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After the disappointing and frankly frightening results in this Tuesday's Wisconsin recall elections for someone like myself who has been a decades long union member and what it might mean for the future of the union movement if this emboldens Republicans to try to get rid of every union on the country, and the real possibility of seeing them push for putting a national right to work law on the books, I was glad to see at least one person leading a discussion on what's happened where we've got the working class voting against their own economic interests, and that was Ed Schultz.

If we had a few more discussions like this in our national media, rather than the constant union bashing we see instead, maybe more voters would be aware of the fact that pitting one group of workers against another just harms all of us. Sadly as Thomas Frank pointed out, this is something that's been going on for decades. And as E.J. Dionne noted, the severe decline in union membership on the United States has made it much easier for Republicans to play this game of divide and conquer with the working class.

This segment hit home for me particularly hard because it mirrored a conversation I had with a co-worker earlier the same day, who was asking me what I thought about what happened in Wisconsin and all the money poured in there and wondering how we've got so many within our own ranks who are union members and who are happy to have the security of that union membership when it comes to everything from decent wages, to health and retirement benefits, and some recourse with safety issues on the job to not worrying about being fired if they dare to speak up about problems in the work place, and yet consider themselves part of this ridiculous AstroTurf "tea party" movement.

Sadly I didn't have any good answers for him other than to make some of the same points made by Frank and Dionne here about the propaganda those members have been exposed to and the huge uphill battle we're facing to try to overcome that and the way unions are portrayed in the media.

Here's part of the conversation from Schultz's show where he was more or less following up on a discussion he'd had on MSNBC earlier that day on Alex Wagner's show and the need for union leadership to be doing more to educate their members. I agree with the points he made. The question is how do unions use the limited resources they have to potentially follow up on them when their ranks are under assault, which means their finances are as well.

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Thomas Frank lays out the reasons why the pick of William Daley for Chief of Staff in the Obama administration is completely politically tone deaf to the mood of the average voter out there.

From CNN's Parker Spitzer:

SPITZER: Joining us in "The Arena" tonight are CNN political contributor James Carville and Thomas Frank, "Harper's" magazine contributor and author of several books including "What's the Matter with Kansas?"

PARKER: Thanks for joining us. So we're all talking about the changes at the White House, particularly the new chief of staff. Why should the American people care about who the president hires as his chief of staff, James? Go to you first.

CARVILLE: Well, first of all, you know it's one of the most powerful positions in the United States government. It's not confirmable. So I think it does matter and I also think it's a reflection of the White House strategy of policy which appears to me to be a continuation of the December policy that cooperate with the Republicans and to not be very confrontational.

And I think that president picking Secretary Daley sent that signal. I think it's a manifestation of an ongoing strategy that the White House has adopted.

PARKER: Well, everybody loves him, it seems like. I have found no one on either side of the aisle who's critical of him. And I'm sure Tom Frank would join us here and congratulate the president for picking such a rationale chief of staff, right?

FRANK: You know what, Kathleen, this -- this whole thing, it just -- you remember when I was on your -- I was up there in New York and I was on your show a couple of weeks ago and we were talking about -- the term that I use is the poverty of centrism, right?

The sort of exhaustion of this whole way of understanding politics. And this gives you another, you know, really big clue as to what's the matter with the Democrats. There's just no imagination out there. They seem to just be completely clueless with regards to, you know, how to play the political game. This is their response to the shellacking that they took.

SPITZER: You know, Tom, I got to jump in here and agree with you 100 percent. It seems to me there's another factor we've got to bring to the table here.

On the same day that Bill Daley comes in, Paul Volcker goes out. Paul Volcker, of course, the esteemed, highly respected former chairman of the Fed, was the only one in the administration who was really pushing for fundamental Wall Street reform. And so he is gone and we bring in a banker, somebody from Morgan Chase, who is now going to be at the center, as James said. Being chief of staff for the president is being arguably the second most powerful person in the United States government.

FRANK: Right. But, you're not -- you're not being fair there. It's a balanced choice because at the same time they brought in Gene Sperling who I believe used to work for Goldman Sachs.

SPITZER: That's right.

FRANK: So you've got -- you know you've got both sides represented there. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs.

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As Chris Hayes reminded us before Harper's Thomas Franks joined him in the segment, "the Gingrich revolution in Washington gave way to crime and corruption with impressively staggering speed" and as he discussed with Frank here, this new lot coming in and their embrace of lobbyists looks like it's just business as usual for the GOP and their new leadership in the House.

HAYES: What begins as a movement becomes a business, which quickly turns into a racket.

Now, to be clear, this is not just a Republican problem. Congress is fundamentally broken and corrupt, and the Democrats are part of that problem, too. But over the past two decades, right up until today, Republicans really are proving themselves to be gold medallists in the race to become a racket.

