Is your story and we encourage you to share the stories you hear this weekend on twitter, instagram or facebook. You can keep the spirit going by downloading the printers row app where you will find the Chicago Tribune premium book contents free and discounted ebooks for subscribers and that complete printers row schedule. Demo today and you get a free ebook and five dollars off merchandise. Todays program is being broadcast live on cspan twos book tv. We will leave about 10 minutes at the end for a q a session with the Live Audience here, so when the time comes if you have a question, please lineup at the microphone to your right so the home viewing audience can hear your questions. Lastly, before we begin this program i ask that you silence your phones and turn off the flashes on any cameras. With that said, i would like to introduce author thomas frank of listen liberal. [applause]. Howdy, folks. How are you all doing next thats my version of a chicago accent, howdy folks. I did live here for many years on the south side in hyde park and i know also said useful facts about the city. Did you know Williams Jenny bryant gave the gold speech about three blocks from where we are sitting right now . So, you talk about political history, man, this is the place. So, like i say i have lived here for many years. In fact, when i was living here i wrote a book 12 years ago called whats the matter with kansas. [applause]. Oh, youll know that one. Awesome. It was a book about all of the different ways that the Republican Party wrote in workingclass people with these different varieties, populace that the Republican Party is so skilled at an today as we look around us, i mean, basically we are watching before our eyes the rise of the greatest fake populace of all time. Donald trump. I mean, this guy is like huey long without the compassion. [laughter] do you know what im saying . As we watch this happen i want to talk about something that a wrote about in the kansas book, but that i didnt really go into in detail back in those days and its just that a large helping of that blame for the right wing backlash that i saw back then and that we all see today that a large helping of the blame has to go to democrats as well. The degree to which republicans have one these workingclass voters over is the same degree to which the democrats have abandoned them. Okay . So, think that this is the year to ask, whatever happened to the party the people. I mean, its a great question to be asking just a few blocks from where Williams Jenny bryant basically launch them on their career as the american part of the left, but, i mean, this question in two ways. First of all, how is it that the democrats came to abandon working people; right . The working people in this country and also why is it the democrats basically failed to respond to the greatest issue of our time . Now, what, i mean, i said that . What failure am i referring to . President obama has had and i agree with him that another chicago in, by the way. Every time i named check a chicago in the will pointed out. I met obama wants and we will talk about that later on. He was my state senator down on the south side. Right now im talking about obamas ideas and what he has done as president and he said that a couple years ago that end inequality is the defining challenge of our time and i think he was right about that. The defining challenge of our time, the sweeping statement, but when you think about it for more than a few seconds to realize that it isnt anywhere near sweeping enough. Inequality, i dont like this word. Is seems far too technical. But, its what we got, so im going to use it. Inequality is a kind of shorthand for all of the things that have gone to make the lives of the rich much more delicious year on year for three decades and also, its shorthand for all of the things that have gone to make the lives of working people in this country so wretched and so precarious. Inequality is visible in the ever rising cost of healthcare and college, in the coordination of wall street and the slow blading aware of it is you have to live. You catch a glimpse of inequality every time you hear about someone that has had to declare bankruptcy when one of their kids got sick or when you read about the lobbying industry that drives washington dc reader about the requirements that all about political candidates must either be billionaires favorites or actual billionaires themselves. Inequality is about the way that speculators and even criminals got a helping hand from uncle sam while the vietnam fed down the street from you loses his house. Inequality is the reason that some people find such incredible significance, such incredible meaning in the ceiling height of an entrance foyer or the hot content of a beer while other people will never believe in anything again. Inequality is a euphemism for the appalachia vocation of our world and i know i mean me of all people i know that if the republicans who bear the primary responsibility for this modern that we live in the other party that launched this country on our modern era of tax cutting and wage suppressing and these are the guys that made a religion out of the market and who fought so ferociously to open our politics to money at every level. I know all of that. But, just blaming the republicans one more time, turning the old tv set back to msnbc, folks, this is not good enough. Not anymore. The things i am describing represent a failure of the Democratic Party as well. Look, protecting the great and the class order used it to be what the democrats while about. This was that partys traditional mission. Once upon a time there leaders would have taken one look at the situation we are in today and they would have known exactly what to do. On not trying to lionize oldschool democrats. They had a lot of things wrong with them as we all know, but you take a guy like harry truman or Lyndon Johnson and they would