That's only half of Frank's argument. I've been blazing through the book this week. It's a lot of fun to read. Frank also says Clintonesque center-hugging on economics -- free trade, labor rights, privatization, etc. -- causes the culturally- conservative worker's decision to hinge solely on God, guns, and gays.
I haven't finished the book yet. So far Frank's argument begs the question of why we don't see a politics that is culturally conservative and economically progressive, like the old populists 100 years ago. mbs (Thomas Frank's new book "What's Wrong With Kansas" argues implicitly that the Democrats lose elections because they are identified with the wrong side of the "culture wars". This is the same sort of position that Michael Moore argued in the Nation Magazine in 1997 and that Richard Rorty put forward in "Achieving Our Country". You get a more strident version of this in Todd Gitlin's "The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars". Moving directly into the enemy's camp, you get Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s "The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society" and Jim Sleeper's "Liberal Racism: How Fixating on Race Subverts the American Dream". Somehow, this kind of economism that panders to white workers has been associated with Marxism in some circles. Frank himself would probably describe himself as a Marxist, but not on the Charlie Rose show--I don't imagine. In any case, this has little to do with the outlook of Lenin who urged that socialists act as a "tribune of the people".) NY Times, July 16, 2004 OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Failure Is Not an Option, It's Mandatory By THOMAS FRANK
