Stands to reason that the first letter of a parties name reflects the first letter of the economic situations they are responsible for. Republican, "R", for the Run of the mill, business cycle Recession. Demo'Rat, "D", for the once in a lifetime, Devestating, Demoralizing, Depressing, Depression.
All true. Another factor to consider is that the 1930’s marked our first sustained experiment with relentless government propagandizing of the American people. Two prominent examples are the writers project and the FSA/OWI photography project. Other than historians, no one much reads the writers any more, but the FSA photos, because they are accessible, have become the visual record of Depression era America. The problem is, the photographers were on a mission. They were told to go out and document hardship, and that’s what they did. They didn’t produce a balanced portrait of America; they produced a portrait of out-of-work America, and the glorious redemption being wrought by New Deal makework programs. This still heavily colors ideas about the 30’s today.
Yes, times were tough in macroeconomic terms and for the long term unemployed. But even in the Depression, most people didn’t lose their jobs, and life went on. It wasn’t bad at all for those who had some money. Not unlike today. The gap isn’t as great as the skewed recollection of that decade can suggest.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that the depression of the 1930s was world wide. Just like this one is going to be.