have known precisely what to do about this current Economic Situation that we are in. These guys were screwed up in all sorts of ways, but one thing they were really really really good at doing was defending the middle class. This was shared prosperity with the democratic parties in the old days there greatest mission. It was their highest aim on the defending our middleclass world was a sacred task to these guys and they would never shut up about it. They talked about it all the time and to this day some bits of that, some vestiges of that still remains that democrats are the ones always pledging to raise the minimum wage and the taxes of the rich, but when it comes to tackling what president obama calls the defining challenge of our time, however, many of our modern Democratic Leaders falter. They acknowledge that inequality is this terrible thing, this awful thing and they know its out of control, but they cant find the conviction or the imagination to do what is necessary to reverse it. Instead, they offer the same, you know, highminded policy platitudes that they had been dishing up since the 1980s they remind us, they say there is nothing anything can do about technology or globalization. Globalization; right . That is the hand of god reaching down to rearrange human affairs. Nothing anyone can do about that, so they promise us you know what they promise us, Charter Schools onthejob training, student loans. They all shuttle out the student loans, but other than that they got nothing, folks. Lets start with some specific issues come in the mainline and you notice, the main issue of our century, of our dumb little century here, the wall street bailouts in 2008 in 2009. This was the great missed opportunity. This was the historical Inflection Point where our country could easily have changed course. But, our leaders chose not to. Remember what it was like back then, president barack obama had been elected on this massive wave of hope and enthusiasm. On election day 2008, there was this Amazing Party just a few blocks from here in grant park with thousands and thousands of people. Elected on this amazing wave, the country is at his back, all of the forces of history are behind him and he proceeded to continue the policies of president bush, essentially unchanged. Im referring to his policies towards wall street and the investment banks. No big banks were ever put into receivership. No bailouts were unwound no elite bankers were ever prosecuted. Obama and his democrats refused to change course when every sign was telling them to turn. When it would have been good policy to turn. When it would have been overwhelmingly popular to turn. When the country fully expected him to turn and when i say the country, i mean, that bankers themselves, the wall street bankers thought they were going to be taken to the wood shed and when it was fully within the president s and his partys power to steer this country in a different direction, they did not do it. What i am saying is that on this matter there was no conflict between pragmatism and idealism. This is a conflict we have been dealing a lot about during the primary season, the pragmatic candidate and idealism candidate. But, this id issue this is sure what to do at wall street, it was the practical thing and the helpful thing. It would have been good for the economy and the popular thing to the public learned them to do it. They were behind him with enormous numbers and he chose not to. Now, i know that the democrats are the good guys. For liberal like me, the democrats are the good guys or i should say the less bad guys, but when you start with Something Like that, this wall street issue the way i described its not a questions that all the economic aims of the recovery that happened since then presided over by democratic president , a president we are often told is the most liberal of all possible president if not an outright communist, the gains on the economic games games of this recovery have gone to the already wealthy. This is not or i should say not only because sinister diabolical republicans keep 40 the righteous liberal will. I know republicans are off when i know how they play the game. I live in dc these days. They are very good at it and are dedicated to obstructionism. Its like a philosophy for these guys, but what im talking about here is different. Is a straight up democratic failure. Obama played this issue the way he did because thats how he wanted to play. We have to get our heads around that. Now, call this a failure you know what the right word for it is. This is a betrayal. In the history of this betrayal goes back a long way when i was in the 70s and 80s the Democratic Party you read the newspaper and the Democratic Party was forever grappling with its identity. You know, arguing with one another over who they were, with the Democratic Party stood for. This went on for decades all through the 70s, 80s and up into the 90s. All these different factions of the Democratic Party basically fighting like cats and dogs, but they all agreed on one thing. All of these different factions agreed on one thing and that was what the democrats had to do was turn away from the legacy of the new deal with its fixation on workingclass people. Thats what they had to do. So, the man who brought this closure, lets say, to this long running Democratic Civil war was of course a president bill clinton and i think if we want to understand where the Democratic Party in the country are today, this is one of the turning points we have to look back at and how to scrutinize in some detail. Bill clinton brought a new kind of Democratic Administration to washington. Rather than paying homage to the politics of franklin roosevelt, which is what democrats used to always do, he was a patron saint allah sort or think. Clinton did the opposite. He did these kind of singular favors for fdrs old enemies, for the banks, the radio networks, the power