When we examine the roots of today’s chaos in the Republican party, we see that much of it has been caused by the party using and manipulating social issues to hold together Red State voters, while ignoring and even acting counter to their real economic concerns. This was the premise of one of the seminal books of our modern political age, What’s the Matter with Kansas, by my guest Thomas Frank.

Today, Frank argues that the Democratic party is facing a similar situation and is ignoring a whole swath of it’s traditional working class base voters. 

He argues in his new book Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?

that the traditional working class Democratic voters, the ones  that drove the Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Johnson coalitions, have been ignored.  That the traditional Democratic Dunkin Donuts/ Walmart voter has been replaced by the Starbucks/Whole Foods voter.  And that o

once again, even in the Democratic party, social issues have been used to  transcended the real economic needs and distress of Americans.

To some extent this has given rise to the Bernie Sanders movement. But more specifically it’s left the door open for a populist demagogue like Donald Trump, to take advantage of this openings on both side of the political equation. 

My conversation with Thomas Frank: