actually, keep books important. in my experiences technology is always advancing, and when the e-readers advance, those books are going to be stuck on their old one, and they might not transfer to another one. and that's going to turn a lot of book people off because they're used to going to the book shelf and pulling a book whenever they can. um, you know, and things break on accident is and things like that. so i think it's, it's a fad. the bigger chains are going under, um, i think because they are trying to spread themselves too thin. ..

>> now, thomas frank argues that instead of a backlash from the 2008 economic collapse, the right wing has used the crisis to further advance laissez-faire economic policies. this is a little under an hour. >> good evening. i'm bradley graham, co-owner of politics and prose, and on behalf of the entire store staff, i'd like to welcome you this evening. this is the first author talk of

the new year for us, and it marks the resumption of our regular author events, which were suspended for a few weeks during the holiday season. you can see from the overcrowding this evening we did not have a chance to grow the store over the holidays but we are considering all kinds of options, but we are really delighted to have such a large audience here tonight for this first event of january. the holiday season, i might just say a word about that. it was really very encouraging for us, particularly as new owners. we had sales well in excess of the previous december, and that's been true of a number of independent book stores around the country. of course, there are a number of challenges ahead with ebooks and online sales, but we're very

encouraged and we're very grateful for your continued loyalty and patronage. we're also quite delighted this evening to be able to present thomas frank and his new book, pity the billionaire. the book's subtitle is. the hard times swindle and the unlikely comeback of the right. and there's certainly no question about it, the right is back. as unlikely as that may have seemed in november of 2008 when barack obama was elected and democrats obtained control of both houses of congress. tom looks at this resurgence of the right and the reasons for it. a big political year is just getting started and we wouldn't politics and prose if we weren't planning on featuring a number of political books in the months ahead and holding a number of discussions about this election

season. so we're very fortunate to have tom kick things off for us. as tom has been writing about politics and culture in the yates for some time now. he has a phn history from the university of chicago and one of the most are articulate, provac cav voices on the left. a former opinion calumist for the wall street journal and the founding editor of the baffler magazine, and i was just informed that we will soon be carrying the baffler magazine -- >> i hope you do. >> and since late 2010, he has been writing the monthlied a easy chair column for hallwayers magazine. tom lives in the washington area and has appeared at politics' prose for at least the last two of his several books, what's the matter with conditions, -- with

kansas, wered in 2004, and the wrecking crew, which came out in 2008. this is his fifth book and he has also edited a couple of anthologies. in this new book, tom argues that the right has managed to resurrect itself largely by taking advantage of public anger about the disastrous condition of the economy. they have offered an appealing narrative about what went wrong, placing the blame not on wall street but government, but their notions of lay say floor -- laissez-faire were badly undercut by mismanagement and they have in tom's view upped the ante and become even more insistent about their free market idealism. this idea that at a time of economic collapse, brought on by financial irresponsibility and lax regulation, people should

embrace the notion of free markets even more blindly, strikes thomas outrageous. imagine, he says, if the public had demanded dozens of new nuclear power plants in the days after the three mile island disaster, or if we hat reacted to watergate by making richard nixon a national hero. a number of noneconomic issues contribute to the ongoing strength of the consecutive movement in the united states. no doubt such issues as abortion, gay marriage, and immigration will factor in this year's election campaign and help gallannize the right. but the economy is almost certain to be a major subject of contention, and tom's makes important points to keep in mind. he shows how the republicans, at least so far, have been more successful in democrats in defining the terms of the debate, and his essential

argument about the right having provided a compelling vehicle for popular anger is a significant consideration. i'm sure tom will have other interesting points to make, and i will turn the microphone over to him in a second. let me remind you please to silence your cell phones if you haven't already. tom plans to speak for 15 or 20 minutes and then he'll take questions. if you have a question, please step up to this one microphone we have in the center. we have c-span here this evening and we like to record all of events and make them available on the web site. so now, please join me in welcoming thomas frank. [applause] >> the first i want to say is that it was very kind of brad to say all those things but we have to also remember independent book stores like politics and prose. speaking as an author, these

places are absolutely essential to the literary life of this nation, and it's a great thing that brad is keeping this place going and let's hope he goes for a long, long, long time. so, -- oh, water. awesome. i hope it it's not fizzy. so let's get our cell phones off. and -- so, what i came here to talk about tonight was the confused era that we're living in. this time when americans are rising up against imaginary threats and rallying to economic their riz they understand only in the gauziest terms. i'm going to talk about a country where fears of a radical takeover became epidemic, even though radicals themselves had long since ceased to play any role in the national life.

