Chris DeLuzio represents Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives. Here is a taste of his piece at The New York Times: Many of my constituents support smart tariffs, particularly ones that target China, and so […]
working class
Thomas Frank on “fake populism”
Nathan Robinson, the editor of Current Affairs, starts his interview with author Thomas Frank by quoting from Frank’s 2016 book Listen, Liberal: “Now all political parties are alliances of groups with disparate interests, but the contradictions of the Democratic Party […]
David Brooks: “Trump really seems not to give a crap about the working class”
Here is The New York Times columnist: Over the past 20 years or so many of us social observer types have been writing about the horrific chasms separating the educated class (people with college degrees) from the working class (people […]
The “Brahmin left” thinks the working class are idiots. “Thinking and behaving this way just strengthens the far right.”
Over at Jacobin, Edward Engelen interviews Joan C. Williams (White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America) and Thomas Frank (What’s the Matter with Kansas and Listen Liberal) about the working class and the 2024 election. Here is a taste: […]
Worker solidarity and electoral victories “may not be possible without the support of people who might have all sorts of contradictory, even reactionary, views.”
I am not sure I am completely board with Bhaskar Sunkara’s piece at Jacobin, but it gave me a lot to think about: The Democrats went from being the party of justice and stability to the party of meritocracy and […]
The Author’s Corner with Gregg Andrews
Gregg Andrews is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Texas State University. This interview is based on his new book, Hard Times in an American Workhouse, 1853–1920 (LSU Press, 2024). JF: What led you to write Hard Times in an American […]
What is missing from this marker of personal virtue and moral purity?
Thomas Frank answers the question in the title of this post: Back in 2022, Frank said that the Democrats were incapable of defeating the Trumpism. He was right. Frank asks, “what happens to a country when the people of its […]
The Democratic Party is not “just losing white workers but all workers, regardless of race”
For the last nine years we have been told that people support Trump because they are racist and patriarchal. Social class, we are told, is really just a guise for the racism and misogyny of the uneducated white working classes. […]
Democrats need to “ditch” DEI thinking and “get back to fighting for the poor, the working class, and the middle class”
Writer Rand Richard Cooper asks whether the Democrats have “lost the country.” Here is a taste of his piece at Commonweal: The wealthy, worldly, and highly educated parts of this nation are Democratic, while the struggling, provincial, and undereducated parts […]
David Brooks: “As the left veered toward identitarian performance art, Donald Trump jumped into the class war with both feet.”Â
Check out David Brooks’s New York Times piece, “Voters to Elites: Do You See Me Now?” A taste: The Democratic Party has one job: to combat inequality. Here was a great chasm of inequality right before their noses and somehow […]
Bernie Sanders explains what happened on Election Day 2024
The Author’s Corner with David M. Emmons
David M. Emmons is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Montana. This interview is based on his new book, History’s Erratics: Irish Catholic Dissidents and the Transformation of American Capitalism, 1870-1930 (University of Illinois Press, 2024). JF: What […]
The Author’s Corner with Adam Laats
Adam Laats is Professor of Education and History at the State University of New York at Binghamton. This interview is based on his new book, Mr. Lancaster’s System: The Failed Reform That Created America’s Public Schools (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024). JF: What […]
The Author’s Corner with Connie Goddard
Connie Goddard is a journalist and independent scholar. This interview is based on her new book, Learning for Work: How Industrial Education Fostered Democratic Opportunity (University of Illinois Press, 2024). JF: What led you to write Learning for Work? CG: […]
The Author’s Corner with Daniel J. Clark
Daniel J. Clark is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Public Humanities at Oakland University. This interview is based on his new book, Listening to Workers: Oral Histories of Metro Detroit Autoworkers in the 1950s (University of […]
Sean O’Brien’s “return to Gompers”
As we have noted here, Sean O’Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, spoke Monday night at the TNC (Trump National Convention) in Milwaukee. We covered that speech here and here. Over at Jacobin, Dustin Guastella, the director […]
Jonah Goldberg: “I wish the Teamsters president would call for Tesla to be unionized, just to see what happens.”
Commentator Jonah Goldberg had the line of the night: Here is some context. Donald Trump gave the keynote address on night one of the GOP convention to Sean O’Brien, the president of the Teamsters. O’Brien was not there to endorse […]
Donald Trump’s Wildwood, New Jersey rally was characterized by vulgarity, personal attacks, and even a pro-Hannibal Lecter reference. His evangelical supporters are silent.
My Italian grandparents spent a week or two in Wildwood, New Jersey for decades. They drove three hours down the Garden State Parkway to this honky-tonk shore town because they enjoyed sitting on the beach, walking the boardwalk, and spending […]
The Author’s Corner with Shaun S. Nichols
Shaun S. Nichols is Assistant Professor of History at Boise State University. This interview is based on his new book, Manufacturing Catastrophe: Massachusetts and the Making of Global Capitalism, 1813 to the Present (Oxford University Press, 2024). JF: What led […]
A case for 1950s nostalgia
Today’s socialists are not longing for the days of Jim Crow. But, as Dustin Guastella of Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia argues, neither should they throw out the idea that the 1950s was a great time for the American worker. […]