Why Doesn't Thomas Frank Care About Waiters?

[Milchshake]

Self appointed populist Thomas Frank convinced himself that Trump was the more progressive candidate. Writing during the election that;

The Republicans were trying to win the support of people like me! Not tactfully or convincingly or successfully, of course: they don’t know the language of liberalism and wouldn’t speak it if they did; and most of the liberals I know will never be swayed anyway. But they were trying nevertheless.

Donald Trump’s many overtures to supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders were just the beginning. He also deliberately echoed the language of Franklin Roosevelt, he denounced “big business” (not once but several times), and certain of his less bloodthirsty foreign policy proposals almost remind one of George McGovern’s campaign theme: “Come home, America.”

Is this insane? Yes. But his reaction to the Republican convention was that Hillary Clinton was DOOMED because Trump was going to win the liberal votes Clinton was ignoring. No idea what informed Frank on this analysis. Did he actually talk to working class people like waiters?


White House Learns Its Tip-Robbing Plan Will Rob Waiters. Guess What Happened Next.

The Trump administration is changing labor law so as to allow restaurants to control their employee tip pool. When you’re enacting a regulatory change like this, you have to follow procedures, which include an analysis of its effects. The analysis showed that the thing anybody could guess would happen when you let the boss control the tip pool would happen: The employees would get a lot less of it. In this case, waiters, waitresses, and dishwashers would lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars.

What happened next? If your guess is, the Trump administration decided not to implement this change because it doesn’t want to steal from working-class people, you probably haven’t been following the Republican Party very closely for the last few decades. No, the real response was to omit the analysis.

Thomas Frank may have done great work in the past. But asking him to speak for the working class, is like asking Ben Carson to speak for the homeless.

If you coastal elites don’t like it, sorry — the white working class in the Midwest wanted restaurant owners to be able to steal their workers’ tips, and that’s why they voted for Trump.

[Z-Man]

I work with people that cheered this decision. "Now I don't have leave any tips just for bringing me my food."

I can't wait to watch what happens to these restaurants when they get double-teamed by having all their staff leave - and then have the states remove the tipped staff exemption on their minimum wages. They'll be trying to scrape by with waiters even the fast food places don't want.

[Mormolyce]

Can we please stop referring to these people as "populists"? You have to be popular to be a populist.

[Levelfive]

And then he goes on to say:

"Trump is not going to receive my vote, of course. His bigotry, his racist statements about Mexicans, his attitude toward global warming, his love of authoritarianism, his hypocrisy, his ignorance, his untrustworthiness, and his years of predatory business practice all make such a thing impossible. He frightens me every time he opens his mouth.

But that’s not the point. The question we need to ask is this: what are the consequences of the violent disruption Trump has visited on our delicately balanced political system? Look what he has done. He has dynamited the free-trade consensus that dominated Washington for so many years, he has done it with force, and in the process he has made himself the choice of many millions of Americans who have watched their economic situation deteriorate and heard their concerns brushed off by the Thomas Friedmans and the Bill Clintons of the world.

Think about it this way. For years, Republican orthodoxy on trade made possible endless Democratic sell-outs of working people, with the two-party consensus protecting the D’s from any consequences. They could ram Nafta through Congress, they could do trade deals with China, they could negotiate the Trans Pacific Partnership, they could attend their conferences at Davos and congratulate themselves for being so global and so enlightened, secure in the belief that the people whose livelihoods they had just ruined had 'nowhere else to go'.

In other words, it was only possible for our liberal leaders to be what they are – a tribe of sunny believers in globalization and its favored classes – as long as the Republicans held down their left flank for them. Democrats could only celebrate globalization’s winners and scold its uneducated losers so long as there was no possibility that they might face a serious challenge on the matter from the other party in the system.

Well, today all that has changed. The free-trade consensus lies in shards on the floor. The old Republican party has been smashed by this man Trump. It is a new political world out there. How will Democrats react to this altered state of affairs? How will they present themselves to voters now that the bipolar system of the last four decades has exploded, now that they can no longer count on free-trading Republicans to make their own passion for globaloney seem acceptable?

So far, Democrats are acting as though nothing has really changed. In speech after speech at the Philadelphia convention they are denouncing Trump as though he was just an outrageous extension of the familiar conservative demonology, rather than an altogether different monster.

And Democratic leaders seem to be preparing to run exactly as they have always run. Hillary Clinton is pivoting to the right just as other Democrats did before her because ... because, well, that’s what Democrats always do. Her first big move after securing her party’s nomination was to choose Tim Kaine as her vice-presidential candidate – a man who voted for fast-tracking the Trans Pacific Partnership and a supporter of his state’s right-to-work laws. He is, as a recent headline proclaimed, “a Democrat Wall Street can like”.

Appropriately enough, Wall Street personnel are reportedly flocking to the convention in Philadelphia, eager to be reunited with the party that, for a time during the primary season, seemed to be turning away from them. Other accounts suggest that Hillary intends to reverse course on trade as soon as it’s possible to do so.