a country where ideological night mare conjured up we tv entertainers came to seem more vivid and compelling than the contents of the news pages. but if you look at it from a different perspective, this is actually a miraculous time, great awakening, as some people put it. a revival crusade in which the gospel is the old time rolf the free market. it's an era of grassroots rebellion and the incredible recovery of the conservative political movement from the gloomy depths of defeat. and let's confess there is indeed something miraculous, something astonishing, about this recovery. considering the barest facts. this is the fourth successful conservative uprising to happen in my lifetime. each one of them all apuff with pop "mary pop populist bluster e

one helping to compose the a historical chapter? what i used to call the great bashlash, others call the age of reagan or the age of greed or the conservative ascendancy or the washington consensus. think about it this way. it's now been 32 years since the supply side revolution conquered this city, since the free market faith became the dogma of the nation's ruling class, shared by large numbers of democrats as well as'mans, and since then we have lived through decades of deregulation and deunionizeation and privatization, and free trade agreements of every kind. the free market ideal has been projected into every corner of the nation's life. i mean, universities try to put themselves on a market-based footing these days, so do hospitals. electric utilities, museums. so does the post office.

the cia, the u.s. army. and now, okay, after all of this has been going on for decades, we have a people's uprising demanding that we embrace the free market ideology. right? and this only a short time after that ideology led the world into the greatest economic catastrophe in living memory. i mean, amazing, yeah. amazing is right. that's the world. unlikely would also be right. preposterous would be even righter. and back in 2008, the country's financial system suffered an epic breakdown, and largely the result as nearly every serious on agrees though, decades long effort to roll back bank superexpression encourage financial experimentation, and the bankle stumbled, plunge the nation interest the world into the worst recession sense the 1930s, and is a stand here

tonight, the main political response to these events are a campaign to roll back regulation, just strip government employees of the right to organize in wisconsin, ohio, now in indiana, and to clamp down on federal spending. so, let us give the rebels their due. let's acknowledge that the conservative comeback of the last couple of years is indeed something unique in the history of american social movements. a mass conversion to free market theory as a response to hard times. before the present economic slump, i had never heard of a recession's victims developing a whole sale taste for chicago school economics or a spontaneous hole stilt to the works of franklin roosevelt. before this current recession, people who had been cheated by bankers almost never took that occasion to demand that bankers be freed from red tape and the

scrutiny of the law. before 2009, the man in the breadline did not custom marrily weep for the man lounging on his yacht. >> the achievement is remarkable when you consider the climate in 2008. after the doors the george w. bush presidency culminated in the catastrophe on wall street, the citizens of our beautiful beltway consensus land all -- we all agreed, on the direction in which the nation was traveling. our pundit leaders had seen this movie and they now how it was exposed -- supposed to go conservativeism's range was at an end and the unambiguous mandate of history, as unmistakable as the gigantic

crowds that gathered to hear barack obama speak on the campaign trip. you can no more deidentify this plot line than you can write checks on an empty bank account. now, the thinking behind all of this was straightforward cause and effect stuff. the 2008 financial crisis had clearly discredited the differ movement's signature free market ideas. so-so the story went. scandal and incompetence wrecked it and rhetoric was supposedly repugnant to a new generation of voters and there's the obvious historical analogy. we had just been through a replay of the financial disaster of 1929, and now, murmured the pundits, the automatic left turn of 1932 wassed a hadn't with the part of franklin roosevelt being played by the newly elected

barack obama. for the republican party, the pundit approved script went like this. the g.o.p. had to moderate itself or face a long period of irrelevance. remember how they used to say senate with a polite speaking world expected from the leaders of the right was repentans. they assumed that conservatives would be humbled by the disasters that hadbe fallen their champion, george w. bush. that republicans would confess their errors and make it a for the political center. the world expected constriction. what it got was the opposite on the end of bayonet. instead of seeking accommodations, the right went on a quest for ideological purity. instead of elevating their remaining centrists to positions of power, they purged them.

