Elaine May famously coined the
phrase: "You have devoted yourself to a way of life that perished before
you were ever born." I'm fond of
that quote because it is evergreen for many, regardless of politics.
And its particularly true of
Thomas Frank. Frank has devoted his entire academic career to proving that
liberalism is a popular idea and he was born in 1965 – around the time the
conservative revolution began. There has never been a point in his adult life
when conservativism wasn't immensely popular either with the voters during Reagan's
landslide's, the Gingrich Revolution of Congress, talk radio, Bush's presidency,
the Tea Party, etc. At no point in his life has the kind of old-fashioned liberalism
he believes is best for America ever been popular with the voters in the
electorate at large, never mind the Sanders campaign for President he was an
adviser for.
Most people would argue that
Frank is hopelessly behind the times. But Frank is an academic which is one of
the few fields where you can comfortably argue your point of view is correct
and that the rest of the world is the problem. (Criticism of film and
literature are among the other professions.)
Now Ockham's Razor would argue
that if so many people across the country vote Republican there must be
something about it that appeals to the masses. But since simple solutions are
for simple people Frank chooses to ignore the possibility.
The statistical and historical evidence,
of which Frank is comfortably aware, paints an even clearer explanation. Ever
since LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 both the South and the white
working class voter have always been major backers of the Republican Party. Therefore
for Democrats to win elections they have always had to go where the voters are.
And the times they have managed success with Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton's Third
Way as well as Obama's Presidency to an extent would justify that. The figures back
that up as well.
But to the Franks of the world
that's not a solution they like, mainly because it involves going to where the
electorate is, not where men like Frank say it should be. And so for my
lifetime men with Frank's leanings have been trying to find as many erudite and
academic terms to explain that there is something wrong with the rest of America,
particularly regions where their policy has had by far the hardest time meeting
success.
So I think that is the real
reason Frank's most famous book What's the Matter With Kansas was
published. Because an academic doesn't
like facts getting in the way of his pre-ordained theories Frank chose Kansas
for a reason.
Let's be clear: Kansas has been
voting Republican from the moment in joined the Union. It has voted for a
Democrat six times in its entire history. The first time was in 1896 when
William Jennings Bryan was running for President for the first time. It voted
for Wilson both times he ran for President. It voted for FDR in his first two
runs for President and for the last time during LBJ's landslide – one year
before Frank was born. So never in his lifetime has it voted for any Democrat.
The last time it elected a
Democrat to the Senate was in 1932 when George McGill won a full term. Kansas
has historically had some of the most famous Republicans during the 20th
century, from Alf Landon and Charles Curtis to Bob Dole. Eisenhower was born in
Kansas. The closest a Democrat has come to winning a Senate seat in Kansas was
in 1974 when Bob Dole barely won reelection.
So to be clear the idea that
Kansas ever was a state in favor of progressive or liberal ideals probably ended
just after it joined the Union and after a brief flirtation with populism. It
didn't believe in the New Deal; the Fair Deal or the New Frontier and Johnson
barely carried it by nine points in 1964. It was smaller than FDR's margin in
1932.
This was by design when Frank
went there when he was doing the research for his book in the leadup to the
2004 election. He could have chosen a lot of other states, even in the plains
and gotten very different answers to his questions.
If he'd gone to Iowa, for
example, he would have found a healthy Democratic Party in a state that had
gone Democratic in 1988 to 2000. Tom Harkin was in his fourth term as Senator
and Tom Vilsack was governor. Had he gone to his immediate west to Missouri –
where he was born – he would have found that John Ashcroft had lost to a dead
man two years earlier and where Claire McCaskill would win in the Senate two
years later.
Hell had he gone north to
Nebraska, he'd have gotten a completely different story altogether. This was
the state of the brilliant progressive Senator George Norris. He would have
seen Bob Kerrey had served there as Senator and governor in the previous two
terms and that Ben Nelson had just been elected to the Senate in 2000.
