by Thomas Frank
I signed up for a second dose of Thomas Frank after reading What’s the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. In that book I was fascinated to learn about the progressive agrarian populist movement that began in Kansas in the 1890s, and with the word “populism” being bandied about all over the political spectrum these days, it seemed important to more deeply understand the history of that movement.
The kernel of Frank’s argument is, in fact, that the word “populism” and what it originally represented has been misappropriated by both the right and the left. He believes that if it were restored to its original intentions, it could very well be revived as a progressive movement that could remedy our current political woes. Donald Trump is sometimes both favorably and unfavorably labeled a populist because of his appeal to the white working class of middle and southern America, when of course he is nothing but a wealthy autocrat serving the interests of his own class. At the same time I’m hearing traditional populist economic themes echoed in the rhetoric of new New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, and even that of James Talarico, the Democrat and devout Christian senatorial candidate from Texas, when he says it’s not a fight between right vs. left, but between top vs. bottom. True populism is all about the economic and social well-being of working people.
Frank’s outrage was once again laid on quite thick in this audiobook edition, but he is a great storyteller who makes history easy to understand, so I can heartily recommend The People, No. The title, by the way, is a takeoff on a book-length poem by Carl Sandburg, published in 1936, called The People, Yes, which I had never heard of and decided to take up after reading Frank’s book.