@nimh,
Quote:I don't doubt the term has currency among the right especially, I just see little suspicious or counterintuitive about a socialist using it either.
That's a fair statement. My suspicions, in this case, had more to do with the speaker than the speech.
There are issues of social class here, obviously, and the privileges (or disadvantages) that attend class. The growing income inequality that began to diverge more acutely in the 80s has continued that same trend into the present. How/why this happened is certainly a matter of interest because if we don't get that right, it's difficult to imagine how we might plot a course to correct it. I haven't read either of Frank's books (though have read quite a bit he's written elsewhere). I like his anger and understand his pessimism and I respond to his species of lefty populism (my dad was a union organizer and that graph of increasing inequality has a real correspondence to the decline in union membership). But I think he's missing something quite key to the modern situation. That is the asymmetry of the two parties as described by Mann and Orstein and also by Pierson and Hacker. Along with many others, I carbon-date the shift at the Powell Memo in the early 70s.
It's unfortunate and understandable that neither Frank nor the four others have offered up (at least that I've seen) some good means of correcting what has gone wrong. There are very big problems and barriers involved. And I personally do not see a solution coming from Sanders himself even if his impulses are mostly right. The Occupy movement was the obvious precursor and why it fizzled so quickly ought to be instructive. Or we could go back further to Ralph Nader. I think a 3rd party attempt in America is destined to fail whether from the right or the left. Sanders surely gets that too, thus his run as a Dem.
As Gage argues in her review (it's a good piece - thank you) FDR managed to overcome his background, wealth, connections etc and became a true populist President. But that period of time was much different from this one in many ways. Clinton and Obama both came from lower middle class backgrounds (which says something good about the Dem party) but both faced circumstances and levels of opposition which seriously limited what they could do. The key element of both men's circumstances was/is a highly organized and incredibly well-funded movement which set out to remove them from office or to at least curtail their populist urges and policies (eg the dedicated effort to stop Hillarycare). That Obama managed to get the ACA done and into law was something of a historical wonder.
My personal notion, to end off here, is that our best hope for a serious and effective movement to carry/force Dems back to inclusion of those who are poor and powerless will be a movement led by and mainly populated by women. Either that or an immense catastrophe. I'd prefer the former.
