Thomas Frank: Democrats' Failure to Address Economic Insecurity Gave Trump Election Advantage

Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews.

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The Resistance Starts Now!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement

"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

SPECIAL REPORT: "The Resistance - Women's March 2018 - Hartford, Connecticut" Jan. 20, 2018

Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris

SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018

Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017.

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THANK YOU TO EVERYONE...

who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Between The Lines on Stitcher

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

"How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop.

Listen to audio of the plenary sessions from the weekend.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live, weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines' interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT at www.WPKN.org (Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

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Democrats' Failure to Address Economic Insecurity Gave Trump Election Advantage

Posted Nov. 16, 2016

Interview with Thomas Frank, political analyst, historian and author, conducted by Scott Harris

For weeks, pollsters across the board had predicted a decisive victory for Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 presidential election. As the returns came in, it was apparent that the Democratic Party coalition that had delivered two previous victories for President Barack Obama failed to materialize for the former senator and secretary of state. Overall voter turnout was down, with some 43 percent of eligible voters deciding not to participate, a 20-year low.

While Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote, Trump won the Electoral College vote due to the geographic location of his supporters, many in the important Rust Belt states of Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Trump received roughly 5 million fewer votes than Mitt Romney did in 2012. But Hillary Clinton lost because she got roughly 10 million fewer votes than Obama in 2012 and 15 million fewer votes than Obama received in 2008.

In examining the reasons why Democrats failed to come out to support their nominee, political analyst, historian and author Thomas Frank argues that "Hillary Clinton was exactly the wrong candidate for this angry, populist moment – a technocrat who offered fine-tuning when the country wanted to take a sledgehammer to the machine." This against a backdrop of Democrats in general failing to lift up American workers, many still struggling to recover from the 2008 economic meltdown. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Frank, who examines the reasons why so many voters failed to turn out to support Clinton, and what the Democrats must do to re-structure their party’s priorities to address American’s economic insecurity. [Rush transcript.]

THOMAS FRANK: Hillary was uniquely vulnerable to the campaign of Trump. In fact, my opinion is that Trump basically chose his issues because he knew that Hillary would be the Democratic candidate. Everybody could see that long before. But the trade issue in particular, Hillary was uniquely vulnerable on that front because of her husband's deeds as president and it's also the sort of philosophy of Clintonism, which treats big parts of the Democratic constituency with the phrase "they have nowhere else to go." So leaders don't have to deliver anything to the rank and file because they know that they won't vote for the Republicans so therefore they can treat them badly and reach out to affluent people or do what they really want to do, which is to be a party of the wealthy. I mean, we really have now learned the folly of these strategies.

BETWEEN THE LINES: I certainly wanted to explore the issues of the Democratic party not delivering to working class people in this country any kind of program to address growing income inequality that's been apparent for quite some time, long before the Occupy Wall Street movement. This is a reality that certainly affects more than just Democrats. And obviously, Donald Trump struck a chord with the people who are coping with that same reality.

THOMAS FRANK: Well, when you put it in those terms, you see what you're getting at here, you're describing the same thing that put Barack Obama in the White House in 2008. Only then, it was a hopeful movement. I mean, people were scared then, too, people were frightened. But what you see in the Trump phenomenon is desperation; it is hope after it has curdled in vinegar for eight years. People had such high expectations for Barack Obama and they were disappointed. And I think that they were right to be disappointed. He really did not deliver in all sorts of ways that people expected him to. And things that he easily could have done – it's not like they were expecting things that were outlandish or really radical or completely off the table. He just didn't deliver them.

When I say desperation, we're talking about people that can see their way of life slipping away from them. The middle class of this country is crumbling. This is terrifying to people. And they rolled the dice and took a chance on Trump. Hillary did not really promise anything different. I mean, if you read the campaign platform very closely, she had a lot of things that I thought were pretty awesome – I voted for her – I'm certainly not going to vote for a guy like Trump.

But the thing is that nobody believed her promises. Nobody really thought she would actually try to get them done. There's just something about the way the Democrats have ruled. It's not just something vague. People just knew they couldn't expect anything different from Hillary.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Thomas Frank, do you have optimism that the Democratic party or progressive forces in general around the country, given the relative success of Bernie Sanders and the enthusiastic support he gathered during the Democratic primary contest, that there is a force in the country that can address some of these deep-seated economic concerns and fears of a lot of people, but move it in a progressive direction – a direction that doesn't prey on people's fears and prejudices.

THOMAS FRANK: Well, of course, I have hope that that will come to pass. That's got to be the next step within the Democratic party that's got to be the next measure that they take. It's the end of the road for Clintonism, I think. Look, in some ways, I'm very hopeful about the situation that we're in. Trump has shown, among other things that anything is possible in politics. Hillary outspent him. I mean, she had ads everywhere. He had virtually none. She had every newspaper endorsement in America. She had celebrities behind her. She had everything going for her. And this guy won. All the rules that we have been told were set in stone for my entire lifetime – all those rules are gone. You know, all the stuff about how you have to have billionaires on your side, you have to able to match the Republicans in ads. None of that means anything anymore. And there is a really wonderful freedom out there, and I hope that we can take advantage of it and rebuild this thing.

Visit Thomas Frank's website at tcfrank.com and his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/Thomas-Frank-300407053332512/.