What’s the Matter with Democrats?

In June 2004, Tom Frank published a book entitled “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” At the time, his thesis that Republicans somehow manipulate social issues to “trick” working-class voters into voting against their own economic interests slipped under the radar.

Less than five months later, George W. Bush defeated John Kerry, and Frank’s book became a bestseller. More than that, his thesis became the organizing principle through which white liberal Democratic elites perceived American politics. Frank’s basic idea, especially the concepts that any issues liberals deem to be “cultural” are somehow “fake” and that Democrats are automatically favored on economic issues, has remained axiomatic even as it produced electoral disasters for the party in 2010, 2014, 2016, and 2024.

There is a lot wrong with Frank’s thesis. Its analysis of what constitutes a “social issue” is reductive, amounting in effect to taking issue with anyone who disagrees with the present liberal consensus and wants to talk about it. His definition of economic self-interest is reductive to a level that would embarrass Karl Marx. To Frank, voting for one’s economic self-interest comes down to voting for whomever will give you money and take it away from others, with no consideration for the overall health of the economy or any greater societal principles. Economic theory is, apparently, like “social issues” a distraction designed to trick voters into parting with their money.

Economic theory is not the only place where Frank’s bargain basement Marxism would embarrass Marx. Karl Marx described religion as the opiate of the masses, but those words were meant to express respect for a worthy foe rather than contempt. Marx understood the intense power of religion, hence the comparison with an opiate. He also fully understood that unless he broke or coopted religion, none of his economic manifestos would amount to anything.

Frank’s attitude, which has in large measure defined the Democratic Party’s attitude toward religion, is one of contempt. Marx saw religious belief as an obstacle. Modern Democrats increasingly view it as a fraud. Marx understood that religious individuals truly believed regardless of whether he shared that faith. Inherent to Frank’s thesis is that pro-lifers do not actually believe in life, and that pro-family activists do not believe in the family. Rather, Frank and his followers see them as cynically using religion to manipulate the masses to win votes.

It is impossible to exaggerate how extensive this attitude toward religion has infiltrated the Democratic Party. It is evident in the obsession among liberal media outlets with implying that socially conservative activists who opposed same-sex marriage were secretly gay, and searching for evidence pro-lifers may have taken part in abortions.

This conviction that everyone secretly agrees with them culminated in Democrats closing the 2024 election with ads urging married women to secretly vote for Kamala Harris and then lie to their husbands about it. Democrats genuinely believed that millions of married, conservative women secretly loved liberal positions, yet were somehow too ignorant to know that the ballot was secret, and if informed that it was, would suddenly flip to Harris.

If Frankism denied agency to millions of religious believers and reduced the working-class to a greedy caricature, the racism inherent in Frankism was perhaps its defining element. Frank’s thesis left the modern Democratic Party with perhaps the most white-centered worldview of any political party since the segregation-era southern Democrats.

Under Jim Crow, Democratic politicians had no need to concern themselves with the views of Southern African Americans or the votes of the Southern states as both were assured, and therefore their political calculations presumed they did not exist. While Tom Frank was obviously no segregationist, his book virtually ignored non-white voters.

“What’s the Matter with Kansas” featured three protagonists: A white liberal elite that wanted the best for society; a self-interested white conservative elite which secretly shared all the views of the white liberal elite – why wouldn’t they? – they all went to the same schools! – but nevertheless chose to feign social conservatism and religious faith in order to ensure their own enrichment; and a white working class caught between the two. African Americans, Latinos, and other groups did not figure in because it was assumed they were little more than voter banks for Democrats.

There was therefore no point in analyzing the difference between an African American millionaire or a Latino service worker in Nevada who lost their job during COVID-19 and saw their kids’ school closed as well. It didn’t matter what Democrats said or ultimately did to minorities. In this framework, their votes were taken for granted.

When laid out in this manner, what happened in 2024 is not surprising. Married women, it turned out, did not secretly hate their husbands. Religious Christians, Jews, and Muslims actually believed in the stuff they said they did. Shockingly, for Democrats, it turned out that rather than being caricatures, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos were human beings with agency, and voted based on their beliefs and understanding of the issues like everyone else. The mystery is not why any of this happened, but how Democrats could ever have believed it would not.

