Listen, Liberal
or, what ever happened to the party of the people?
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
With his trademark sardonic wit and lacerating logic, New York Times-bestselling author Thomas Frank exposes how, in the last few decades, the American Left has made an unprecedented shift away from its working-class roots.
Financial inequality is one of the biggest political issues of our time: from the Wall Street bail-outs — where bankers still received huge bonuses while thousands of people lost their homes — to the rise of ‘the One Percent’, who between them control 40 per cent of US wealth.
So where are the Democrats — the notional party of the people — in all this? In his scathing examination of how the Democratic Party has failed to combat financial inequality, despite being given near perfect conditions for success, Thomas Frank argues that the Left in America has abandoned its roots to pursue a new class of supporter: elite professionals.
Under this ‘meritocratic’ system, the educated middle class prosper, but ordinary workers continue to suffer. Unless the Democrats remember their historic purpose and win back the working class, Frank warns, the rift between America’s rich and poor will deepen further still, with dire consequences for both sides.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In an astute dissection of contemporary Democratic politics, Frank (Pity the Billionaire) asserts that stagnant wages and the decline of the American middle class were neither unavoidable nor wholly the work of a plutocratic Republican party. He skewers Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and lesser liberal lights such as former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick with the savage clarity of a man who never bought what they were selling. He tracks three grim decades of the party's abrogation of the working class that once filled its rank-and-file membership, replaced by harmful fealty and obsequious reverence toward the "Liberal Class," well-educated, impeccably credentialed white-collar professionals. By the first Clinton administration, non-college-educated laboring voters were left open to widening inequality, a shocking erosion of workers' rights, and a growing concentration of power and capital facilitated by trade pacts like NAFTA. Worse, Democratic establishment figures such as the Clintons have embraced this dynamic, failing to confront abusive financial practices and engaging in fatuous reverence for "innovation" and startup companies. Frank demonstrates, cogently and at times acidly, how the party lost the allegiance of blue-collar Americans.
Customer Reviews
A compelling read on the Democratic Condition
This is a compelling read on the modern Democratic condition; the foundations that were set back in the the 70s by the neo-liberals that divorced themselves from their "worker class" base.
For anyone that's interested in understanding the genesis for the train-wreck that was the 2016 Presidential Election, this is a must read book!
Highly recommended.