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mcbibliotecaria's review against another edition
4.0
Exploration on the modern day reemergence of neo liberalism. Very interesting. Damn intellectuals.
jinxlerai's review against another edition
3.5
[review copied over from Goodreads]
3.5 stars, rounded up because the writing is very good and the data is extensive and sourced beautifully. (Also, this book even has an index! I'm always a sucker for a book with an index.)
Frank's fundamental thesis comes across as, "Listen, liberals: you're not that great." Throughout much of the book, I found myself thinking, "Okay, yes, I admit it. We're not that great. ...And? What next? What do you want to say about it?" It became quite frustrating at points that there was no "so what", no next step presented.
But to be fair to Frank, that was not this book's intention, and he makes this crystal clear – especially in the final few paragraphs:
3.5 stars, rounded up because the writing is very good and the data is extensive and sourced beautifully. (Also, this book even has an index! I'm always a sucker for a book with an index.)
Frank's fundamental thesis comes across as, "Listen, liberals: you're not that great." Throughout much of the book, I found myself thinking, "Okay, yes, I admit it. We're not that great. ...And? What next? What do you want to say about it?" It became quite frustrating at points that there was no "so what", no next step presented.
But to be fair to Frank, that was not this book's intention, and he makes this crystal clear – especially in the final few paragraphs:
...This cannot go on.
Yet it will go on, because the most direct solutions to the problem are off the table for the moment. The Democrats have no interest in reforming themselves in a more egalitarian way. There is little the rest of us can do, given the current legal arrangements of this country, to build a vital third-party movement or to revive organized labor, the one social movement that is committed by its nature to pushing back against the inequality trend.
What we can do is strip away the Democrats' precious sense of their own moral probity – to make liberals live without the comforting knowledge that righteousness is always on their side. It is that sensibility, after all, that prevents so many good-hearted rank-and-file Democrats from understanding how starkly and how deliberately their political leaders contradict their values. Once that contradiction has been made manifest – once that smooth, seamless sense of liberal virtue has been cracked, anything becomes possible. The course of the party and the course of the country can both be changed, but only after we understand that the problem is us.
This last paragraph makes me believe that, despite his pessimism, sarcasm, and bitterness (all gloriously on display throughout the entire book), Frank does have hope.
All the same, this is not a book for the easily discouraged or those who are unable to take criticism. Again and again while reading it, I felt brutally called out: he drags all the polite, unspoken niceties of Democrat culture out from under the rug and shines a merciless, mocking spotlight upon them. He unerringly points out every speck of hypocrisy and slimy two-facedness in this political party, and if you have any humility and self-awareness as a liberal, you won't really be able to argue with most of it.
In a nutshell, the tone of the book is rather harsh and largely comes across as repeated mockery and sarcastic criticism, but said mockery and criticism rest on an impressive, unshakable foundation of elegantly presented and meticulously cited facts. This book was very useful for me as a long-time Democratic voter to read. And no, I'm not about to stop voting for the Democrats any time soon – but it's important to have some nuance, an appropriate degree of shame, and a firm reminder that the American two-party system is not, has never been, and will never be a battle between "good and evil".
christianholub's review against another edition
4.0
Donald Trump's election was a major wake-up call for me, as I know it was for many other people. Although the campaign had been a shitshow for more than two straight years by that point, it wasn't until Nov. 8 that the veil was totally ripped away and I truly realized what a fucked-up hellscape America had become. That's a strange realization to have coming off eight years of a liberal president, and one I used to admire greatly at that. Luckily, this book does a thorough job of explaining the decades of failure and betrayal by the Democratic Party that led to this point - from George McGovern exiling labor unions from the party just a few years after they pulled off a massive voter-registration drive for the Democrats, to Bill Clinton eradicating the welfare legacy of FDR in a way not even Republicans could. Frank lays them all out with excellent reporting, in-depth knowledge of his subjects, and an ear to the voices of America's forgotten workers and poor people. In the Trump era, I find myself listening to a lot of rowdy podcasts, but this book consistently made me angrier than any of them with barely a swear word to be found. I highly recommend checking it out if you're wondering how we got to this dystopian hell world.
mcwv's review against another edition
5.0
Takes us through the Carter, Clinton and Obama administrations to point out how the People's Party was dismantled step by step, and not just by Republican policies. Introduced terms like "meritocracy", "the professional class" and "virtue politics" to my thought blurbs. Coherent and cogent explanation why Trump won 2016 and why voters repeatedly said to me "I would have voted for Sanders if he had won; since he didn't, I had to vote Trump". Validated a lot of what I've been arguing for and unbaffled a lot of my confusion.
kristianawithak's review against another edition
2.0
It's hard to gauge how I feel about this book because it's not what I usually read.
madihoney's review against another edition
dark
informative
medium-paced
4.5
Really enjoyed the themes of the book. Liked the different perspective on recent democratic presidents and their fiscal/working class short comings. Would also like to explore other progressive failures outside of just financial.
lindsirae's review
2.0
What in incredibly frustrating read!! Having heard about this author from a leftist podcast, I assumed Frank was a socialist or at least some kind of materialist. Not at all. He is, in fact, one of the idealist liberals he claims to despise.
