Posted on 10/21/2017 9:48:57 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Thomas Frank, the author best-known for "What's the Matter with Kansas?" who's also a Washington political journalist, places the blame for the election of President Donald Trump squarely on the back of the Democratic Party and its abandonment of working-class Americans.
"They love it when unions work hard for them and give them campaign funds," Frank said in a telephone interview.
"But they aren't deeply concerned with the problems faced by working-class people," he said. "They need to stop taking those people for granted."
What they got in exchange for that neglect was Trump, he said.
Frank will be in Lincoln next Sunday to deliver the 2017 C.A. Sorensen Lecture at the Unitarian Church. His address, "The Age of Trump: How We Got Here," will begin at 7 p.m.
"The Democratic Party used to be very concerned with working-class issues," Frank said. Not so much anymore, he suggested.
Frank has described the change as a shift of political attention from the working class to professionals, "the highly credentialed and creative class."
In the process, he said during an earlier address at the Kansas City Public Library promoting his book, "Listen, Liberal," the Democratic Party became "a party of New Economy winners."
And last November it paid the price, he said.
Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in key industrial states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, upsetting Clinton and astonishing most political prognosticators.
"Trump himself may come and go," Frank said during the telephone interview.
"But here's the deal: Trumpism is definitely here to stay.
"Traditional conservatism with all these populist clothes is not going away."
Trump won "without essentially knowing what he was doing," Frank said.
Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz and House Speaker Paul Ryan "know what they're doing," he said, "and they're going to continue to succeed.
"America has changed in lots of different ways," Frank said. "When I drive through Kansas and Missouri, I'm always astonished and depressed by what has happened to small towns."
Frank is a native of Kansas City, Missouri, and a graduate of the University of Kansas.
"The change that is most disturbing to me is the way the middle class has evaporated," he said.
During his Kansas City speech, Frank said the disintegration of the middle class has sparked "outrage and fury around every corner."
Can Democrats win in 2018 when control of Congress will be at stake?
"It will be very hard," Frank said.
"But they certainly can beat Donald Trump" in 2020, he said. However, they cannot do it by "going down the road they've been going," he said, and they will need to choose a nominee "who is good on working-class issues."
"Their present state of powerlessness was made possible by the changes they made."
Abandoned the working class and embraced communists and America-haters of all stripes, illegal aliens, and sexual degenerates. Great formula, Dems. Keep it going. In fact, up the ante.
Democrats have thrived on the racial intimidation of whites. Of course, that means the white working class was going to bear the brunt of that.
Embracing communism, something they did a century ago (perhaps longer), is the same as abandoning the working class. IOW, the Dems were never at any time for the so-called working class.
Over three years ago, Jeff Sessions wrote the seminal piece on the issue that Trump used as his template for victory. It should be required reading for every Rep seeking elective office.
Becoming the Party of Work--How the GOP can help struggling Americans, and itself by Jeff Sessions.
Take them for granted?
They’re taking them to the cleaners!
You can’t give everything to the recipient class without taking it from the productive class first.
Unfortunately Republicans have screwed up Kansas so badly that I wouldn’t doubt that the voters kick GOP to the curb. How on Earth can you screw up a red state so badly.
[However, they cannot do it by “going down the road they’ve been going,” he said, and they will need to choose a nominee “who is good on working-class issues.” ]
In other words, find a Dem candidate that can lie like hell really good.
Oh, and Trump knew exactly what he was doing.
No they didnt abandon the working class.
They were never with them to begin with
Well they were for Big Unions. But you’re right, it is not the same thing.
The Democrats would tell you that the Unions were the working class but in reality the Unions were against anyone who was in working class that wasn’t in a union.
The diminution of unions is a reflection of the democrats running aground. Progressives and common sense cannot coexist because they cannot occupy the same space.
Huh? Did income distribution become bimodal with a lump at the low end and another lump at the high end and no one in between? What I have seen is that the middle income has become flatter, with fewer in the middle of the middle income and more in the upper and lower middle class.
The left has embraced the most radical among them.
speaking as a former democrat from a socially conservative working class ohio family, he’s got it right.
Reagan, Perot, Sessions and Bannon also got it right too.
I don’t know exactly when or how Trump figured it out, but he obviously did too.
“Reagan, Perot, Sessions and Bannon also got it right too.
I don’t know exactly when or how Trump figured it out, but he obviously did too.”
That’s the amazing thing. Clueless Repub officeholders, consultants, pollsters etc. almost to a man, could not figure it out. (or didn’t want to)
But somehow a Manhattan real estate billionaire did.
He probably hags out here.
hangs, dam smartphone.
maybe the ruling class of both parties were relying on their massively funded secular cultural initiatives, or their now tight fisted monetary control of all our too-big-to-fail institutions, or perhaps their pre-conceived notions of our greed for gov’t handouts, or our, obvious to them, blind indoctrinated, war-mongering stupidity vs. their clear intellectual and moral superiority, or perhaps to just overwelm us with their cheap-labor-express imported workforce and reliable leftist voter base to eventually stamp our ilk out.
it hasn’t worked yet :).
It’s way past time to put this “Democrats are for the working class ‘’ bs to rest once and for all. The Democrat Party was NEVER for the working class. High taxes, endless, prohibitive regulations, welfare and entitlement programs for lazy bums were and are all part of creating a dependent class of exploited brainwashed voters to keep Democrats in power.
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