|
Thom's blog
What Happens When Neither Political Party Answers to the Bottom 90%?
 As Donald Trump leads a full-scale war against the Republican establishment and elites, particularly through his attack on both their military and their trade policies, the Democratic Party is also in a predicament of its own. Both parties right now face a great crisis of ideology as well as a great opportunity for reinvention, and whichever party first reinvents itself successfully will begin winning elections the way the Democrats did in the 1932-1968 era. If neither does, our nation faces a massive crisis provoked by the loss of democratic representation of the majority of the American electorate. The root cause of this crisis is the fact is that neither party today does much of anything for the bottom 90% of Americans. A recent study out of Princeton, for example, pointed out that the likelihood of legislation passing that represents the interest of that bottom 90% was equivalent, statistically, to white noise. So why is that? Well, it's complicated... But on the Democratic side of things it has a lot to do with changes in party structure and demographics that began in the 1970s. Thomas Frank's new book Listen, Liberal: Or, Whatever Happened to the Party of the People? argues that starting with the McGovern Commission of 1972 - which largely excommunicated Labor from having a large role in Democratic Party decision-making - the Democratic Party largely abandoned the American working and middle class - the bottom 90%. It instead began to embrace -- and now fully embraces -- the "professional class" - i.e. the top 10% economically. As Frank told me on my program recently, the doctor who delivered me in the 1950s was almost certainly a Republican (then the party of the professional class), but today would almost certainly be a Democrat. In the 1950s and 1960s virtually the entire professional class (the top 10%) was Republican; today it's virtually all Democratic.
This has had a direct effect on the policy priorities of the Democratic Party, which was formerly the "party of the people."
In the late 1980s, the DLC Democrats (today's Third Way or Clinton Democrats) jumped on board with the professional class and its supposedly "complex" solutions to our nation's problems.
They consciously moved away from labor and the working class and towards an elitist embrace of the banksters, the emerging "geniuses" of Silicon Valley, and the college-educated at all levels.
|
Tonight on The Big Picture on RT TV at 7pm and 10pm... Obama lands in Cuba (check your local listings for stations or stream at RT or Free Speech TV, and catch past shows on Youtube)
 Be sure to check out our newest video: RESTORATION - narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio & Thom Hartmann, directed by Leila Conners / Visit GreenWorldRising.org to check out all the videos: CARBON, LAST HOURS & GREEN WORLD RISING - narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio & Thom Hartmann, directed by Leila Conners
Big Picture Progressive Roundtable:
- Rodell Mollineau, Rokk Solutions 
- Lauren Windsor, The Undercurrent/The Nation/Huffington Post
Plus Special Guest: Obama lands in Cuba
- Joe Madison, The Joe Madison Show/Sirius ch. 126
Plus Special Guest: Trump Is A Delusional Crybaby
- Chauncey DeVega, Salon
Daily Take: When Political Parties Ignore working People... |
The Daily Stack 
Hour One: Chauncey DeVega Shows Up at Trump Rally and Explains Why Trump is a Delusional Cry Baby - Chauncey DeVega, Salon
Economic and Labor News Do you have all the info you need to vote for @BernieSanders? Find it here. |
|
Tuesday on The Thom Hartmann Program, 12-3pm ET
And, the best of the rest of the news along with your calls right here on...
The Thom Hartmann Program, Occupying The Media 3 hours a day 5 days a week" for "we the people"
And don't forget...Democracy is NOT a spectator sport...it begins with you...
|
|
Show Info
Call Thom on the show at (202) 536-2370.
Sign up for Thom's podcasts.
Come on over to the free chat room, where Thom hangs out during the show.
Join in the discussions on Thom's free message board.
Blog or upload videos or audios at Thom's community.
|
 Please support the Hunter School, a unique therapeutic boarding school for young children diagnosed with ADHD, Anxiety, Sensory, Mood and related conditions... |
