Listen Liberal or Whatever happened to the Party of the People? by Thomas Frank, (2016) [apologies in advance for such length without breaking out headers and subheads]
AWESOME BOOK! Nails it! Perfectly captures why Bernie Sanders supporters are baffled by the non-democracy of the Democratic Party. It USED TO BE the Party of the People, but it turned it’s back years ago, and did so deliberately, as one of my now favorite authors describes in this book.
I thought I had posted about his books before but cannot find now; he is most famous for “What’s the matter with Kansas” and I will post later. (It is also a good video – I especially was horrified at the power of too much money in the hands of some people, like the guy who built a “museum” on Creationism; especially the part with the dinosaur grazing peacefully next to a small boy.)
I have been saying similar things about WTF has happened to the democratic party I have voted for all my life. Yes sometimes the lesser of two evils, but I always thought fundamentally the commitment to workers and social justice were the values of the party. So I was truly shocked, but kind of not surprised to learn that Hillary had been a Goldwater supporter back in the day. Yeah, yeah, don’t get in my face, people can change. But I’m not sure she did or if she just calculated the odds of achieving her ambition to become the first woman president was absolutely more likely in a democratic party, never the republicans. It has never been more obvious than this 2016 election that the process of presidential nominees has been a queue of people who tow the line of the real power behind the politicians, financial and corporate donors.