and rather than acknowledge that they had enjoyed their 30 years behind the wheel, they declared that they had never really got their turn in the first place. the true believers had never actually been in complete control so the conservative ascendancy that those historians talk about, that never existed, and all the journalistic and historical work on that subject had been so much liberal propaganda and, of there, most importantly, the disastrous events of recent years cast no discredit on conservative ideas themselves. so, the solution wasn't to reconsider deregulation, it was to double down and work even more energetically for the laissez-faire utopia. here's the water. this is the moment where i drink water. it's written into the script. now, the social patterns of hard times are posed to be a simple thing. right? as impersonal and as mechanical

as the forces that shutter our factories and bid down the price of our stocks. markets disintegrate, layoffs fount, foreclosures begin, and before you know it the people are out in the streets screaming for blood. the idols of our past become targets of derision. we demand that the government do something about it. that they burn issue the perps and rescue the vision. we look for aas soon as and stricter supervision of the economy to make sure it never happens again. at least that's how it went in the 1930s. and when the catastrophe comes, the depression taught us, certain legislative deeds will follow almost automatically in its wake. unemployment insurance will be extended. extended again. there will be massive investment in public works. commissions will be named to investigate the causes of the crisis. agencies will get set up to keep people from losing their houses to foreclosure.

and as the economy falls apart, the assumption goes, we will also rediscover a certain neighborly is in, sense of community and even of collectivism that comes from shared approvation. the hurt by the downturn will take action you'll see union organizing and maybe even a wave of strikes sweeping the country in response to the complete breakdown of capitalism's promise, and the people hurt by the downturn will protest, of course, voicing their discontent in public places, like the striking farmers in iowa in 1932, who claimed to be upholding the spirit of the boston tea party as they dumped out the contents of trucks that tried to cross their picket lines. in 2008-2009, sure enough, looked like the pattern was repeating itself. our slump began with this financial insanity very similar

to that of the 1920s, and what's more, it's not a coincidence that our banks' modern-day misbehavior began just as the depression era bank regulations were repealed or allowed to go uneven forced, and like in the awful days of 1932, average people are rising up against in outrage, fuming about the money men who drove the nation into the ditch, and the politicians who stuck with the cronies while the rest of us lost our shirts. 30-style poppism has -- populism has made a return, putting caring americans against a predator uncaring world. should you happen to hear an homage the spirit of the boston tea party nowdays, the demands that follow are going to be -- what makes the rebels' blood

boil today is not the plight of the indebted property owner but the possibility that such losers, as they call them, might escape their predicament. that the government might step in and do the very things those iowa farmers wanted it to do 80 years ago. that seven lean years must follow seven fat years. hell, that seems like a good deal now daze. what burps our populace is that anyone has the arrogance to think that human affairs might be arranged in any other way. that government might somehow allow our neighbor to evade his part of the common disaster. that some mortgage remediation bill might let him out of the hard times he so clearly deserves. the ones moved to protest today are all liquidationists as old herbert hoover used to call them. what they want the world to understand is to quote the word

i saw prepared on the sunshine the fort tea party protest, your mortgage is not my problem. now, how did conservativism chief that's? by learning the great depression during times of economic collapse, the conservative movement figured out no one loves the defender of orthodoxy, or a spokesman for the rightful rulers and when the economic came long, positioned themselves as a protest movement, a social uprising movement, people protest banks, big corporations, people yelling through bull oregons, people organizing boycotts. there are marches on washington and big talk about strikes of the producer class, just like in the 30s. and what's more, the newest

right cast itself as a people's movement, with no leaders. right? a movement that was so profoundly democratic, so virtuesly rank-and-file so very punk rock, that it was actively against leaders. a movement that was downright obsessed with betrayal, with being sold out by traditional politicians, regarding its awe then tisty. think about glen beck, the former tv host, who is the emblematic figure in all of this stuff i'm talking about, this confusion. beck idea to ritually claim to be man beyond partisanship. he del halt -- deliberately imitated martin luther king's march on washington, and mayor that on the mall here. and at one point in his career on fox news, he suggested he might have voted for hillary clinton had she won the democratic nomination for the presidency. now, if you watched him closely,

