truthdig | Thomas Frank’s writing about electoral politics and its impact on
American culture has been published for decades in such venues as
Harper’s Magazine and The Wall Street Journal, and in his 2004 book,
“What’s the Matter with Kansas?” In his latest book, “Listen Liberal:
Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?,” the journalist and
political analyst tackles the question of what changed within the
Democratic Party to make it become a “liberalism of the rich.”
“The Democratic Party itself has changed,” Frank told Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer during an episode of “Scheer Intelligence”
earlier this year. “What’s changed about them is the social class that
they answer to, that they respect, that they come from.”
The trend has gotten worse.
“Democrats look at Wall Street, and they see people like themselves,” he said in an interview with Scheer during the Democratic National Convention in July.
On Tuesday night, Frank joined Scheer at the University of Southern
California to discuss “Listen, Liberal” and his analysis of Hillary
Clinton during this election cycle, from her public views on inequality
in United States to her promises to tamp down greed on Wall Street.
Frank offered critiques of the Democratic Party’s abandonment of the
average working-class American, the Clintons—who signed off on welfare
reform that proved discriminatory—and the two-party system. He said:
Hillary has changed her position on issues many, many times over the years, and some of the things she’s done that her husband did that she had a hand in—she was a close adviser to her husband as president—have been disastrous, had catastrophic effects on people—welfare reform, for example. Every time Hillary says—and she says it a lot—that her whole life has been about protecting children, there’s an enormous counterexample, which is welfare reform, or what they called reform. They abolished the welfare system in this country, Hillary and her husband did. This is one of the cruelest things [...] It was a New Deal program that they abolished. It was a cruel thing, it was more or less an overtly racist thing, and to do that to the poorest and weakest members of society—at the time, it just turned my stomach. And it’s a little creepy that Hillary sees fit to represent herself as the great defender of poor women and children because she manifestly is not. And that’s one of many contradictions in Hillary Clinton’s record.
If you read the biographies of Hillary Clinton, if you watch a speech by Hillary Clinton, if you watch the presentation of her life story that they had at the Democratic National Convention, Hillary’s story is all about virtue. She is good with a capital G. When she gave her acceptance speech at the convention, she was wearing all white. She likes to dress in all white; she is Joan of Arc. That is how she sees herself. Her favorite saying that she quoted at the convention, it’s this Methodist thing: Do all the good you can, all the ways you can, to all the people you can, for as long as ever you can. She’s good, she’s so good, she’s so virtuous, her heart’s in the right place, and every biography of her emphasizes this intense sense of her goodness, her virtues—her overpowering, 100-proof virtue. ... She is intensely good. And yet, look at Libya, look at the welfare system in this country.
