- The Koch Bros. & Their Billionaire Web
- Bernie Sanders Explained Plus Sue Grafton’s X
- Eric Laursen, THE PEOPLE’S PENSION & Greg Palast, BILLIONAIRES AND BALLOT BANDITS.
- Doug Henwood, MY TURN: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency
- Gerald Friedman: A Bernie Sanders Presidency Boosts Incomes & Jobs
- Comix as Art and Politics: Art Spiegelman and Greg Palast
- Paul Theroux, DEEP SOUTH & Ted Rall, BERNIE
- DISPATCHES FROM THE RELIGIOUS LEFT
- Ron Suskind, THE WAY OF THE WORLD and ELIZABETH WINTHROP, COUNTING ON GRACE
- David Cay Johnston, FREE LUNCH
- The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
- Margot Livesey, HOUSE ON FORTUNE STREET
- Thomas Frank, THE PEOPLE, NO
- Call for Independent Exit Polling
- Web Extra: 9-11 Press for Truth video
- The Vote Count Protection Project
- URGENT: Stealth bill threatens democracy
- Voting Problems?
- Danielle Allen, OUR DECLARATION & Katy Simpson Smith, THE STORY OF LAND AND SEA
- Bill de Blasio’s Civic Experiment – Is It Working?
- Linda Coleman: Radical Descent & Greg Guma on Bernie
- Greg Guma on Bernie Sanders’ “Insurgent” Run
- Cicero’s End, Dust Up over Sanders’ Plan, & Remembering Quentin Young
- Is Hillary Clinton Good For Women?
- Historian Donna Murch on The Clintons’ War On Drugs, Mass Incarceration & The Black Vote
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We spend the hour talking with political historian Thomas Frank about his ground-breaking book about Populism and anti-Populism, The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism.
It’s about the long history of elite distrust of pro-democracy working class/farmer political activism in the U.S. As Frank explains:
The People, No is the story of how much of our modern world we owe to our home-grown democratic movements for reform. It is also a cautionary note for our time, a warning against the pundits who tell us to fear the plain people, to keep to the path of centrist complacency, to let the experts handle our lives and our future.
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Thomas Frank
There are only a few days left before the most consequential election in American history. Will democracy come to an end if Trump wins? Many fear so, with reason.
But democracy has been under attack since long before Trump started trying to dismantle it entirely.
After he was elected in 2016, there were many pundits who questioned the value of democracy, scorning Trump as a “populist,” because supposedly the non-college educated white working class masses put him in office. In fact, Trump voters were better off than most Americans, with an average income of $70,000 (about $20,000 over median income at the time.)
In a counterintuitive twist, somehow democracy was accused of leading to populism, and populism was decried as autocratic, illiberal, and, above all, stupid.
But our guest Thomas Frank says that the pundits, academics and Democratic elite who attack populism have got the term all wrong–and they are heirs to a tradition that’s been getting it wrong since the Populist Party became a force in 19th century America.
In fact, the Populists fought for expanding the vote to women; they rejected xenophobia against immigrants; and they built alliances between Black and white workers and farmers. And, far from being stupid, they pushed for policies that succeeding generations adopted as fundamental and needed reforms.
In his book The People, No, Frank takes the reader through the history of populism and its opponents from the beginning down to today. The lesson he draws is that the real story of populism is the story of American democracy itself.
Thomas Frank is the author of nine books, including Listen Liberal, which we spoke with him about in 2017.
READ AN EXCERPT FROM THE PEOPLE, NO
CHECK OUT THOMAS FRANK’S GALLERY OF ANTI-POPULISM ART