Curtis Bowman

Thomas Frank's Autopsy of the 2016 Presidential Election

If you follow my blog, then you know that I have a fondness for the work of Thomas Frank. Here's a short interview with him on CNN in which he offers his autopsy of the election.

Scroll down this page a bit and you'll see a video in which Mr. Frank was talking about the same issues months before the election.

More: Here's a written version of Mr. Frank's autopsy.

Thomas Frank Reviews Hillary Clinton's "What Happened"

I always turn to Thomas Frank for insight into how the Democrats manage to lose elections that they should be winning. So, naturally, I was intrigued by his review of Hillary Clinton's What Happened.

The professional self-satisfaction and willful blindness of the highly credentialed professional class has a lot to do with her loss, says Frank, thereby continuing the sort of criticism that he has been offering of the Democratic party for a long time.

Thomas Frank on What John Podesta's Hacked Emails Reveal About the Liberal Elite

Thomas Frank looks at what John Podesta's hacked emails reveal about the liberal elite. It's no surprise, Frank says, that they take care of themselves and their own. So if you don't belong to the meritocracy, then you're out of luck.

Frank discusses the liberal meritocracy at length in Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?, especially in chapter one. 

Thomas Frank Talks About His New Book and the State of the Democratic Party

Thomas Frank just published a book entitled Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? You can watch him talk about it in this video:

I've been a fan ever since Mr. Frank published What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America in 2004. So I'm looking forward to reading his new book.

Thomas Frank on Donald Trump's Supporters and Their Anger at Trade Agreements

I developed a soft spot in my political heart for Thomas Frank after he published What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America in 2004. It seemed to me that he correctly identified how the Republican party uses culture-war politics to stir up white working-class voters, and that such support usually comes at the expense of their economic well-being. True, I was rather critical of Mr. Frank's handling of the importance of religious conviction, but there is much in his book that I still find convincing. Be that as it may, I take his views seriously, and so I'm always happy to come across new work from him.

In that spirit, then, I recommend that you read this article on the role that the rejection of trade agreements plays in generating white working-class support for Donald Trump's presidential campaign. It's not the whole story, of course, and Mr. Frank knows as much, but he is clearly correct to pay attention to what Trump is actually saying on the campaign trail, and if you look at videos or read speeches, you'll see that Trump spends a lot of time denouncing trade agreements that he and his supporters hold responsible for gutting American manufacturing.

By the way, just so you know, both of my parents were born and raised in Kansas. I too was born there, but I grew up in Texas.

Thomas Frank on the Higher Education Swindle

Thomas Frank looks at the swindle being perpetrated by higher education.

Because I worked as an adjunct for a decade before I left academia in 2003, I can fully appreciate Frank's remarks about part-time faculty. But I also felt the poignancy of his remarks about wildly overpriced textbooks, rampaging administrators, and ballooning student debt.

Thomas Frank on Class Stratification, Student Debt, and the Tuition Spiral

In my previous post I linked to a recent piece by Thomas Frank on some of the current problems in higher education. I see that he has written two more worthwhile pieces on higher education and class stratification (not that he uses the latter phrase) and the tuition spiral of the past thirty years. Both are worth your time, I think.

Thomas Frank on Student Debt and Adjunct Professors

I haven't linked to anything by Thomas Frank in a while. I see that these days he's writing for Salon.

Anyway, because I worked as an adjunct professor for ten years, I couldn't help being interested in this article in which he tells the class of 2014 how badly they've been served by their colleges and universities. The plight of adjuncts is a large part of his tale of woe.

Thomas Frank on Talking about Freedom

Thomas Frank looks at the Democrats' unwillingness to challenge the Republicans' claim to being the sole preservers of freedom in the U.S.

More: And while you're at it, read Frank's previous column on the oddity of a red scare without reds.

Thomas Frank on the Feigned Outrage of the GOP

Thomas Frank marvels at the GOP's undiminished capacity to express outrage over the things for which it bears responsibility.