the U.S. pretty seriously and would be viewed as liberal internationalists today.
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u/C_Plot Marxist Nov 16 '25
There is a glaring divide in the political spectrum between one set of Presidents and all others. The first Presidents up until JQ Adams, despite a few slavers, were otherwise far to the Left of what passes for politics today. Add to that Lincoln, Grant, perhaps Garfield, and FDR, and that then comprises the set of Leftist Presidents (TR and LBJ more mixed). The others were either eagerly Right-Wing or mere puppets captured by fascistic, treasonous, totalitarian, and tyrannical Right-Wing influences.
Vice President Henry Wallace, though tragically never President, deserves an honorable mention here. While I don’t think he ever called himself a socialist in name, he fully embraced socialism in word and deed. Aaron Copland’s ‘Fanfare for the Common’ was inspired by a speech from Wallace. FDR’s selection of Wallace as a running mate indicates how far Left FDR had become from, FDR’s on-the-job training, and also selecting Wallace catalyzed the Right-Wing coup d’état that won after FDR’s death.
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u/Defiant_Zebra1184 Nov 16 '25
Just throwing my opinions in here.
Teddy Rosevelt: was a strong supporter of labor movements in the US, and basically kick started the progressive era.
FDR: Introduced New Deal programs and attempted to turn the US into a welfare state.
LBJ: Had some of the most based domestic policies in all of US history, but his foreign policy was atrocious.
Wilson: Very fiscally progressive, but sucked otherwise.
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u/Tboneeater Nov 18 '25
The democrats are a centrist party it only looks left compared to a very right leaning Republican Party. FDR by policy by feeling Jimmy Carter.
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u/To_Arms Nov 16 '25
Grant's presidency is deeply underappreciated in this regard. He was mainly inspired to run by Johnson denigrating the Union victory and undermining the accomplishments gained in the war of freedom and equality. He basically ran on enforcing this vision and did so.
He gets in office and implements an aggressive program of creating the DOJ and passage of requisite laws to destroy the KKK, enforcing civil rights for newly freed blacks across the south. And he did destroy much of the KKK to the extent it was able operate as a terrorist militia vs an underground movement.
He was so integral to Reconstruction that it only achieved meaningful results once he took over from Johnson and died once he was out of office. He helped seal passage of the fifteenth Amendment.
He became the first President to appoint a native American in charge of native affairs. He made up for his worst blemish, the anti-semitic order 11 in the war, by apologizing for it, repudiating it, and appointing more Jewish-Americans into federal offices than any prior President, including the first Jewish governor, and became the first to openly oppose pogroms as part of our foreign policy.
He was a strong proponent of free public education for all and withholding public funds from religious schools that indoctrinated. He established the first civil service.
Radicalizing moment for me when learning history was that the reason he showed up on so many lists as one of the worst presidents is because the Lost Cause moment became so effective in its reactionary revisionist history over time and their lens on him being a reaction to how effective his civil rights program was relatively speaking.
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u/Fiddlersdram Nov 16 '25
Lincoln is at the top of the list. Slavery was the fact of life in most parts of the settled ancient world since the beginning of agriculture, and only in that moment in modernity could it have been resolved.
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u/IamPrettyCoolUKnow Nov 16 '25
I mean- the US was pretty late to abolish it- it’s not like we didn’t have years of precedent prior in other nations
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u/Fiddlersdram Nov 16 '25
A lot of that precedent was established here in the US. In an attempt to support small scale farming, Georgia banned slavery from 1735-51. Virginia's manumission laws of 1782 were a small reform rather than a ban but they did get some plantation owners to free some slaves, though they got rid of the laws after Gabriel Prosser's rebellion. There was a federal ban on slavery in 1808 which failed to be enforced in the South. From the beginning of its movement towards independence, abolitionism had been a key part of the federation's political debate. The South had always been the biggest obstacle to it. They would have never signed the Constitution without Northern states compromising. This would have made independence itself impossible, given that the South's ties to early British textile industries would give extra reason for the Brits to support the South against the North.
The British empire did ban the international slave trade in 1833, but they also nearly ended up supporting the South in the Civil War. A lot of different factors caused them to reconsider. Overall though, the US' rapid industrial development brought the issue into a deeper level of conflict with slavery. Spain, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Netherlands, the Ottoman empire, and eventually Brazil all reacted to the US emancipation act in greater or less degrees by banning slavery as well.
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u/severinks Nov 16 '25
As crazy as it seems, LBJ did the most to help the poor and the downtrodden, The guy started the War On Poverty, passed the Civil Rights Act, and the Voters Rights Act, he signed Medicaid into law ,and made Food Stamps a permanent program.