I could make similar arguments
for most of the states in the Plains, including both Dakotas during that
period. Tom Daschle was still serving as minority leader when Frank began
writing his book and Tim Johnson, another Democrat held the other seat. North
Dakota was held by Ken Conrad. For that matter if he'd gone west he would have
seen that Ken Salazar was about to win the open Senate seat in what was a major
upset.
So why didn't he choose any of
those states if he'd wanted to see how Democrats were winning in the world of
conservatism? Because by that point he and his colleagues had labeled Democrats
such as Kerrey and Harkin neoliberals which like so many things was seen as a
plus when it was coined but by the mid-2000s academics like Frank considered it
worse then being a Republican.
Furthermore if Frank had gone to
states where people were voting for Democratic officials on a regular basis it
would have come into conflict with the major theory of his book which is the
same theory that honestly all academics thought well before he published his
work and still do today. The people in the middle of the country are rubes and
idiots because – well they live in the middle of the country.
The academic left, I should be
clear, has no more respect for the working class then the conservative elite
does. The Democrats were only able to win those parts of the country when they
were a more, rural agrarian party which basically ended by the time FDR was
running for office for the first time. FDR managed to win the working class
voter at an incredible rate and JFK managed a record 64 percent of the vote. And
they did so, it must be said, because all of them were doing everything in
their power to ignore the elephant in the room that was civil rights. It was
FDR's greatest flaw, Truman only slightly tried to rectify it and JFK almost
certainly would have delayed until his second term had he lived.
The farmer and the working class voter were
important parts of the Democratic Majority that Frank yearns for so badly and
much of that meant dealing with the conservative Democrats. That the
segregationists are now part of the GOP doesn't magically erase the fact that
they were part of ours for more than a century and there's an irony then many in
our party what to take so many Confederate monuments and southern statues down
considering many of their distant political ancestors no doubt put them up in
the first place. The magical thinking of the Frank's of the world does not make
it so.
Frank and his colleagues have
spent their long careers trying to find a way that liberals can win the working
class vote without lowering ourselves to meeting them halfway. To do so,
they've tried endless rebranding exercises including changing the term 'liberal'
to 'progressive' and as we've seen
they're now trying to redefine 'working class'. We saw that happen in Maine
first with Graham Platner and then with Troy Jackson, who for all their working
class appearances are essentially running on a far-left platform that could just
as easily be part of the Justice Democrats. By contrast Dan Osborn running in
Nebraska, actually has a working class platform and has widened his appeal to
everyone whether they be Democrats, Republicans or Independents. Those last two
would be disqualifiers for Frank and I'm not sure how much he'd want Osborn to
win Democrats at all.
I don't pretend to have the same
education Frank has but even I know what works in some regions of America and
what doesn't. And when you write a book that basically argues that because a
state where the electorate has been voting Republican for your entire lifetime
must de facto have something wrong with it, you're kind of playing into the
culture wars that you say the right has been framing. I can't imagine how this
book was advertised on Fox News after it came out with everyone from Bill
O'Reilly to Sean Hannity saying some version of: "The liberal elites think
that the people in Kansas are stupid!" It certainly didn't help Kansas
turn Democratic in 2004.
Just for the record since Frank
wrote his book Kansas has elected – and reelected - a Democratic governor,
Laura Kelly. Now I do realize that other states in this region have also had female
governors, but as Frank would no doubt argue Kristi Noem and Kim Reynolds don't
count. California, for the record, is a far more progressive state than Kansas,
yet it has yet to elect a female governor in its long tenure.
The first time she won office she
defeated Kris Kobach, one of the most avid anti-immigrant conservatives in American
life today. He spent his career developed the strict immigration laws in Arizona
and did much to work to help try and build the border wall. He proposed the idea
of self-deportation as part of the 2012 Republican Party Platform and was among
the first Republicans to endorse Trump in February 2016. He implemented some of
the strictest voter ID laws in the US as Secretary of State of Kansas and has been
one of the biggest voices arguing of prosecution of voter fraud for decades.
And in 2018 he lost the governor's race to Kelly by five points.
All of which is a way of saying,
maybe there isn't as much wrong with Kansas as people like Frank think.