a couple years ago -- i spent a lot of time doing that, okay? so you don't have to, right? [laughter] >> but he is a billionaire and then you don't have to. but if you read the beck text closely, what you will -- a close reading of the beck text, you will find is that beck sort out constantly pilfers left wing imagery and arguments. he has a critique of the public relations industry that comes straight from the payment office gnome chomsky. or his charge of racism against president obama which was a lump si attempt to use a weapon conservatives feel is always directed against they themselves. the new is right always glories to imagine themselves as victims. for example, there's this entire hate geography of persecution that hovers like halo around the figure of sarah palin. heat her brand image, the

persecuted one. i mean sometimes this fear can get pretty baroque. in glen beck's 2010 novel -- imshoe you can buy a copy of it right here -- if you go out and read his novel of the overton window, kind of an exciting book but you'll find that conservative activist the novel are imagined to be the victims of everything that big brother can throw at them. they get thrown in jail on the flimsiess of charges. they endure savage beatings by the police book's hero gets waterboardded after he signs up for this kind of fictional version of the tea party movement. there are patriotic meetings are constantly infiltrated bed police spies and agent prove indicators. the descendents of the realive red squads they used to have in cities like chicago, that would go around and try to suppress left-wing radicals back in the day.

but in this book, of course, the idea is they're now cracking down on the right. and it's fictional. never really happens. similar fears come up in the larger conservative movement culture in 2009, the populace right was swept by this panic that the new democratic administration was preparing concentration camps for conservatives, and this turn out to not be true. i'm sure it's a big surprise to you. and i did a little research on it. i discovered that neither federal nor state governments have ever mounted a campaign to criminalize the free market faith. however, i also found they have used force to break up strikes, imprison labor organizers, keep minorities from voting and disrupt antiwar movements. today, though, it suits the resurgent right to imagine itself as the real victim of state persecution, which no doubt enhances its aura as a

dissent movement taking on a mercyious establishment. i want to stop there and change subjects. it's a lot of fun poking holes in the things that conservatives say. right? i mean, i've got a whole book of it here. and these are dark times but there's some humor in it. i mean, these guys blow off the facts when they feel like it. they swipe symbols from the other side constantly. they illustrate arguments on economics with fairy tales. yes, they actually do that. the roping -- reasoning you hear on their favorite radio shows, sounds like something from a brain washing session at a prison. it's preposterous. it's contemptible, but you know what? it's better than? it's better than nothing. now, let's remember one more

time the original cataclysms whose memories today poison our every political moment. the financial crisis and the bailouts. and remember this. the culprits of those cataclysms -- the ones who wrecked our economy, were not punished for what they did. they were rewarded. and by this i don't mean they got away with a slap on the wrist mean they were laden down with billions and our blessings, and today they are rich in a way that you and i will never be able to comprehend, and all of this happened, remember, courtesy of our government. the officials of which have conducted themselves ever since as though nothing untoward happened at all. the bailout money will be recouped. nothing to worry about. the experts understand this. you could not have contrived a scenario better calculated to destroy public faith in american institutions. i mean, what is the point of hard work? of scrapping for a few dollars

more at some lousy hourly wage when dishonest financial legerdemain is so profitable. why play by the rules when they obviously don't apply to everybody. when routs and crooks and bullies take home society's greatest rewards. the bailout created a perfect environment for populism and the jacksonian tradition, for jeremiah's raging against the corrupt and powerful. and one of our two political factions in this country as we have seen, took to this task immediately and with relish. they tossed incon event leaders overboard, like george w. bush. he is out of here. not a conservative. ex-communicate. they declared war on the ruling class. they assembled with megaphones in the park and gave voice the people's outrage.

the other faction, the actual political descendents of jackson and truman and roosevelt, they failed to rise to the occasion. they didn't have much to say. they never seemed to get it. that circumstances called for something different. they could not embrace the requirements of the moment even though responding to hard times was once they're party's very reason for being. i take the bailouts, for example. there are 100 different ways that situation could have been dealt with. each one of them less of an outrage than the way chosen by bush and hank paulsen, the treasurery secretary in the bush administration. but upon taking office, president obama didn't break with paulsen's campaign, didn't lay plans to reduce investment banking's power over american life. instead he took pains to let the world know he embraced the