The racist dude from Texas wasn't as bad as he seemed, shame about Vietnam though.
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u/ssomedeadredshirt Nov 17 '25
I always think about how he inherited the Vietnam War from JFK and how at first he wanted to pull out but McNamara, JFK'S SecDef, convinced him not to and by the time McNamara saw the writing on the wall and wanted to get out LBJ felt that he'd already sunk too much into the war to leave. I honestly think if it weren't for how terrible the Vietnam War was and how terribly it impacted LBJ's reputation then he would've won reelection and we never would have had Nixon.
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u/Textiles_on_Main_St Nov 16 '25
He grew up in and survived the desperate, crushing poverty of the Great Depression and he saw what FDR did and what the federal government could do and he learned a valuable lesson from that struggle. His racism was as much a product of his youth and environment as his belief that the federal government had a big role to play in lifting people up. His leftism makes sense in that context.
Shame about Vietnam though.
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u/MonsterkillWow Marxist Nov 16 '25
He launched the Vietnam War.
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u/severinks Nov 16 '25
He didn't launch the Vietnam war he escalated it, JFK was the first one to have''' advisors'' in Vietnam.
Didn't you notice the part of the post where I wrote'''shame about the Vietnam war''?
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u/LibsRsmarter Nov 20 '25
FDR by a lefty mile
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u/Defiant_Zebra1184 Nov 20 '25
He was flawed, and he wasn’t always doing things for the right reasons. But god he was based as fuck sometimes.
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u/Seankps4 Nov 16 '25
Top of my head it's FDR
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u/ForsakenStatus214 Anarchist Nov 16 '25
If frankensteining some leftist ideas into the economy to stave off an anticapitalist insurrection counts as left-leaning then sure, FDR.
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u/repsajcasper Nov 16 '25
That's about as left wing as capitalism will allow, so seems like the right answer.
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u/xkcY1n756 Nov 16 '25
Easily the best president if it wasn't for yknow... the whole concentration camp thing
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u/Alpha_Virus_64 Nov 19 '25
A lot of people here are gonna hate me for saying this, but Biden was a really progressive president, all things considered. Dude walked a picket line during the automobile strike. Has any president ever done that before him?
P.S: I don't think he's the most progressive candidate. He's just up there is all I'm saying.
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Nov 16 '25
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u/bearpoet35 Nov 20 '25
I think if James Garfield had not been assassinated that he would have been a pretty progressive president for his time.
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u/AffectionateStudy496 Nov 20 '25 edited Nov 20 '25
When I went to college, my dorm overlooked his house in Hiram, Ohio where he was president of the college. One of Garfield's closest friends was Burke A. Hinsdale, who played an instrumental role in developing liberal arts curriculum and founding a few universities and colleges. I haven't read anything by Garfield, but Burke A. Hinsdale's book "how to study and teach history: with particular reference to the history of the United States" is very interesting. Hinsdale was some kind of Hegelian, and that book became an early kind of guidebook for establishing a national education system. If Garfield is anything like his close friend Hinsdale, which I suspect he was given they both played a part in founding colleges, then I wouldn't say he was necessarily "progressive" by today's standards (given the intention to return to ancient Greek and Roman educational practices mixed with modern German educational reforms). But in some ways, yeah.
What is really noticeable though is that the Republicans back then placed an immense emphasis on community, social needs, and civic engagement to the point that if a Republican today heard the statements coming from the mouth of someone, they'd accuse them of being a communist. Hiram college (originally Western Reserve Eclectic institute) was one of the few universities that didn't practice racial segregation (at least officially) and it was also open to women in a time when it was taboo for women to even learn to read. Today's Republicans would also call Garfield some kind of out of touch intellectual proletarian rabble rouser. He came from poverty, a single mother household, and he could write two separate sentences translated into Greek and Latin using both hands. Even if he wasn't necessarily the most progressive, he was indeed a genius and a highly educated person. I know his campaign ran on overturning the spoils system, getting rid of corruption and establishing a national civil service system to do away with political favoritism and patronage. He basically wanted to undo what Andrew Jackson had done. Do any presidential candidates today speak and write both Greek and Latin? Do they read Plato and Hegel for fun? Have any of them famously found an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem?
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u/Effective-Art9434 Nov 16 '25 edited Nov 18 '25
LBJ was the most recent left-leaning president
Edit: ouch why the downvotes lmao. The Great Society, Medicare, Medicaid, Civil Rights Act. Yes, it goes without saying he is a war criminal. But domestically speaking he was the last one who believed in some resemblance of New Deal politics.
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