Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?
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From the bestselling author of What's the Matter With Kansas, a scathing look at the standard-bearers of liberal politics — a book that asks: what's the matter with Democrats?
It is a widespread belief among liberals that if only Democrats can continue to dominate national elections, if only those awful Republicans are beaten into submission, the country will be on the right course.
But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the modern Democratic Party. Drawing on years of research and first-hand reporting, Frank points out that the Democrats have done little to advance traditional liberal goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal. Indeed, they have scarcely dented the free-market consensus at all. This is not for lack of opportunity: Democrats have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-four years, and yet the decline of the middle class has only accelerated. Wall Street gets its bailouts, wages keep falling, and the free-trade deals keep coming.
With his trademark sardonic wit and lacerating logic, Frank's Listen, Liberal lays bare the essence of the Democratic Party's philosophy and how it has changed over the years. A form of corporate and cultural elitism has largely eclipsed the party's old working-class commitment, he finds. For certain favored groups, this has meant prosperity. But for the nation as a whole, it is a one-way ticket into the abyss of inequality. In this critical election year, Frank recalls the Democrats to their historic goals-the only way to reverse the ever-deepening rift between the rich and the poor in America.
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Thomas Frank. (2016). Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? Henry Holt and Co.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Thomas Frank. 2016. Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? Henry Holt and Co.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Thomas Frank, Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? Henry Holt and Co, 2016.
MLA Citation (style guide)Thomas Frank. Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? Henry Holt and Co, 2016.
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- bioText: Thomas Frank is the author of Listen, Liberal, Pity the Billionaire, The Wrecking Crew, and What's the Matter with Kansas? A former columnist for The Wall Street Journal and Harper's, Frank is the founding editor of The Baffler and writes regularly for The Guardian. He lives outside Washington, D.C.
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From the bestselling author of What's the Matter With Kansas, a scathing look at the standard-bearers of liberal politics — a book that asks: what's the matter with Democrats?
It is a widespread belief among liberals that if only Democrats can continue to dominate national elections, if only those awful Republicans are beaten into submission, the country will be on the right course.
But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the modern Democratic Party. Drawing on years of research and first-hand reporting, Frank points out that the Democrats have done little to advance traditional liberal goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal. Indeed, they have scarcely dented the free-market consensus at all. This is not for lack of opportunity: Democrats have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-four years, and yet the decline of the middle class has only accelerated. Wall Street gets its bailouts, wages keep falling, and the free-trade deals keep coming.
With his trademark sardonic wit and lacerating logic, Frank's Listen, Liberal lays bare the essence of the Democratic Party's philosophy and how it has changed over the years. A form of corporate and cultural elitism has largely eclipsed the party's old working-class commitment, he finds. For certain favored groups, this has meant prosperity. But for the nation as a whole, it is a one-way ticket into the abyss of inequality. In this critical election year, Frank recalls the Democrats to their historic goals-the only way to reverse the ever-deepening rift between the rich and the poor in America.- reviews
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- source: History News Network
- content: "What makes Frank's book new, different and important is its offer of a compelling theory as to how and why the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Roosevelt is now so unlikely to champion the economic needs of everyday people. . . . In such a looking-glass world, Listen, Liberal is a desperately needed corrective."
- premium: False
- source: New York Post
- content: "In his new book, progressive commentator Thomas Frank says Democrats need to take a good long look in the mirror if they want answers to why blue-collar workers are feeling abandoned and even infuriated by what used to be their party."
- premium: False
- source: OBRag.com
- content: "The most important political book of 2016, and one that should disturb and hopefully influence progressives for years to come."
- premium: False
- source: Naomi Klein
- content: "A must-read."
- premium: False
- source: Washington Post
- content: "Over the past four decades, Frank argues, the Democrats have embraced a new favorite constituency: the professional class--the doctors, lawyers, engineers, programmers, entrepreneurs, artists, writers, financiers and other so-called creatives whose fetish for academic credentials and technological innovation has infected the party of the working class. . . . For that class, Frank argues, income and wealth inequality is not a problem but an inevitable condition."
- premium: True
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- content:
March 14, 2016
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.
- premium: True
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March 1, 2016
How the party of the working class has switched its focus to well-heeled professionals, more concerned with social issues than economic inequality. "This is a book about the failure of the Democratic Party," writes political analyst and Baffler founding editor Frank (Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right, 2011). "What ails the Democrats?" he asks. "So bravely forthright on cultural issues, their leaders fold when confronted with matters of basic economic democracy." Where David Halberstam once showed how reliance on "the best and the brightest" resulted in wrongheaded decisions on Vietnam, Frank builds a similar case for economic policy, as Ivy League presidents (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama) have surrounded themselves with Ivy League advisers whose perspectives aren't those of what was once the blue-collar base of the Democratic Party: "Thus did the Party of the People turn the government over to Wall Street in the years after Wall Street had done such lasting damage to...well, the People." Frank is particularly acidic on the Clinton presidency, calling his cabinet "a kind of yuppie Woodstock, a gathering of the highly credentialed tribes," and claiming, "what he did as president was far outside the reach of even the most diabolical Republican." In the author's estimation, the hope of the Obama administration turned hopeless. Since Frank is far from a lone voice in the wilderness in his perspective, you'd think he might see allies in the Occupy movement and the Bernie Sanders campaign, but he barely acknowledges the former and makes no mention of the latter, making it seem as if more recent developments lie outside his analysis. Rather than insisting on radical reform from the left or even a third party alternative, he seems to feel that Hillary Clinton is inevitable: "I myself might vote for her," because it would be a "terrible thing" if any of the Republicans became president. A hard-hitting analysis that may leave readers confused by the author's ambivalent, punches-pulling conclusion.COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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March 15, 2016
Frank, best known for his scathing commentary about Republicans in books like What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004) and The Wrecking Crew (2008), turns his sights on the Democrats, the supposed party of the people. As Frank sees it, individual Democrats have done little to advance liberal economic causes. The party itself, he argues, is firmly entrenched in the establishment and, despite the rhetoric, has expended little effort on the vanishing middle class. He begins with Barack Obama's quick turn from preaching hope and change to bailing out Wall Street, and he continues by bashing Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick (who took a job at Bain Capital when his term was over); Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who touts innovation but befriends bankers; and Hillary Clinton, whom he chides for phony populist rhetoric, among many other faults (though he says he'd vote for her). There's no doubt that Frank puts forth an impressive catalog of Democratic disappointments, more than enough to make liberals uncomfortable. But solutions aren't really offered, the Bernie Sanders effect isn't examined, and good intentions and motivations are discounted. Still, he offers a tough and thought-provoking look at what's wrong with America.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
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September 1, 2015
The author of What's the Matter with Kansas? thinks that there's something the matter with Democrats, arguing that they are ignoring the traditional liberal commitments to greater opportunity, greater social justice, and fairness for workers in favor of free-market pandering and more elitist concerns. Now it's time to go in reverse. Great conversation fodder.
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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From the bestselling author of What's the Matter With Kansas, a scathing look at the standard-bearers of liberal politics — a book that asks: what's the matter with Democrats?
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But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the modern Democratic Party. Drawing on years of research and first-hand reporting, Frank points out that the Democrats have done little to advance traditional liberal goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal. Indeed, they have scarcely dented the free-market consensus at all. This is not for lack of opportunity: Democrats have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-four years, and yet the decline of the middle class has only accelerated. Wall Street gets...- sortTitle
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