paulsen strategy. he made it his own. and each time politicalled a veersty came -- adversity came -- almost each time -- but pretty much i'm time the obama team would compromise in the direction of wall street, as though that was who needed to be mollified. now, the folly of this for us as citizens, for us as americans, as economic actors should be plain by now. that it might also lead to electoral disaster probably never even occurred to the president's tough-minded political advisedders. all those hard guys he brought in from chicago. after all, you know, catering to wall street -- how about victories to bill clinton. coming around to the way of the market was regarded as high-minded stuff in the 1990s open. this statesmanlike

acknowledgment of the conservative ideas but the hard times made that as obsolete as thin'y -- the floppy disk. the great recession repolarized all the compass point outside. nothing worked the way it used to. it was no longer about left verse right. it was about special interests very common interests. this was the moment for a second fdr. not clinton 2. now, sometimes when i watch the washington democrats in action, my mind goes back to the tragically incompetent british general staff of world war i, you know. always -- you come to politics and prose and listen to tom frank and he makes a world war one analogy. that what you got yourselves in for. i watched these guy and i think of the british generals with --

ordering assault after gigantic assault, only to see their armies annihilated one after other. but still they kept at it, ordering up another round of the same thing, playing by the gentlemenly rules of combat, never doing anything clever and always completely surprised when the other side introduced them to 20th century warfare in a brutal new way. sometimes i wonder what things will look like when the other side -- when the new revitalized right finally gets the chance to do what they want with the nation. maybe, you knowmarks finally what the pundits -- maybe finally the rightward drift of the last four years will stop and the nation will finally reverse course. or maybe, as the nation clambers further down into the pit called

utopia, the thinking of the market-minded will continue tee involve and before long they will have discovered that certain once uncolorful uncolorful arms of the government must be removed. what are parks but wasteful subsidies for leeches who ought to be paying their own way. what is disaster relief but a power grab by losers who can't get themselves out of the path of a hurricane. you know social security will go. right? as the essential injustice of protecting the weak dawns on them. why should society pay for the retirement of someone who hasn't been all responsible and hoarded krugerrands like they're supposed to do. every problem that editorialists fret about today will get worse. inequality. global warming. financial bubbles. but it will not matter.

on america will go, chasing the only ideology that the country has left, down into that pit, that seething arcadia of all against all. thank you very much. [applause] >> there's something going on back there is everything okay? okay. so we're going to do questions, and they've set up a microphone here. i brought a pen to sign books. okay? so after we're done with this, i'll sign whatever you want, okay? all right. who is first? yes, sir. >> i've been standing here all along anyway. >> there you go. >> so, i have some thoughts i'm just interested in your response

to them. it looks as though the other side knows that a good offense is better than a good defense. their languaging is better. it's like how can you not -- to be perfectly honest, how can you be not pro life? the free market, what's the opposite, what's the opposite of a free market if not feudalism? >> well, we can talk about that. >> well -- the language of free market. i mean, brings up all of this wonderful images that, how can any person, american or otherwise, be against that. the democrats have done a wonderful job of staying anywhere doghouses and not doing a counterattack or doing an offense themselves. >> right. >> and one last thing, which was something i discovered on an app called show of hand, where people vote on stuff. it seems that democrats, when

the question is which should you do, compromise or give it your all, or go for it, it looks like 70% of democrats want to compromise and 80% of republicans want to go for it. >> it's an amazing divide. >> which is a scenario built for defeat. >> they call it game theory. if you put those two groups together, who is going to win? you know, the people who believe in compromise as part of their innermost principle? or the people who are like, we're going to win. it's like dish mean, tom delay wrote about this in his memoir. i'm sure you carry the tom delay memoir. we would move further to the right because we knew clinton was triangulating. if we moved the goalposts this much further, he has to triangulate that much further. du. when that's his stated strategy and everybody in the country

knows it, it's incredibly easy to play the dude, you know? enough of that. but -- look, maybe you think i'm going hard on the democrats but i don't think i am. i think their cult of centrism and bipartisanship is just as ha hall lose nation as much as -- they're very similar in all ways these cultish faiths, and as far as i'm concerned they're both completely discredited by the events of the last decade or so. yes, sir? >> you have spoken eloquently to it, but give us a review again of what germinated or gave birth to the fears that you're alluding to?