Do Democrats and their supporters even glimpse the danger in such moves? On the contrary: they seem to think it shows statesmanlike gravitas. On Monday, Bill Scher wrote, of Hillary Clinton:

She tapped Sen Tim Kaine despite his support for the ‘fast track’ law designed to ease ratification of multinational trade agreements. She’s reached out to anti-Trump Republican hawks by embracing the philosophy of American Exceptionalism, declaring that ‘if America doesn’t lead, we leave a vacuum, and that will either cause chaos or other countries will rush in to fill the void’. Her aides told the New York Times earlier this month that her governing strategy would be squarely based on bipartisanship, the antithesis of Sanders’ vision of steamrolling Congress via grassroots revolution.

Let’s see: trade agreements, outreach to hawks, “bipartisanship”, Wall Street. All that’s missing is a “Grand Bargain” otherwise it’s the exact same game plan as last time, and the time before that, and the time before that. Democrats seem to be endlessly beguiled by the prospect of campaign of national unity, a coming-together of all the quality people and all the affluent people and all the right-thinking, credentialed, high-achieving people. The middle class is crumbling, the country is seething with anger, and Hillary Clinton wants to chair a meeting of the executive committee of the righteous.

When Democrats sold out their own rank and file in the past it constituted betrayal, but at least it sometimes got them elected. Specifically, the strategy succeeded back in the 1990s when Republicans were market purists and working people truly had “nowhere else to go”. As our modern Clintonists of 2016 move instinctively to dismiss the concerns of working people, however, they should keep this in mind: those people may have finally found somewhere else to go."

I mean, the whole article is a critique of corporate democrats selling out their base and the irony of Trump swooping in with co-opted, old lefty rhetoric, irrespective of whether it was sincere, which of course it wasn't--all of which Frank was completely right about, and correctly predicted the outcome of the election besides. I laughed out loud when Bill Clinton, usherer in of NAFTA and the GLBA and welfare "reform," had the gall to bitch about the banking crisis and the impact on working class Americans (this line in particular stuck in my craw: "[The Republicans] want to get rid of those pesky financial regulations designed to prevent another crash and prohibit future bailouts"). The corporate wing of the Democratic party--the only wing with any real power--has been more than happy to shit on unions and blue collar workers as long as it meant more money and revolving doors from Wall Street. That's the target of Frank's scorn and the point of the article, not that Trump had something genuinely worthwhile to offer the working class, but that he was only one speaking to it.

I don't understand your takeaway at all.

[Rukh]

See, the thing is it doesn't matter what Trump's campaign says. For decades he's been a blatant self promoting con man. Why the fuck did ANYONE trust a word he said ever? Are people that gullible? The thing that annoys me the most. People who HATED him in the 90's, describing him as only being good at self-promotion and that his entire empire was built on hot air, went and voted for him when he started shaking his fist at the Mexicans.

[Hilhen7]

See, the thing is it doesn't matter what Trump's campaign says. For decades he's been a blatant self promoting con man. Why the fuck did ANYONE trust a word he said ever? Are people that gullible? The thing that annoys me the most. People who HATED him in the 90's, describing him as only being good at self-promotion and that his entire empire was built on hot air, went and voted for him when he started shaking his fist at the Mexicans.

Trump is really Emperor Palpatine, he uses the populations anger and hate to control them.

[Gestopft]

Is this insane? Yes. But his reaction to the Republican convention was that Hillary Clinton was DOOMED because Trump was going to win the liberal votes Clinton was ignoring. No idea what informed Frank on this analysis. Did he actually talk to working class people like waiters?

The Obama/Obama/Trump voters turned out to be a real thing, particularly in the white working class. Trump's "ideas" were largely impossible, and he's mostly taken a steaming dump on his working-class voters, but this was written when he was running, not governing, and he did actually run to the left of Hillary in several respects. Whether or not you believed he would actually govern that way...

Thomas Frank may have done great work in the past. But asking him to speak for the working class, is like asking Ben Carson to speak for the homeless.

I'm not sure he's trying to do that? The point of his first article seems to be more about how the GoP enabled the Dems to leave behind their working class base, and how Trump's candidacy was essentially brick walling that enablement.

If you coastal elites don’t like it, sorry — the white working class in the Midwest wanted restaurant owners to be able to steal their workers’ tips, and that’s why they voted for Trump.

We all know that they got duped, and that Trump (or the GoP) wasn't really going to help working people, but I'm not sure why Thomas Frank needs to be brought into this.

[Theodarzna]

Someone is ultra salty about Thomas Frank rocking the rotten apple cart. He didn't call Trump more progressive, he said Trump was snagging a lot of voters and he was correct, remember the blue wall and its fall?

Democrats are just salty that he dares to tell them they've fucked up and often betray their own base.

[Gestopft]

Democrats are just salty that he dares to tell them they've fucked up and often betray their own base.

Neoliberal Democrats at least. Progressive Democrats are already perfectly aware of this.

[Theodarzna]

Neoliberal Democrats at least. Progressive Democrats are already perfectly aware of this.