Joining us now is Thomas Frank, columnist for "Harper`s" magazine, author of the book "The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule."

Thomas, how are you?

THOMAS FRANK, HARPER`S MAGAZINE: I`m good. Yourself, Chris?

HAYES: I`m good. So, OK, what do you think of that thesis about that quote, the ark of the `94 Gingrich revolution sort of --

FRANK: I disagree with all that. I mean, you know, I remember exactly where I was when - I was living in Chicago at the time when they came in `94 and `95, and all the stuff about the idealistic freshmen that was the mime in the mass media, the idealistic freshman, they`re so idealistic. I don`t know if you know about this, Chris, but they had great idealists.

And it is not like it took a really long time for them to come in and sell out. They are sold out already. Remember, they believe salesmanship is a virtue. These are people who think that the market is something holy, and that government is a criminal enterprise, OK.

We`re not just talking about -- you know, I grew up around Republicans, there`s a lot of good Republicans in America. We`re talking about true believers in a very strange, you know, pretty right-wing doctrine.

HAYES: Right.

FRANK: Ideologues. And the listen that I -- this is the -- I mean, "The Wrecking Crew" is largely about Jack Abramoff`s career. He was really one of this group, although he was a member of Congress. He came to Washington with the freshmen -- the idealistic freshmen in 1994 and stayed here and helped bring them down.

HAYES: Right.

FRANK: But the lesson that I kept trying to hammer away at in "The Wrecking Crew" is that in this conservative world, in the world of conservative D.C., you can be an idealist and a boodler (ph) at the same time. They don`t -- they don`t contradict each other.

HAYES: That`s the first time boodler has been said on cable news.

(CROSSTALK)

HAYES: So, what you`re saying -- what you`re saying is the racket is the cause. The cause and the racket are one and the same.

FRANK: Yes, conservatism in this town anyway. Look, you go back to place like Wichita or Kansas City, you know, where I`m from and conservatism can be something very idealistic and often something very noble, OK? Here in Washington, D.C., it is an industry. People don`t go into it, you know, because they really, really believe in it. I mean, that`s helpful, of course.

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I don't know if it's just me, but Howard Kurtz seemed to be a bit puzzled during this panel segment on Reliable Sources as to why liberals like Thomas Frank might be disappointed with President Obama and the legislation he's managed to get passed during his first two years in office. I think Frank summed it up pretty nicely during the little time he was allowed to speak during this segment.

FRANK: That's true and look what he just did the other day. I mean, it's a great accomplishment. He did get something done with health care. I mean, it was -- it was the constant selling out earlier in the process, remember, of negotiating with the Rs, and then the Rs walked away from the table.

Sadly Frank wasn't allowed to elaborate any further during this part of their discussion before Kurtz turned the topic to Sarah Palin and we got more nonsense instead from the other panelists about whether the media has given the president good press coverage and why, whether they've sold their legislative accomplishments to the public well enough and other similar talking points.

What Kurtz and the other talking heads in the media don't seem to understand is that it is possible to appreciate what Obama has managed to get passed in this extremely hostile legislative environment while at the same time being upset that he hasn't used his bully pulpit to push for a more liberal agenda.

I realize fully that in this community we’ve got a range of views from Obama being a complete sellout and he’s as bad as or worse than George Bush with his policy positions to those who are still supportive of the President and who think he’s doing the best he can given the Congress he’s dealing with.

Personally, I’m in the camp where I’m upset with how he’s done business and that he has shown way too much deference to Big Business, and hasn’t done enough to undo the policies that we saw under Bush, with everything from rendition to continuing our occupations overseas to the spying, and to our ridiculous continuation of this “war on terror” -- which looks to me like an excuse to drop bombs on poor people’s heads rather than address the economic conditions that cause people to resort to terrorism in the first place.

That said, I’m also enough of a pragmatist to realize that for him to get anything done, he was going to have to work with Republicans and “conservative” or rather corporate Democrats in the Congress. I admit as Thomas Frank did here that he has gotten a lot of good legislation passed which is not easy to do given the Congress he’s been forced to work with. And as legitimate as the reasons are for anyone being upset with him, he’s still not as terrible as John McCain and Sarah Palin would have been had they been elected instead. If those war mongers had been elected, we’d be asking whether we should have bombed Iran or not by now and not how many troops we should be pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

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You've just got to love the framing they used for this segment from CNN's Parker/Spitzer earlier this week -- Can a centrist movement in the U.S. succeed or is it too 'mushy' to hold up?

This just smells of more Republican re-branding with some of the so-called Republican "moderates" wanting to distance themselves from the teabirchers that have taken over their party. They may have done well during the mid-term elections just catering to their base, but that's not going to work so well in 2012.

