On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” author Thomas Frank declared that the Democratic Party is not “the party of the people,” and members of its “Ivy League set” “do not give a damn about working class Americans.”
Frank said that his new book, “Listen Liberal,” is about the fact that “Democrats aren’t who we think they are. You think they’re the party of the people, the party of the workers, the party of labor? They aren’t. … It’s a party of the white-collar, professional class, affluent white-collar professional class.”
Maher added that Democrats today are “a very different breed” than the Democrats his parents were.
Frank responded, “Absolutely, and the — but today’s breed, it’s these Ivy League guys doing favors for other Ivy League guys. Look at the Obama administration, the revolving door with Wall Street. Look at the Clinton administration, same kind of thing. And if it’s not Wall Street, it’s Silicon Valley, it’s big pharma. I mean — so yeah, it’s a liberalism of the rich. This is a liberalism of the winners of the new economy, winners. The people who are left behind, of course, organized labor, working people.”
Maher stated, “I feel liberals just got lazy. I feel they got — it’s so — it’s, the bar to be smarter than a Republican is so low, and it’s so easy to do, that they got lazy, and they made it all about these silly little wedge issues.” Frank agreed with this point.
Frank added of Democrats, “[T]hese people who are so smart, they f*ck up again and again and again. I’m talking about the Democrats here. They can never see it coming, right?”
Later on, Maher and Frank agreed that Kansas voters “deserve” to be told that they can’t be helped for re-electing Republican Governor Sam Brownback. Later in the show, Frank also wondered how there could be a “working class movement” that would rally around Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who “fires people.”
Frank further described his book as “about the folly of the highly educated, the folly of the Ivy League set. I mean, these people are just as foolish, and have made, I mean, even bigger blunders in some ways, and really do not give a damn about average working class Americans.” Maher added, “Nothing stupider than an intellectual, I agree.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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