What’s The Matter With Democrats?

Five years ago, Thomas Frank wrote “What’s The Matter With Kansas?”, about how the GOP uses cultural populism to dupe rural working-class Americans into supporting pro-corporate policies that hasten their own economic demise. Today’s Obama/Rahm/Reid Democrats have turned that dynamic on its head, in more ways than one.

Not only have Obama and the Senate Democrats adopted pro-corporate policies that will hasten their own political demise, but they have allowed the Republicans to keep their hands clean and pretend to oppose legislation that they would have happily championed a few years ago.