So important to look deeply into our political systems and question,
explore, discover, unearth, and grow in understanding, humility, courage,
consciousness, compassion, and caring for us all. There are many who
shine light on dark places, illuminating what is in need of awareness,
healing, and transformation. Thomas Frank is among them.
Bless us all ~ Molly
 |
| Listen Liberal: What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? |
 |
| With Thomas Frank, 2016, at Powell's Books, Portland, Oregon |
Democrats have gone from the party of the New Deal to a party that is defending mass inequality.
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY WAS ONCE THE PARTY
OF THE NEW DEAL and the ally of organized labor. But by the time of Bill
Clinton's presidency, it had become the enemy of New Deal programs like welfare
and Social Security and the champion of free trade deals. What explains this
apparent reversal? Thomas Frank—best known for his analysis of the Republican
Party base in What's the Matter with Kansas?—attempts to
answer this question in his latest book, Listen Liberal: Or, What Ever
Happened to the Party of the People?
According to Frank, popular explanations which blame corporate lobby groups and the growing power of money in politics are insufficient. Frank instead points to a decision by Democratic Party elites in the 1970s to marginalize labor unions and transform from the party of the working class to the party of the professional class. In so doing, the Democratic Party radically changed the way it understood social problems and how to solve them, trading in the principle of solidarity for the principle of competitive individualism and meritocracy. The end result is that the party which created the New Deal and helped create the middle class has now become “the party of mass inequality.” In These Times spoke with Frank recently about the book via telephone.
The book
is about how the Democratic Party turned its back on working people and now
pursues policies that actually increase inequality. What are the policies or
ideological commitments in the Democratic Party that make you think this?
The first
piece of evidence is what’s happened since the financial crisis. This is
the great story of our time. Inequality has actually gotten worse since then,
which is a remarkable thing. This is under a Democratic president who we were
assured (or warned) was the most liberal or radical president we would ever
see. Yet inequality has gotten worse, and the gains since the financial
crisis, since the recovery began, have gone entirely to the top 10 percent of
the income distribution.
This is
not only because of those evil Republicans, but because Obama played it the way
he wanted to. Even when he had a majority in both houses of Congress and could
choose whoever he wanted to be in his administration, he consistently made
policies that favored the top 10 percent over everybody else. He helped out
Wall Street in an enormous way when they were entirely at his mercy.
He could
have done anything he wanted with them, in the way that Franklin Roosevelt did
in the ’30s. But he chose not to.
Why is
that? This is supposed to be the Democratic Party, the party that’s interested
in working people, average Americans. Why would they react to a financial
crisis in this way? Once you start digging into this story, it goes very deep.
You find that there was a transition in the Democratic Party in the ’70s, ’80s
and ’90s where they convinced themselves that they needed to abandon working
people in order to serve a different constituency: a constituency essentially
of white-collar professionals.
That’s
the most important group in their coalition. That’s who they won over in the
’70s, ’80s and ’90s. That’s who they serve, and that’s where they draw from.
The leaders of the Democratic Party are always from this particular
stratum of society.
A lot of
progressives that I talk to are pretty familiar with the idea that the
Democratic Party is no longer protecting the interests of workers,
but it’s pretty common for us to blame it on mainly the power of money in
politics. But you start the book in chapter one by arguing there’s actually
something much deeper going on. Can you say something about that?
Money in
politics is a big part of the story, but social class goes deeper than that.
The Democrats have basically made their commitment [to white-collar
professionals] already before money and politics became such a big deal.
It worked out well for them because of money in politics. So when they chose
essentially the top 10 percent of the income distribution as their most
important constituents, that is the story of money.
It wasn’t
apparent at the time in the ’70s and ’80s when they made that choice. But over
the years, it has become clear that that was a smart choice in terms of their
ability to raise money. Organized labor, of course, is no slouch in terms of
money. They have a lot of clout in dollar terms. However, they contribute and
contribute to the Democrats and they almost never get their way—they don’t get,
say, the Employee Free Choice Act, or Bill Clinton
passes NAFTA. They do have a lot of money, but their money doesn’t count.
All of
this happened because of the civil war within the Democratic Party. They fought
with each other all the time in the ’70s and the ’80s. One side hadn’t
completely captured the party until Bill Clinton came along in the ’90s. That
was a moment of victory for them.
Bill Clinton’s presidency is what progressives usually cite as the
time when things went bad. But there’s a trend that goes back to the ’70s,
right?
Historians
always cite the ’68 election as the turning point. The party was torn apart by
the controversy over the Vietnam war, protesters were in the streets in Chicago
and the Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey went on to lose. Democrats thought
this was terrible, and it was. So they set up a commission to reorganize the
party, the McGovern Commission.
Please continue this article here: http://inthesetimes.com/features/listen-liberal-thomas-frank-democratic-party-elites-inequality.htm
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