Former Rudy Giuliani staffer John Avlon's been pushing this nonsense for some time now, but as Karoli pointed out last week, there's a new group jumping on his bandwagon as well. Kathleen Parker never mentioned the "No Labels" group during the segment, but it may as well have been an infomercial for them by Parker and Avlon.

It's really a shame that Thomas Frank wasn't allowed to speak more to counter Avlon's talking points. Kathleen Parker and John Avlon can put all of the "mushy middle", "we're a center-right country", bipartisan spin on this they want. It's not going to change the fact that they're both a couple of right wingers. There's not a lick of difference between their economic policy positions and those of Dick Armey and the Koch brothers.

CNN's off air interview with Frank looked a lot more interesting than listening to Avlon's claptrap about how voters just really want all the bickering to stop and for our politicians to all just get along, which is doublespeak demanding Democratic capitulation.

Q: If we could arrange a private conversation between you and Rep. John Boehner, what would you say to him?

FRANK: I was struck by his line about Democrats “snuffing out the America that I grew up in.” It’s a charge that I frequently apply to conservatives, who have so resolutely smashed the middle-class society where I grew up in favor of a nation that is heaven on earth for the very rich—and an endless, losing struggle for working people. It’s also something I often say about market forces generally, which are the most radical and disruptive cultural influences I know of. Conservatives always claim to love the market and to deplore what’s happening in “the culture,” but they never explain how they can hold these two views at the same time. Wouldn’t it be great to have John Boehner himself sort out these things out for us?

I’m also always been impressed by his luminous neckties, and I would of course tell him so.

Q: What credit do you give the Tea Party for changing American politics at this moment?

FRANK: They demonstrated two important things:

- That the supposed power of centrism is in fact just a comforting beltway fairytale. That the “median voter” doesn’t really determine things. That politics really is a battle of small, committed groups—and also of money.

- That there’s a place in politics for class-based discontent. That conservatives can speak to that emotion just as readily as liberals can. And that if liberals don’t understand this—if they just blow it off on the grounds that working-class people will always vote for Democrats because duh—that they will keep losing, and they will deserve to lose. [...]

Q:As you get older, do you find yourself becoming more or less liberal?

FRANK: Not speaking strictly for myself here, but what I find people outgrow isn’t liberalism per se, it’s the tendency to treat politics like a branch of aesthetics, where what matters are gestures and what you’re after—the object of politics—is a demonstration of your originality and your surpassing cleverness. When you get older you realize how impotent that approach is, and you also understand the disastrous consequences things like, say, banking deregulation have for people.

Full transcript of the clip above below the fold.

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CNN aired their first edition of their new show Spitzer Parker with Eliot Spitzer calling for the firing of Tim Geithner in Spitzer's "opening argument." I completely agree with all of his points here but it doesn't quite make up for them making Thomas Frank have to argue with Andrew Breitbart in the segment that followed. I love Thomas Frank. They didn't let Breitbart go completely off the rails, but what a rotten way to start a new show and pretending Breitbart deserves any credibility.

That said, most of the following interviews were pretty good that I had a chance to watch and this show might actually make me stand to be able to watch CNN during their 8pm eastern hour again. Here's Spitzer's rant on Timmy and as I said, I agree and he needs to go. He's been nothing but a fixer for Wall Street and he's not looking out for Main Street and the lives of every day Americans and President Obama could do better with who he's getting advice from. I'd be more than happy if he gave Eliot Spitzer a call as he requested.

Spitzer: My opening argument tonight—very straight forward. Mr. President, I’m a fan, a big supporter, I promise I really am but please do yourself a favor, do us all a favor—fire Tim Geithner.

You need a clean sweep in your economic team. Larry Summers is gone. Finish the job. Fire Tim. They haven’t done the one thing people care about, producing jobs. That’s what we need, jobs, more jobs. They took care of Wall Street, but not Main Street.

Look at the record Tim brought to your administration. He was at the New York Fed. You know what he did? He coddled the banks. He was their cheerleader. He wasn’t the cop he was supposed to be. He made the banks rich, surely not Main Street. You know what? We are suffering. He built the foundation that collapsed in a cataclysm of 2008.

You brought him as Treasury Secretary, I’m not sure why and you know what he did there? He bailed out the banks with hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars.

Just one example, Goldman, they got billions of dollars and they said they didn’t even need it. So you know what they did? They gave themselves bonuses with tax payer money. And what did Main Street get? Pink slips, unemployment through the roof, 20% of our mortgages are under water. You know what Mr. President, the reason we have a “Tea Party” is your team took care of the same insiders as the last administration.

We brought our hopes and aspirations to Washington with you and we’ve been disappointed. Please, give us a Treasury Secretary who understands Main Street. I’ve got some names. Give me a call.

