Thomas Frank is a journalist and author of ten books on politics and the movements that shape political change. His most famous work, What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (2004), chronicled the transformation of his home state from a progressive populist hotbed to a home for modern right wing conservatism. We spoke in Madison, Wisconsin, during his current book tour.
Q: In your new book, Rendezvous with Oblivion, you write about the possibility of a re-election of Donald Trump. What factors make that a possibility?
Thomas Frank: This guy really doesn’t know how to govern and “loose cannon” is a weak metaphor. [He’s] like a B-1 bomber that is randomly blasting all over the world. But he inherited a hot booming economy––unemployment is as low as it has been in our lifetimes, and if it continues to boom like that, you will see a really tight labor market, better bargaining power for workers, and wages will go up.
Larry D. Moore
Now it will be illusory, because he’s not doing it with stronger unions or a higher minimum wage. It will be a temporary phenomenon. But if it happens at the right time, it will suffice to get him re-elected.
Q: Trump has been using tariffs, saying his goal is protect jobs, but in reality, they’re having very negative impacts already being felt by U.S. farmers. How does he avoid the backlash from that?
Frank: Farmers as a group have not gone Democratic in a very long time. And these small towns, which depend on farmers, tend to be very desperate and have been moving Republican for a long time. This presents all sorts of opportunities for the Democrats, but to take advantage of those opportunities, the Democrats have to actually care about those people. So I think Trump is probably safe with those voters.
Q: In the chapter called “Making America Great Again,” you talk about how the Democrats could blow it. What is the primary shortcoming of the Democratic Party today?
Frank: It’s their desire to run the 2016 campaign over again unchanged––which they really want to do. In a larger sense, it’s that over the years they have changed who they are, more or less deliberately. The Democrats are really not about working-class people. The group that they really care about is the professional managerial class. People who run the Democratic Party think of this as a great reform, beginning in the 1970s. But in fact, it has coincided with their destruction as the majority party in this country.
Q: What does the Democratic party need to do to reclaim its identity?
Frank: They have to be the party of Roosevelt, which is when they were at their historic moment of strength and were doing great things for the average people of this country.
Today, there’s this enormous problem of student debt for young people. Health care is still not affordable despite having the “Affordable Care Act.” We are beset by online monopolies (like Google and Facebook) that make Standard Oil look like a lemonade stand. Basically, there are probably a dozen easy issues relating to inequality that the Democrats could latch on to. They’d have to think about it and come up with a popular way of presenting these things.
The Democrats are really not about working-class people. The group that they really care about now is the professional managerial class. This change has coincided with their destruction as the majority party in this country.
Q: Roosevelt didn’t come into this as a populist, he came from a patrician background. It was the social movement that pushed him, and the Democratic party, to enact policies for working people.
Frank: This has been one of the themes of my writing for years, the importance of social movements in American history. Roosevelt was moved to the left by labor, but also by the requirements of the time. He had to take on the banks in a forceful way. There were also a lot of leftwing movements around at the time. It was a very different time. But organized labor could recover very quickly given the right circumstances. Just look at the recent teacher strikes around the country.
Organized labor also has to change its game. But there are other ways, other social movements on the horizon. I would love to see something like Occupy Wall Street come along that had more staying power. It’s gotta happen. That’s the short answer. It’s gotta happen.