>> fear was natural in my opinion in 2008-2009. i mean, i was scared. the interesting thing was how to speak to that fear, how to capture the fear and redirect it to your own purposes and there's many conservative vying for that. i went to a lot of tea party rallies when is was writing the book -- the book is called "pity the billionaire." i went to these rallies, and they spoke about fear all the time. and ramping it up and making it seem much more dramatic than it was. but they would tend to shift it. they would move its focus. so instead of talking about the destruction of our economy, they talk about the destruction of our liberties. it's always -- and they would wave the snake flag and say, instead of worrying.the power of wall street, they were wowed about obama's a dictator. and the classic example is, they're talking about debt. there's all kinds of personal debt in america, or there was,

and it was out of control. they say we have a debt crisis in the sense that the federal government is running too great a deficit, and they are running a big deficit because we're in a recession. duh? i'm sorry. i shouldn't get all huffy. it's my opinion. what you see is the redirection of fear from the obvious targets, the real culprits -- wall street -- to the fantasy culprit -- government. and there's a whole industry that does this. there's something called fox news on cable tv. you should turn this on sometime and check it out. i mean, you -- well, look. the name that i should give is obviously glen beck. the man deals in these fears. i just -- turn him on on the tv or his rayow show and it's the world coming down, by some new

path. did you in the glen beck idolizes or sort of idolizes ore send wells? this is his first book he talks about how he really likes ore orsen wells and there is a photo of beck doing a radio drama, and i said that picture looks familiar. and i looked it up and it's the same pose as orsen wells during the war of the worlds profit, and that's when the light went on in my head. he doesn't admire ors enwells. it's war of the worlds, the martians are coming, and i suddenly got it. that explained it to me. yes? >> i happened to hear today your interview on npr, and in that interview you talked a bit about the problem of experts, and the democrats' reliance on experts. could you elaborate on that and also answer the, we if you don't have the answer, do you go to

the amateurs? >> that's a good question. this is both the democrats -- the modern democratic party's strength and their achilles heels. the reference for experts. no individual where this is more clearly defined than barack obama. man produced by harvard and the university of chicago, and he looks to academic expertise. but you also look at the various statements and deeds the obama administration -- i should say most of them i agree with. they often didn't go far enough ump but yes we needed a systemus package in 2009. yes, universal halve insurance is is a good idea. the problem was they would explain these things as things that we needed because we -- the experts said we needed them. the experts say we need them.

but that's not -- and we know we need them because of the experience of the 1930s, the keynesian economic theory and the decade economists. that's true. but what this leaves up stated is, roosevelt, when he was originally doing giant stimulus packages, social insurance, they didn't say, we're doing this because the experts say we need to. they went out there and they sold it, by god, and they fought for and it talk about why you needed it. and that was completely missing from the obama administration. and it also -- this reference for expertise -- this is something you come across when you follow the administration closely, it's something you come across virtually every day in their statements and their way of doing things. it walks right into the

conservative critique of liberalism. the conservative over the last generation have developed this critique of what the call the liberal elite. it's a phrase that we all should know. and what they mean by that is that the real ruling class in this country is educated people, highly educated people, people that went to graduate school. it's a fascinating theory. because it happens to be flatline correct nowdays. the country is -- the invisible hand has us in its grip. but it's not harvard grads that are wrecking wichita, carnes right now. it's people following the dictates of the market. but that's their critique, and they hammer it home with -- with incredibly powerful rhetoric. they rip off the rhetoric from the 1930s, and the democrats

take no notice of it. yeah, experts, that's us. we're them. again and again they walk right into the buzz saw. send those troops over the top, you know. epray here we come, you know? if they're so good damn smart why haven't they looked -- it's not just me talking about conservative strategy. there's a whole body of literature talking about conservative populism. this is a well-known phenomenon but the democratic leadership in this city never gets it and never figures out, how would democrats counter right wing populism. maybe they can be pop pop lists on their own. i talk about there is too much. i'm shutting up now. >> how did the conservatives get the economically disadvantaged to vote against their own

interests. >> this time around? >> how are they able to get away with it? these people are misled, lied to when they vote republican, they get screwed. >> as they're finding out in wisconsin and ohio. but -- the first thing i want to say, went to these tea party gatherings, and i read a lot of their literature. i didn't read all. i tried my best. i read a lot. the one thing i understood almost immediately after hanging around with these people and going their rallies, they're not blue collar people by and large. they tend to be small business people, and they also tend to be fairly well off. and okay. within to a rally in denver, tea party rally in denver, and through met man who is wearing ascot at a protest rally. i had never seen that before.

