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

In my younger days (I’m 85 years old) I was a “New Deal, Fair Deal, New Frontier, Great Society Liberal Democrat.” This party was named after the four presidential administrations that contributed to it, especially that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Among other things, it stood for: a democratic-republic with a vibrant and active middle-class; a strong social safety net consisting of social security, medicare, medicaid and unemployment insurance; an estate tax and a graduated income tax; enforcement of the anti-trust laws and regulation of big business. Republicans derogatorily referred to it as the “welfare state” and brought at least a temporary end to in the 1980s with the Reagan Revolution.Frank believes that the Democrats are as much responsible for the demise of this party as the Republicans and “Listen, Liberal” is a history of that decline at the hands of Democrats. It’s a history of how the Democratic Party evolved from the “party of the people” to the party of a professional class. It is a history of the “great betrayal” of the working man.According to Frank, Bill Clinton is the principal villain of this story. However, the destruction of the New Deal began much earlier.Gary Hart, who was George McGovern’s campaign manager, became a symbol of the sixties generation’s revolt against the workerist politics of their parents. “The End of the New Deal” was the title of Hart’s standard 1974 campaign speech; he liked to mock old-school libs as “Eleanor Roosevelt Democrats.”The Jimmy Carter presidency was another milestone. Once in office he broke with New Deal tradition in all sorts of highly visible ways, canceling public works projects and conspicuously snubbing organized labor. With the help of a Democratic Congress, he enacted the first of the era’s really big tax cuts for the rich and also the first of the really big deregulations. That working people felt the brunt of Carter’s policies was no coincidence; this was not a group for whom his administration felt a great deal of sympathy.It was Bill Clinton’s administration that deregulated derivatives, deregulated Telecom and put our country’s only strong banking laws in the grave He also rammed NAFTA through Congress. Mass incarceration and repeal of welfare, two of Clinton’s the major achievements, are pillars of the disciplinary state that has made life so miserable for Americans in the lower reaches of society. The Monica Lewinsky scandal is the only thing that prevented him from putting a huge dent in Social Security. Repeal of the Glass-Steagle Act was the final “great accomplishment” of the Clinton presidency. Nine years later, after the greatest wave if insider looting ever seen, the de-regulated 21st Century financial system had to be rescued almost in its entirety.Concerning Obama’s handling 0f the 2008 financial crisis, Frank says that it was fully within his power to react in a more aggressive and appropriate way; the laws were in place, there was ample precedent, he wasn’t forced to pick the “wrong men”. It wasn’t the Republicans who made him choose Tim Geithner to run the bailouts or Attorney n my younger days (I’m 85 years old) I was a “New Deal, Fair Deal, New Frontier, Great Society Liberal Democrat.” This party was named after the four presidential administrations that contributed to it, especially that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Among other things, it stood for: a democratic-republic with a vibrant and active middle-class; a strong social safety net consisting of social security, medicare, medicaid and unemployment insurance; an estate tax and a graduated income tax; enforcement of the anti-trust laws and regulation of big business. Republicans derogatorily referred to it as the “welfare state” and brought at least a temporary end to in the 1980s with the Reagan Revolution.Frank believes that the Democrats are as much responsible for the demise of this party as the Republicans and “Listen, Liberal” is a history of that decline at the hands of Democrats. It’s a history of how the Democratic Party evolved from the “party of the people” to the party of a professional class. It is a history of the “great betrayal” of the working man.According to Frank, Bill Clinton is the principal villain of this story. However, the destruction of the New Deal began much earlier.Gary Hart, who was George McGovern’s campaign manager, became a symbol of the sixties generation’s revolt against the workerist politics of their parents. “The End of the New Deal” was the title of Hart’s standard 1974 campaign speech; he liked to mock old-school libs as “Eleanor Roosevelt Democrats.”The Jimmy Carter presidency was another milestone. Once in office he broke with New Deal tradition in all sorts of highly visible ways, canceling public works projects and conspicuously snubbing organized labor. With the help of a Democratic Congress, he enacted the first of the era’s really big tax cuts for the rich and also the first of the really big deregulations. That working people felt the brunt of Carter’s policies was no coincidence; this was not a group for whom his administration felt a great deal of sympathy.It was Bill Clinton’s administration that deregulated derivatives, deregulated Telecom and put our country’s only strong banking laws in the grave He also rammed NAFTA through Congress. Mass incarceration and repeal of welfare, two of Clinton’s the major achievements, are pillars of the disciplinary state that has made life so miserable for Americans in the lower reaches of society. The Monica Lewinsky scandal is the only thing that prevented him from putting a huge dent in Social Security. Repeal of the Glass-Steagle Act was the final “great accomplishment” of the Clinton presidency. Nine years later, after the greatest wave if insider looting ever seen, the de-regulated 21st Century financial system had to be rescued almost in its entirety.Concerning Obama’s handling 0f the 2008 financial crisis, Frank says that it was fully within his power to react in a more aggressive and appropriate way; the laws were in place, there was ample precedent, he wasn’t forced to pick the “wrong men”. It wasn’t the Republicans who made him choose Tim Geithner to run the bailouts or Attorney

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. "