Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People

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. (Mar.)