Frank tells us that the Democratic Party leadership made a conscious decision in the years between 1968-1972 to abandon their historic base of working class voters in favor of the emerging professional class. Before this point, the Democrats were good liberals. Now they are bad liberals. There is no material analysis of the broader socioeconomic trends that led the Party to make this transition, and no hint of self-awareness of the irony in mourning the period of time in the past that directly led to the current undesirable situation. Instead, Frank nostalgically longs for the past in which the “right” kind of liberalism reigned.
Even more maddening still, he tells us that “there is little the rest of us can do to build a vital third-party movement or to revive organized labor,” and instead advocates that we somehow reverse the economic trends of the past forty years by “strip[ping] away the Democrats’ precious sense of their own moral probity.” Apparently wagging our fingers and telling Democratic leadership that they aren’t very nice is the best We the People can do. This is inane idealist thinking through-and-through, the exact type of inane idealism that Frank claims to so despise.
I also take great issue with Frank’s habitual conflation of white working class union men with the working class as a whole. According to Frank, the Democratic party has historically “sided with the weak and the downtrodden” - this right after acknowledging that they were, also, historically the party of slavery and the Klan. He reconciled this by claiming that when viewed through a *class* lens, the Democrats usually got it right. Evidently race does not factor into Frank’s analysis or understanding of class. Repeatedly he makes assertions about the working class as a whole that are only true about white working class men belonging to unions. While white working class history is of course a worthwhile topic to explore, it is beyond frustrating when this specific group of people is conflated with the whole of the working class. It is simply inaccurate and, quite frankly, highly insulting to claim that the Democrats have historically protected and empowered workers as a whole. Such a falsehood erases the lives of Black workers, undocumented workers, migrant workers, and women in domestic labor - many of whom overlap with the larger group of un-unionized labor.
I am still awarding the book two stars because the Introduction and Chapter 1 have some interesting insight about the growth and consolidation of the professional class as a voting block. Had the entire work been equally enlightening, this would have been a valuable read. Given the reality that it was mostly extremely shallow analysis and many chapters were no more than recaps of historical events in chronological order, I feel that 2 stars is generous. Perhaps the Biden-loving boomers in your family will get something out of this, but for anyone to the left of that, it will be 70% dull and 30% incredibly aggravating.
Frank tells us that the Democratic Party leadership made a conscious decision in the years between 1968-1972 to abandon their historic base of working class voters in favor of the emerging professional class. Before this point, the Democrats were good liberals. Now they are bad liberals. There is no material analysis of the broader socioeconomic trends that led the Party to make this transition, and no hint of self-awareness of the irony in mourning the period of time in the past that directly led to the current undesirable situation. Instead, Frank nostalgically longs for the past in which the “right” kind of liberalism reigned.
Even more maddening still, he tells us that “there is little the rest of us can do to build a vital third-party movement or to revive organized labor,” and instead advocates that we somehow reverse the economic trends of the past forty years by “strip[ping] away the Democrats’ precious sense of their own moral probity.” Apparently wagging our fingers and telling Democratic leadership that they aren’t very nice is the best We the People can do. This is inane idealist thinking through-and-through, the exact type of inane idealism that Frank claims to so despise.
I also take great issue with Frank’s habitual conflation of white working class union men with the working class as a whole. According to Frank, the Democratic party has historically “sided with the weak and the downtrodden” - this right after acknowledging that they were, also, historically the party of slavery and the Klan. He reconciled this by claiming that when viewed through a *class* lens, the Democrats usually got it right. Evidently race does not factor into Frank’s analysis or understanding of class. Repeatedly he makes assertions about the working class as a whole that are only true about white working class men belonging to unions. While white working class history is of course a worthwhile topic to explore, it is beyond frustrating when this specific group of people is conflated with the whole of the working class. It is simply inaccurate and, quite frankly, highly insulting to claim that the Democrats have historically protected and empowered workers as a whole. Such a falsehood erases the lives of Black workers, undocumented workers, migrant workers, and women in domestic labor - many of whom overlap with the larger group of un-unionized labor.
I am still awarding the book two stars because the Introduction and Chapter 1 have some interesting insight about the growth and consolidation of the professional class as a voting block. Had the entire work been equally enlightening, this would have been a valuable read. Given the reality that it was mostly extremely shallow analysis and many chapters were no more than recaps of historical events in chronological order, I feel that 2 stars is generous. Perhaps the Biden-loving boomers in your family will get something out of this, but for anyone to the left of that, it will be 70% dull and 30% incredibly aggravating.
yikesbmg's review against another edition
4.0
Critiques of Dem's focus on professional classes and the elite instead of the working class & poor and "innovation" instead of taking those left behind by the end of industrialism seriously. This book felt super long and repetitive at times, and took me about 5 months to read. It does a great job of breaking down the Democratic party's failures but not really of paving a path forward (which is fine, someone else can do that). It's not a book written in light of Trump, so it's a lot more incisive and precise with its criticism which I really enjoyed. It deals w Dems by themselves and according to their own history, not in light of recent elections.
gordin's review against another edition
5.0
Brutal and sometimes a bit wide-sweeping, but powerful and insightful.