The answer to that question is far more interesting. Frank’s thesis was never an answer to the Democratic Party’s problems with the electorate, but rather a weapon with which different factions of Democrats could batter their rivals. On one side it was comfort food to liberals. It told them that their views were correct, and more, everyone, including their Republican opponents, secretly knew it.

On the other hand, it provided a convenient scapegoat. Just as Germans following the First World War preferred to believe they had been stabbed in the back rather than confronting their own responsibility for military defeat, Frank’s thesis suggests that Democrats can only lose if they are betrayed.

In What’s the Matter with Kansas?, Frank does not merely posit that Republicans had used “social issues” and religion to turn working-class voters against the Democratic Party. His contempt for both Republicans and the electorate ran too deep to give his opponents even that much credit. Rather, like scavengers, conservatives had merely taken advantage of the decision of Bill Clinton and his allies in centrist groups like the Democratic Leadership Council to embrace globalization and sell out to corporate America.

This thesis allowed Frank, and later left wingers like Bernie Sanders, to blame the embrace of neoliberal policies and corporate America by their Clintonian rivals for enabling the success of the Republican “strategy.”

Had Frank’s thesis merely been a left-wing attack on Democratic elites, it would not have caught on, but the irony was that all of his arguments could be turned around on Democrats. Just as Bernie Sanders and other left-wingers could blame centrist Democrats for alienating the working-class by selling out, the Clintons and Obamas could accuse the left of alienating working-class voters through their bizarre fixations with language, race, and gender.

Frank’s thesis took off because it was immensely useful to every faction of Democrats. It was devastating the party because it polarized internal debate between two positions, both of which were wrong. The left-wing thesis rejected the ability of voters to care about anything but their short-term economic self-interest and blamed every defeat on the Democrats focusing on anything other than offering enough payouts to interest groups. The “centrist” position was that Democrats had a PR problem caused by the left, and that if they could merely get the far left to stop dying their hair purple, using Ze/Zir pronouns, and calling for defunding the police, voters would not actually care about crime rights, education, or open borders.

Both approaches had just enough success – Obama winning twice through the strategy of sounding reasonable and Biden winning by promising everything to everyone – that both sides remained in the internal fight. This, however, led Democrats to ignore the impact of unique, external shocks – the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic – resulting in shock when both approaches proved ineffective in anything other than overwhelmingly favorable conditions for Democrats.

The reason the 2024 defeat is devastating is that both approaches have now failed. In 2016, Hillary Clinton proved that merely talking your way past reality does not work when you are not Barack Obama and the economy is not facing total collapse under your opponent’s party. The defeat of the Biden-Harris administration revealed that paying off every constituency under the sun, often with literal cash, cannot bribe the electorate into ignoring the inflation and total governmental collapse that comes with it.

Whether Democrats can recover from their defeat will depend heavily on their willingness to abandon the comforts of Frankism and accept the idea that maybe their opponents occasionally have a point. Perhaps there are real problems that real voters care about, and winning elections requires persuading rather than tricking voters. Democrats have not yet stopped to consider whether, rather than being betrayed, Donald Trump just beat them fair and square.

Early signs are not particularly positive. Almost all Democratic post-mortems focus on optics – that the debate about whether or not to compromise on the participation of biological men in women’s sports ignores the real issue, that millions of Americans do not believe men can become women, and are concerned about a social contagion spreading among young people. The debates about economics almost entirely revolve around how poorly Biden’s economic record was sold to the electorate, not the record itself. Foreign policy discussion does not consider whether Biden’s tenure was a disaster but whether, perhaps, Liz Cheney had a poor brand.

Republicans, meanwhile, can be content sitting back and watching Democrats fatten themselves on political comfort food, knowing that it will only lead to more defeat.

Walter Samuel is the pseudonym of a prolific international affairs writer and academic. He has worked in Washington as well as in London and Asia, and holds a Doctorate in International History.