Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? Hardcover – March 15, 2016

BRUTAL. Essential reading.I read it back in March, and still refer to it often. Talking points for days! And Frank's clear and engaging style suck you in. I even enjoyed the footnotes.My only criticism: As the man who forever shut down the "Forgive the Clintons for they knew not what they did" narrative (re: '94 crime bill and its racial disparities in sentencing)* I was surprised the book didn't offer more discussion about race; more space is devoted to abandoned neighborhoods in the mostly white rust belt. (One passage actually made me tear up. Thomas Frank brings a lot of heart as well as thought to his report.)I place LL on par with The New Jim Crow as game changers for me. Were this information and HISTORY available to everyone, the political landscape would be transformed by now. And while he criticizes the Clintons (and all the New Democrats), his critiques are not drowned out by ax-grinding; he even said in an interview he would probably vote for Hillary in the general election. He mentions Bernie in passing (and the timing of the book hinders more substantial mention) but he never comes across as having an agenda. After many books deconstructing the conservatives and Republicans, he's unafraid to turn a critical eye on what I imagine to be his own political leanings: he's socially Liberal and Progressive and wants an economy will work for all of us (economic populism? Whatever the opposite of neoliberalism is).Whomever you voted for, please read this book and pass it on. Maybe we can all get on the same page. We're all on the same side -- the losing side. We need to take back our party or take it to the trash heap of history. In this time of fake news, alt-facts and corporate media, reading political books is no longer a luxury; it's a must. We need to turn to scholars as much as independent journalists. This book, with its arsenal of facts told in a conversational style injected with humor, is the best place to start.*Google: "Thomas Frank The Guardian Bill Clinton [and] crime bill"

This is the most important book about modern politics that a person can read. It's essential to understand what has happened with American politics and the economy over the last 25 years. People so easily slip into the narrative about liberal vs. conservative or Democrat vs. Republican because it's a comfortable topic and it's all most people talk about. But people almost never discuss the changes that have taken place with the Democrats and the true nature of their track record. Few people understand the drastic changes that have taken place with the Democratic platform since 1968 and why it happened. The actual track record in the past few Democratic administrations is almost never discussed because there is an assumption that they did the best they could while being constantly stabbed in the back by conservatives.This book uses data as the basis for discussion which restricts the scope to the things that actually matter. It's like the approach in Freakonomics where the writer asks "what does the data say?" without any influence from conventional wisdom. There is fundamental truth discussed right at the beginning which should be the first thing ever discussed regarding politics. This is that is that the productivity of the American economy is several times larger now than in 1980, yet the income growth going to the bottom 90% was zero. It's such a shocking fact that upon reading it for the first time the natural reaction is to start laughing. The median worker in America is so much worse off than in 1980 because cost of living has skyrocketed during that time while their income has stayed the same adjusting for inflation. It means that the management of the US economy has been bungled so badly that the economy has produced an extra $50 trillion dollars worth since 1980 and the people are actually worse off now. What was the point of it all? How could all of that money not been used to benefit the American people? It explains why so many people living in the economically depressed parts of the country are angry and voted for Trump. 16 years of Democrats in the White House didn't do much to fix income inequality and there's nothing to stop these people from being angry despite all of the excuses that can be made. The accepted storyline is that the Democrats did their best but were stabbed in the back by Fox News and various other villains. But 0% income growth for the bottom 90% or "The American People"? I guess their best wasn't quite good enough. The author discusses all of the possible reasons why this happened. It has to do with elitism and the modern Democrat living in a bubble where their main constituencies become academics and corporate leaders. It started with the Kennedy administration and the book opens with a powerful quote about McGeorge Bundy from "The Best and the Brightest.""McGeorge Bundy, then, was the finest example of a special elite, a certain breed of men whose continuity is among themselves. They are linked to one another rather than to the couuntry; in their minds they become responsible for the country but not responsive to it.From Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville:"It is doubtless important to the good of nations that those who govern have virtues or talents; but what is perhaps still more important to them is that those who govern do not have interests contrary to the mass of the governed; for in that case the virtues could become almost useless and the talents fatal."Here's an amusing quote from the book about Obama and how Democratic voters have been unable to criticize or analyze the Democratic presidents:"What was shocking about all this was to realize that Obama actually believed these cliches. Consensus, bipartisanship, the "center": those were the things that this admirable and intelligent man was serious about -- the kind of stale empty verbiage favored by Beltway charlatans on the Sunday talk shows. The other things Obama used to say -- like when he connected deregulation, corruption, and income inequality in his Cooper Union speech in 2008 -- those things were just to reel in the suckers. The suckers being the people who could hear the pillars of their middle-class world snapping. "

Listen, Liberal is a well written, researched, and well thought out book that anyone interested in our political discourse should read. Thomas Frank doesn't really discuss the root cause of the problems with the so called liberal elites or corporatists or establishment Democrats, who are really greedy for money and power--pretty much just like most of the Republicans. Thomas explains who the elite liberals are and when they replaced the support of the working class Democrats. Thomas also explains when the liberal elites began primarily funding the Democratic party essentially replacing or far surpassing the funding from unions.We've essentially lost our democracy to the corporate and establishment class in both parties, because the American people can't get what they want even when a clear majority of the people want Medicare of all, a living wage, no more wars, etc. Corporate interests have been ruling America for quite some time, and the American people get the illusion of a democracy. What prevented this book from being a great or spectacular book is that Thomas Frank limited this discussion to domestic issues during the Clinton and Obama administrations. He could have easily obliterated them if he included their corrupted foreign policies and war crimes. And to be clear, yes, most of the Republicans are worse, but that's no excuse to what has happened to our beloved country.

Dit boek analyseert de huidige politieke situatie in de VS op een duidelijke manier. Wat daar gebeurde verschilt weinig van de neergang van het socialisme in Europa. En daar profiteren de Trumps van. Als Macron in Frankrijk wint, krijgen we binnen de kortste keren eenzelfde situatie als in de VS: totale idiotie. De Clintons hebben de bankencrisis veroorzaakt, en dit is het resultaat. Macron behoort tot de gedereguleerde klasse die goed geboerd heeft als bankier. Après lui le déluge. Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral. Dat moeten onze politici goed onthouden.

A revealing ( and sometimes shocking) look into the flaws of the Democratic Party and Obama, the Clintons and the so called party of the left.

Gran libro facil de leer.Explica el giro del Partido Democrata que abandona las clases trabajadoras industriales en favor de la nueva economia y los profesionales liberales. Explica parte del reciente exito de Trump. Y advierte de lo que puede ocurrir en Europa donde los partidos socialdemocratas tradicionales estan perdiendo el apoyo de las bases.

Despite having been written before election day in 2016, this book is the best book for understanding why Trump won the election. Although a democrat, Frank is angry about the party's betrayal of the working class.

Everyone should read this book and its prequel What's the matter with Kansas to gain an understanding of how the current political environment evolved to its present toxic state.