Once I read an excerpt from this book on Salon (highlighting some of the more egregious affronts of the Clinton presidency), I suspected two things: 1) I wouldn't be abe to keep from reading it, and 2) it would tremendously piss me off. Done and done.
Because I remember full well the vitriol Republicans were throwing at Clinton throughout the nineties, and I remember finding it impossible not to defend the guy against some of the more ridiculous claims, and I think it's important to highlight the danger of this kind of dichotomous thinking. (We could make a similar argument concerning the Obama years as well.)
Thomas Frank starts by discussing the Democratic Party's courting of the "professional liberal" who worships at the altar of ingenuity while turning a blind eye to the mass of Americans' real needs and issues. He leaves no stone unturned in his investigation of the Democrats' departure from traditional liberal values: the financial crisis, the collapse of unions, and the deregulation craze of the 80s and 90s all receive even handed dissection, laced with a wry tone that accompanies his more enraging observations quite well. If you're a liberal, it will be tough to get through some of the earlier passages castigating Democrats for things like courting power or delivering bailouts to Wall Street without screaming, "But what, you think the Republicans are any better?"
That's not the point. The point is, Democrats (at least, the Democrats Frank has in mind here--he's careful to qualify the party and point out there are plenty who don't fit this mold) count way too much on such thinking. As his title indicates, this is supposed to be the "party of the people," aligned with the working class, unions and the poor. If we can't count on them to hold to these principles in their ever-more-perplexing quest for that "political center" (translated: further to the right), who exactly can we count on?
Frank critiques Bill Clinton's gutting of welfare, his punitive crime bill (passed in an era of declining violent crime rates) and deficit reduction carried out on the backs of the needy, and moves on to critiquing Barack Obama's deaf ear to many of the same issues. Ditto Hillary Clinton. (Strangely enough, he doesn't even mention Bernie Sanders, who, you would think, would be a good candidate to investigate in terms of sympathy for the working class.) Over and over, he reminds you (and the attentive reader can't help but realize) that this was pulled off by Democrats. Yes, Republicans love to dismantle unions and the "nanny state," but they couldn't have pulled this off in the nineties. Not without the party on the other side of the aisle.
Frank is short on prescriptions for the problem of a disengaged liberal political party, but it seems obvious to me: change has to start with the American people. We've been atomized, never mind the occasional Occupy Wall Street movement or the (hopefully) more permanent Black Lives Matter. Such movements are so ritually castigated in the mainstream press, you know they must be doing something right. We need to keep at it, get the Democrats' ears and get them back on our side. It took decades to get where we are today; it'll take a long time to get where we need to be. Feel the Bern and everything, but that activism cannot disappear if he loses (or even if he wins). That's our hand, and we need to play it.