Ro Khanna is something special, and maybe that branch can come to power, but I am sceptical about their chances. Especially since any voice of dissent is met with this kind of deranged delusion seen in the OP.

[Milchshake]

The Obama/Obama/Trump voters turned out to be a real thing, particularly in the white working class. Trump's "ideas" were largely impossible, and he's mostly taken a steaming dump on his working-class voters, but this was written when he was running, not governing, and he did actually run to the left of Hillary in several respects. Whether or not you believed he would actually govern that way...
I'm not sure he's trying to do that? The point of his first article seems to be more about how the GoP enabled the Dems to leave behind their working class base, and how Trump's candidacy was essentially brick walling that enablement.
We all know that they got duped, and that Trump (or the GoP) wasn't really going to help working people, but I'm not sure why Thomas Frank needs to be brought into this.

Obama to Trump voters were mostly conservatives, the outlier was them flipping to Obama. Holding onto them was never a sure thing.

Frank's supposition is white working class is the base of the Democrat party. But they've been drifting red since the southern strategy. Granted Democrats struggle to win national elections without peeling off some of them. But how does this make them the "base".

Frank is blind to non-white working class as being the most consistent democrat voters. Why does he deny them the dignity of calling them them the base? Maybe he should move beyond the confines of Kansas or his nice DC townhouse to look for national bell weathers.

Frank was a full throated enabler of Trump duping the populists. He bought into it, then used his platform to sell it. It didn't take much critical thinking or analysis to see this.

[Levelfive]

Obama to Trump voters were mostly conservatives, the outlier was them flipping to Obama. Holding onto them was never a sure thing.

Frank's supposition is white working class is the base of the Democrat party. But they've been drifting red since the southern strategy. Granted Democrats struggle to win national elections without peeling off some of them. But how does this make them the "base".

Frank is blind to non-white working class as being the most consistent democrat voters. Why does he deny them the dignity of calling them them the base? Maybe he should move beyond the confines of Kansas or his nice DC townhouse to look for national bell weathers.

Frank was a full throated enabler of Trump duping the populists. He bought into it, then used his platform to sell it.

I agree with your first two sentences; the rest is a tragic, nonsensical misreading (Frank also once referred to Thomas Friedman as "America's star thought-leader." Do you also believe he actually thinks Thomas Friedman is "America's star thought-leader"?).

It didn't take much critical thinking or analysis to see this.

No, it really didn't.

[Theodarzna]

Obama to Trump voters were mostly conservatives, the outlier was them flipping to Obama. Holding onto them was never a sure thing.

Frank's supposition is white working class is the base of the Democrat party. But they've been drifting red since the southern strategy. Granted Democrats struggle to win national elections without peeling off some of them. But how does this make them the "base".

Frank is blind to non-white working class as being the most consistent democrat voters. Why does he deny them the dignity of calling them them the base? Maybe he should move beyond the confines of Kansas or his nice DC townhouse to look for national bell weathers.

Frank was a full throated enabler of Trump duping the populists. He bought into it, then used his platform to sell it. It didn't take much critical thinking or analysis to see this.

Any number of reasons. Possibly because the Black Vote alone isn't terribly big. AA's are declining in much the same way the White "Anglo-American" proportion of the party is shrinking. Hispanics by the way are not a reliable group to base the party on as they have White Hispanic, Non-White Hispanic and a lot of intermmariage with the White population. This is one of the many problems with the Emerging Democrat Majority thesis that has been pointed out time and time again.

But your view presents an interesting world. If the base of the Democratic party is non-White people, then should White people never vote Democrat?

[Milchshake]

Any number of reasons. Possibly because the Black Vote alone isn't terribly big. AA's are declining in much the same way the White "Anglo-American" proportion of the party is shrinking. Hispanics by the way are not a reliable group to base the party on as they have White Hispanic, Non-White Hispanic and a lot of intermmariage with the White population. This is one of the many problems with the Emerging Democrat Majority thesis that has been pointed out time and time again.

But your view presents an interesting world. If the base of the Democratic party is non-White people, then should White people never vote Democrat?

That's your whole point. That the Anglo-Celt voters need to seperate themselves from the rest of the electorate? Your whole schtick is trying to drive a wedge between varios liberal groups.

You guys are going to go off and reform society based on the WarHAmmer 40k model. Hail to your new caste society, with you near the top naturally.

This is also the premise for neo-confederates and neo-monarchists.

[Theodarzna]

That's your whole point. That the Anglo-Celt voters need to seperate themselves from the rest of the electorate? Your whole schtick is trying to drive a wedge between varios liberal groups.

You guys are going to go off and reform society based on the WarHAmmer 40k model. Hail to your new caste society, with you near the top naturally.

This is also the premise for neo-confederates and neo-monarchists.

Seems to be your whole point, that political parties represent ethnic constituencies. I mean if the DNC is the party for African Americans and Non-White Hispanics and a few other slivers of the population, doesn't that mean it explicitly isn't a party for Whites to vote for?

Correct me if I am misreading it.