that was the first time i ever saw that. and they have -- they have conventions, too one every year here -- only been around for a couple years but they have conventions and they have a trade show attached to it where the sell one another things, and you know, you say what you like about "occupy wall street." they don't do that. they don't have a trade show where everybody can buy all these trinkets, and i'm an enthusiastic consumer of tea party products. i have a house full of this stuff. one of my favorite is a solid silver coin commemorating their march on washington. i think did at the bonus army issue those in 1932, solid silver coins? so, it tends to be a movement of more affluent people, generally speaking, small business people, at least that's what i found or what i think. and -- but their rallies aren't that huge.

0 you had one big one here in september of 2009 but by and large it's usually just a couple hundred people or sometimes smaller than that. but they were the sort of van guard of a moment, and lots of other people followed. they had the language and the megaphone and the money and the media. they have their own tv channel amply identifying everything they say -- amplifying everything they said. and lots of blue collar people we know from the polls and the elections of 20 10. heard what was said and they bought it in wey, we think of the giant protests against walker. how did it get that way? i grew up in the midwest. wisconsin was known for this left-wing extra dirks this progressive tradition. and they -- i mean not radical tradition, and up until a few years ago there were lots of very liberal members of the state reside -- state's congressional delegation, and

they got wiped out in 2010 and didn't get replaced by moderates. they were replaced by people who thing atlas shrugged is a great piece of literature. the state went from one end all the way to the other, and they did all kinds of polling on this and it was largely working class people who changed sides. that's who changed sides. now, then scott walker comes in and says we're going crack down on collective bargaining in the state, and they go -- people go, -- people are furious. and you have these gigantic protests in madison and it's inspiring but it's a sight of people whose backs are to the wall. people who are looking at the ruination of their wow of life and are fairly desperate. so, a lot of those people -- a lot of -- by the way, i was covering this for harpers magazine. i went out there when the protennessee were going on and i

went to antiwalker rally in a small town, a pro labor rally in a small town. i've never seen something like that before. they met at the vfw hall, and marched all around this tiny town. people are honking their horn, a lot of solidarity but also people who are in deep, deep, deep trouble is what it is, and let's hope that the democrats can figure out how to bring the people back this time around. i certainly hope they do. >> i should shut up. yes, sir. >> got a terrific way of putting things. suppose the democrats had taken on business, or at least wall street, with the same see hem mence and the same lack of apology that the republicans show in going after government. to what extent do you think the

democrats -- democratic elected officials, could have harnessed some of the anger the tea party people have shown. for example, let's assume that bailouts were necessary. which obviously can be argued. let's assume they were necessary. would it have made a difference if the democrats said, listen, this is terrible. these guys are a bunch of thieves. i ahead to do this. i hate to do this but they have is over a barrel. had we taken that attitude do you think it would have made a difference? >> oh, my god, yes. but the bailouts are -- i'm sorry. keep going. >> just the second part of the question, to what do you attribute the failure of democratic elected officials to take that tact, too. >> those are two really good questions, and i'll -- let me just say first about their failure. they're a cult of bipartisanship and a cult of civility. they think this is all about.

when barack obama was running for president he said we come from red states and blue states and we're kind of purple and -- he said all those great things about bipartisanship and civility. but i always assumed that was ornament. i didn't know that was the essence, the main thing he believed in. i was kind of surprised by that. i mean, every presidential candidate says things like that and that's appropriate. they should say those things. that's the right thing to say. and by the way i'm a big fan of barack obama. i'm wearing my chicago flag pin today, and i -- easily the greatest speaker of my generation. his rhetorical gift is extraordinary. i have met him in person, brilliant man. he could be -- if he did things slightly differently he could be one of our great presidents. i have no doubt. the bailouts, the way they misplayed this, it boggles my mind. i'm going to give you a short teats. the last chapter is about the

bailouts. what happened was i decided to look into the history of bailouts. that's always what i do when i'm puzzled by something. i read up on the history. and i was surprised to find that there were lots of bailout inside the 1930s. and the reason i was surprised to find that is because it wasn't mentioned by pundit during the financial crisis and the bailouts themselves in '08 and o9. nobody talked about this. maybe three or four references to it in entire work of the pundits in that entire period. herbert hoover started bailing out banks in '31 or '3 2. it outraged people in exactly the same way as our current bailouts did. incredible cronyism. the man who is the head of the bailout agency, calvin college's vice president, and they put him in charge of this agency, he one day quit suddenly. went back to chicago and about a couple weeks later resurfaced ace president of a bank there

