Thomas Frank: What ever happened to the party of the people? [View all]

[NorthCarolina]

Author and Kansas City native son Thomas Frank returned to his hometown to talk about what's wrong with the Democratic Party in support of his new book 'Listen, Liberal'.

Following on the tradition of his popular book 'What's the Matter with Kansas' which carefully chronicled how the Republican Party of Lincoln has been seduced and deliberately taken over by extremist ideologues of the far right, Frank now makes the case that the Democratic Party has also been taken over by a type of conservative ideology that, while not promoting economic inequality, certainly rationalizes it.

While Republican "establishment" figures revere the accumulation of wealth as a sign of 'winning' which somehow makes them automatically somehow qualified --or entitled-- to govern, The Democratic "establishment" believes that the world is a 'meritocracy' where the elites of the 'professional class' are best suited to govern based on their superior educational attainment and connections.

Frank asserts that the two political parties dominated by societal elites have systemically failed the workers in America, resulting in a space for populism to naturally grow into.