June 27, 2019--What's the Matter With "What's the Matter With Kansas"?
I read Thomas Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America when it was published in 2004 to great acclaim among progressives.
I found its central thesis to be persuasive. In a sentence Frank showed how over decades the conservative Kansas political establishment promised, if elected, to enact a long series of rightwing cultural policies (end abortion, bring prayer back to public schools, provide vouchers that would enable parents to offset the cost of private school tuition, ban same-sex marriage, eliminate the teaching of evolution, and so forth) while in return voters would not stand in the way of the conservatives' real agenda--essentially cutting government spending on all social programs such as Medicaid in order to pay for dramatic reductions in taxes for the wealthiest Kansans; and then, most important, once in office, they failed to deliver the social agenda but instead cynically enacted their self-serving regressive economic program.
Frank's central question was--Why are Kansas voters so seemingly willing to put aside their own self interest and go along with policies that will only make things worse for themselves?
In regard to this latter point, for years there has been something about it that did not sit right with me.
And then on Tuesday, during a long lunch with my politically-savvy cousin Harvey who lives in Maine, what has been troubling me for years became clear:
The Frank book is not about what's the matter with Kansas but rather what's the matter with the people of Kansas.
And for that reason it is incendiary because it ultimately blames the victims (the people) and not the perpetrators (the political leaders) for the voting patterns in Kansas and other Midwestern red states.
Frank's point then turns out to be yet another version of the professional and academic class's saying to working people that we know better than you yourself what's good for you; and, further, we know even more clearly than you what needs to happen to serve your best interest is an expanded role for government.
Many, perhaps a majority of people who live and vote in the middle of the country for years have been saying that this is offensive and patronizing because it fails to recognize their ability to articulate what they value and the kind of role they on their own see it appropriate for government to play.
More than anything they hate being taken for granted and feeling talked down to.
They have been saying this but not enough of us have not been listening. And thus for the most part Democrats running for national office have not figured out an effective way to communicate with voters they need to attract if they are to regain the White House and retain a majority in at least the House.
I found its central thesis to be persuasive. In a sentence Frank showed how over decades the conservative Kansas political establishment promised, if elected, to enact a long series of rightwing cultural policies (end abortion, bring prayer back to public schools, provide vouchers that would enable parents to offset the cost of private school tuition, ban same-sex marriage, eliminate the teaching of evolution, and so forth) while in return voters would not stand in the way of the conservatives' real agenda--essentially cutting government spending on all social programs such as Medicaid in order to pay for dramatic reductions in taxes for the wealthiest Kansans; and then, most important, once in office, they failed to deliver the social agenda but instead cynically enacted their self-serving regressive economic program.
Frank's central question was--Why are Kansas voters so seemingly willing to put aside their own self interest and go along with policies that will only make things worse for themselves?
In regard to this latter point, for years there has been something about it that did not sit right with me.
And then on Tuesday, during a long lunch with my politically-savvy cousin Harvey who lives in Maine, what has been troubling me for years became clear:
The Frank book is not about what's the matter with Kansas but rather what's the matter with the people of Kansas.
And for that reason it is incendiary because it ultimately blames the victims (the people) and not the perpetrators (the political leaders) for the voting patterns in Kansas and other Midwestern red states.
Frank's point then turns out to be yet another version of the professional and academic class's saying to working people that we know better than you yourself what's good for you; and, further, we know even more clearly than you what needs to happen to serve your best interest is an expanded role for government.
Many, perhaps a majority of people who live and vote in the middle of the country for years have been saying that this is offensive and patronizing because it fails to recognize their ability to articulate what they value and the kind of role they on their own see it appropriate for government to play.
More than anything they hate being taken for granted and feeling talked down to.
They have been saying this but not enough of us have not been listening. And thus for the most part Democrats running for national office have not figured out an effective way to communicate with voters they need to attract if they are to regain the White House and retain a majority in at least the House.
Labels: "What's the Matter With Kansas", Kansas, Red States, Thomas Frank
posted by Steven Zwerling at
4:16 AM
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