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From C-SPAN's Washington Journal, Thomas Frank explains why the supposedly "fiscally conservative" Republicans actually love deficits so much. They love them so they can assure that government can't work and heaven forbid Democrats might be able to enact any of their evil "liberal" ideas because the bank is busted already. Pretty much exactly like what we have going on now but as Frank explains, this is nothing new.

What he said here I'm sure is nothing new as well to anyone who has read his book The Wrecking Crew. While I have not read the book, I've read enough reviews on it to know that he's giving a very basic synopsis of what he lays out in the book here. That one is on my “remember to buy the next time I get to the book store” list.

As I noted in my other post from this same interview you can watch the entire segment on C-SPAN's web site.

For more on the book you can check out Frank's site:

Casting his eyes from the Bush administration’s final months of plunder to the earliest days of the Republican revolution, Thomas Frank uncovers the deep logic behind the graft and incompetence of conservatives in power. He shows how leaders dedicated to a doctrine of government by entrepreneurship proceeded to sell off the state, channeling the profits to cronies and loyalists. He surveys the federal agencies doomed to failure by the inept and even hostile staff appointed to run them. He charts the practice of wholesale deregulation and the devastating results now clear for all to see. From political scandal to mortgage meltdown, Frank documents the consequences of enshrining the free market as the logic of the state.

As conservatives retreat to lick their wounds and a new administration prepares to undo the years of misgovernment, The Wrecking Crew makes clear the challenges before the nation. A brilliant and audacious stocktaking—now thoroughly revised and updated—this is Frank’s most revelatory work yet.

You can check out some other interviews with Thomas Frank talking about the book along with an audio sample in the link above as well.

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The Wall Street Journal's Thomas Frank on C-SPAN's Washington Journal talks about the Tea Party movement and how, as he wrote in his article The Tea Parties Are No 'Great Awakening', the leaders of this movement are just the same characters from the Jack Abramoff story:

How glorious is the tea-party movement? Some talk of its purity of heart, its patriotic spontaneity, and its abundance of republican virtue. To hear others tell it, the movement is but a few steps away from sacred.

After attending the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, the prominent blogger Glenn Reynolds wrote last week in the Washington Examiner that the movement amounted to "America's Third Great Awakening," a massive popular rising against "politicians and parties" that have "grown corrupt, venal and out-of-touch."

How strange, then, that this flowering of populist integrity should have been tended and pruned and succored by a group of Beltway operators known primarily for their venality and insider power. Read on...

Frank, whose books include What's the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America and The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, as usual gave a really wonderful interview on this edition of Washington Journal. You can watch the entire interview on C-SPAN's web site here.

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Bill Moyers talks to Thomas Frank about whether the Republicans are headed for some victories this coming election due to our collective memory loss about how horrid the Republicans are at governing, sadly enabled by the Democratic leadership which looks clueless as how to counter it all too often. From Moyers' report:

Will Rogers once said, "The short memories of American voters is what keeps our politicians in office." But as Democrats face what many believe will be a tough mid-term election, historian Thomas Frank argues that it might just be the other way around for incumbent Democrats. The Republican Party, which lost Congress and the White House in the last four years, may be poised for a comeback. A comeback Frank believes is only possible because Americans have forgotten what their country looked like under conservative rule, "That's the disease of our time...that sort of instant forgetting."

On BILL MOYERS JOURNAL, Frank looks into the not-so-distant past to describe what America looked like before the time of President Obama, focusing on the last ten years, which he's called "A Low, Dishonest Decade" in a recent column for the WALL STREET JOURNAL. Frank believes that many of the crises that afflicted America during the oughts should be laid at the feet of the conservative movement. Frank's list is long: the inadequate response to Katrina; the Enron, Abramoff and Madoff scandals; the mismanaged Iraqi reconstruction; two mismanaged and unpopular wars; and the 2008 financial disaster. Frank argues that it can all be traced back to an intentional dismantling of the government's oversight infrastructure, driven by a belief that government is always bad: "This is why the wreckage that I've described can't be separated from the conservative ideology and the conservative movement, generally: Because of their hatred of big government and their disdain and contempt for the federal workforce." But according to Frank, the financial disaster has wiped clean Americans' memories. They are mad at the bankers and mad about the economy, and conservatives may ride a wave of populist outrage back into power.

Full transcript below the fold.

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From GRITtv--Week In Review: Which Side Are You On?:

What happened to organized labor in the US? With the decline of manufacturing jobs and rise of female-dominated service fields, does the old labor union model still hold up, or do we need new ways of organizing and supporting workers? And what happened to solidarity?

Paula Finn, Editor of the New Labor Forum, Thomas Frank, author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? and The Wrecking Crew and Wall Street Journal columnist, Tom Geoghegan, labor lawyer, recent Congressional candidate, and author of Which Side Are You On?: Trying to Be for Labor When It’s Flat on Its Back joined Laura to talk about labor’s problems and suggest some solutions to help all of us, whether we’re union members or not.