Thomas Frank | |
|---|---|
 Frank at the 2012Texas Book Festival | |
| Born | Thomas Carr Frank (1965-03-21)March 21, 1965 (age 60) Kansas City, Missouri, United States |
| Alma mater | University of Virginia(B.A.)University of Chicago(M.A., Ph.D.) |
| Occupation(s) | Political analyst, columnist, historian, journalist |
| Known for | Co-founder ofThe Baffler, culture war author |
| Notable work | What's the Matter with Kansas? |
| Political party | Democratic |
Thomas Carr Frank (born March 21, 1965) is an American political analyst, and historian. He co-founded and editedThe Baffler magazine. Frank is the author of the booksWhat's the Matter with Kansas? (2004) andListen, Liberal (2016), among others. From 2008 to 2010 he wrote "The Tilting Yard", a column inThe Wall Street Journal.
A historian of culture and ideas, Frank analyzes trends in American electoral politics andpropaganda, advertising, popular culture, mainstream journalism, and economics. His topics include the rhetoric and impact ofculture wars in American political life and the relationship betweenpolitics,economics, andculture in the United States.
Frank was born inKansas City, Missouri, and grew up inMission Hills, Kansas. He graduated fromShawnee Mission East High School, and in 1988 from theUniversity of Virginia with a Bachelor of Arts degree inhistory after transferring from theUniversity of Kansas in his freshman year. Frank received a Master of Arts degree in history in 1990 and a doctorate in history in 1994 from theUniversity of Chicago. His doctoral thesis on advertising in the 1960s,The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of HipConsumerism, was later published by the University of Chicago Press.[1]
Frank was aCollege Republican, attending campus meetings at the University of Kansas, but became highly critical of conservatism. He summarized the thesis of his 2008 bookThe Wrecking Crew as "[b]ad government is the natural product of rule by those who believe government is bad."[2]
Frank's other writings include essays forHarper's Magazine,Le Monde diplomatique,Bookforum, and theFinancial Times. His bookWhat's the Matter with Kansas? (2004) earned him nationwide and international recognition. In October 2005, Frank received theEugene Debs Award for his work in the field of social justice.[3]
From December 2010 to February 2014, Frank wrote the monthly "Easy Chair" column forHarper's Magazine.[4]
Frank identifies as a left-wing populist and supportedBernie Sanders's2016 and2020 presidential campaigns.
InListen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (2016), Frank was one of the few analysts who foresaw thatDonald Trump could win the2016 United States presidential election.[5] In 2018, he called Trump "the worst politician ever," but maintained that Trump could be reelected in the2020 presidential election. Frank further observes that "quasi-fascist movements" are springing up around the world.[6]
Frank's research intoU.S. populism was published as the bookThe People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism (2020). In it, he examines the origin of the term in the United States and discusses historical examples of populism and its adherents and detractors.[7]
Frank lives inBethesda, Maryland, with his wife, Wendy Edelberg, and their children.[citation needed]
To regain legitimacy with Roosevelt's great majority, Democrats have no choice but to dump the ideology of the nineties and end their decades-long love affair with high tech, big banks, and globalization.