and demanded a bailout, and he got one. he got one. and the public was just screaming. they couldn't believe it. teachers in chicago hadn't been paid for something like two years. and here is this guy getting this lavish handout. okay. so franklin other. , did he say we'll continue this policy in the spirit of civility and bipartisanship? hell, no. he went after these guys. this is some of his most famous speech, denunsation of the bailouts, that we are rewarding the people at the top while our economic army is starving. he said things like that. when he got into office he didn't stop doing the bailouts. he did. the in a way to ensure that the money did not -- to basically restructure the economy. the things they did back then are astonishing. they did it to deliberately restructure the economy so wall street wasn't in charge anymore. they bailed out financial institutions from the bottom up.

they would go to little mom and pop s & ls, cattle auction houses out on the grate plains and bail them out. and they would go -- the banks they did bail out, they would often go in and fire the management. and when they didn't like the banks in a city, they would start one up. they did amazing things. to restructure the financial system, and of course all that accompanied with roosevelt's soaring rhetoric and the fdic, all of this regular laker to crackdown on banks, that's what you do. but that was never mentioned in our current debate. okay, i've got shut up. yes, sir. >> don't shut up. what has really -- what makes me incredibly angry and this drives me to ask certain questions -- what has happened to the poor people of this country? why -- have the democrats lost their voice with regards to the poor community?

and i take moat of this because in obama's speech, it was pointed out he never mentioned the word "poverty" and i'm going to make this accusation again in the book, there's no index of the word "poverty." >> because it's not a proper noun. >> my english has gone to the dogs. really, i kind of feel that there is a silent -- they are the silent poor masses of the country, and they are not -- they have somehow been silenced. they have no voice whatsoever. >> that's not somehow. come on. this is the land of the dollar. this is like you have a voice when you have money. >> otherwise, the democrats have dollars so why do they not use it to give voice to those people that do not have -- >> well, you're asking me to get real cynical. i'm going to decline. i'm going to decline that

invitation. where the action and the movement and the power has to come from is actually working class people, people who have -- who do have jobs and who make -- who earn a living that's above the poverty level but who are -- should be on the democratic side. should be voting democratic but are increase leg moving to the republican party, and that's where the big change has to happen. do we have time for one more? one more. >> thank you. picking up where you left off. does it make sense for the working class in america, specifically the american labor movement, to continue to support the democratic party, given how they responded to the recent -- wisconsin. >> they had both houses of congress and the presidency. where is it? they all promised to deliver it. and this is another example of this kind of -- they can't play the game. one of the -- something i pointed out in what's the matter

with kansas, is when people are members of a union, it's like something psychological happens and they become more liberal. what it is, they understand -- they standard to understand economic issues from a different perspective rather than the one you see on tv and read in the newspapers all the time. and they understand that they have a voice in the economy or they can have a voice in the economy. it changes the way -- so why not like roosevelt did, why not have unions expand? why not have them everywhere? why not encourage that as president? i'm sorry. i interrupted you. >> the only other followup is, what is our alternative if not the democratic party? seems based on the reaction the recent economic downturn you have so well documented and their failure to react to it in a way that brings positive change, what is the alternative for the american labor movement? >> you know, they're in the same tough spot all of us are in. it's a two-party system and the

system is locked in. it's written into law. i would love it, i would -- the day that we can have competitive third parties, that would just be fantastic. i would love to see that. the labor movement is in big trouble these dates. they have been declining for years. their strengths at an all-time low and you have republicans gathering for the kill shot. they're ready to finish them off. and that is a sobering prospect. it's really frightening. at least they're showing some fight. trump could is a fiery guy. not like back in the 70s. more like the 80s when they were just -- just didn't care. at least they're showing some fight. but it's there in that same day they get taken for granted by the democratic party in the same way i feel like i do and i'm sure many people in this room feel they do as well and it's just absolutely maddening.

what's the answer? to let the republicans get in? and do their worst? there is no answer to that question. i think it's to just organize, organize, organize. thank you all for coming. [applause] ...