company, basically the bosses. Shed deregulated wall street. And when i say he deregulated wall street it was not just one or two measures, it was throughout his presidency, item after item after item after item deregulated banks, finance and insured derivative securities would be traded without any kind of supervision. He deregulated radio and telecoms and he basically put an end to the federal welfare system. One of the things that he did that most people dont know about is that in 1997, clinton had a series of secret meetings with Newt Gingrich and they arrived at a plan to privatize Social Security. The meetings were secret at the time, but has since come out and its a known thing. People have written books about and its well documented and gingrich now talks about, but they had these meetings and they came up with a plan for privatizing Social Security and how they would roll it out and introduce the policy. Gingrich had the votes and clinton would sign it and clinton actually took the first step in their proposed plan in his state of the union speech in 1998. He said geez, what was it, we need to i, said we need to end welfare as we know, but thats not what it was. He said shoot, kill remember his exact words, but you know what happened. He had this great plan for privatizing and the very next day after his state of the union speech the monaco lewinsky scandal and we can thank her for saving Social Security system. [laughter] im quite serious. I think Monica Lewinsky is a hero. [laughter] bill clinton, interesting guy. He had this strategy as a candidate. He was running for the presidency and hid this strategy where he would go out of his way to insult or distance himself from some Traditional Democratic constituency like organized labor, minorities and thus assure the public that he was his own man picked the most famous example also happen in chicago. Jesse jackson, do you remember they called this the Sister Soldier moment where clinton arrange or contrived to insult jacks into his face before the cameras of the nation and democrats of the Clinton School had this kind of way of rationalizing this. It could insult these people with impunity they thought because remember this phrase, they had nowhere else to go. Remember that . Now, whats interesting about clinton is that this Campaign Tactic eventually became a fullblown philosophy of governance. Body slamming the people who got you elected. The classic example here is the north American Free trade agreement or nafta and you remember what this was a. George bush senior had negotiated it with canada and mexico, but could not get it through commerce because carvers at that time was controlled by old school democrats, but bill clinton could do it. He brought in your current mayor, ronnie manual who was his point man. Come on now, folks. I remember this vividly because i picture the time. I lived on 48 street and we will talk about that another time, but i would watch the debates on my stupid little tv set in that house. So, nafta, fascinating story if you think about it. When clinton got nafta passed he rammed through congress. He wasnt merely insulting his friends in organized labor who opposed nafta, he was conniving in their ruined. He was assisting in the destruction of their economic power. He wasnt just insulting them, he was materially injuring them. He was doing his part to undermine his own parties greatest ally. To ensure that management would always and forever now have the upper hand over workers whenever they tried to organize or go out and complain about something or basically anything because now management can always say we will move the plan to mexico. We close how that threat now. This is wellknown. They do it all the time and sometimes they even follow through on it. By passing nafta, clinton made the problems of working people materially worse. Now, nafta is interesting for a lot of reasons and one of them is that it was as close to a straight up class issue as we ever see in this country and it gives you when you look at the debate over nafta back in those days and 92, 93, it gives you an idea about what our modern democrats stand for and what to groups aiming to please. Like i say, i remember vividly watching these debates. The debate came down, you know, it was obvious he was on which side. Professionals and the rich were in favor of nafta, working people were opposed to it. People with graduate degrees were always very impressed to learn that 283 economists had signed a statement talk about how nafta would boost Employment Creation and Overall Economic growth. Now, ironically paradoxically whatever adverbial and to use the predictions of the unlettered bluecollar workers who oppose nafta turned out to be far closer to what eventually happened than did the rosy scenario of 283 economists and the road scholar at that in the oval office, president clinton. No matter, bill clintons admirers regarded this as his finest hour. They used this phrase all the time. This was a particularly brave act, his greatest moment as a president. You can find a version of this viewpoint admiring 1996 biography of bill clinton by the british journalist Martin Walker who said, yes, clinton had done a few things wrong, but these things were this is a quote from the book balanced and even outweighed by his part in finally sinking the untenable old consensus of the new deal and the crafting of a new one. Thats why this guy like tim. Thats why he admired bill clinton because he killed the new deal consensus. So, this new consensus that he talks about, this new consensus that came up to replace the old one, who were the heroes of this new consensus . Will come the same democratic thinkers are that period i have been describing who were always saying the party need to abandon workers in the new deal had the answer. Who should the Democratic Party served . What should democrats embrace . It was obvious, the emerging postindustrial economy an