Centerfield

As a Kansan who's been involved in politics for most of my life, I think I can authoritatively say that Thomas Frank is a moron, superficial at best, pandering to his own prejudices and preconceptions. Frank makes a big deal of being a "native Kansan," but he's from Mission Hills, a suburb of Kansas City, tucked away in the most affluent (and Democrat) corner of the state, as far from Kansas reality as you can possibly get and still be in the borders.

The only thing I found in that interview that matched my first-hand experience of over two decades in Kansas politics (and three decades living here) was the obvious statement that the Democrats fell from power in Kansas when they quit representing the working majority and decided to try and build coalitions of liberal special interest groups instead. Gee, d'ya think that could cost you elections in the heartland plains? Well, duh!

It's not so much that the Republicans co-opted Kansas populism, as that the Democrats so thoroughly abandoned it. This led to a pendulum swing to the other end. Predictably, it's now swinging back towards the middle. But Kansas will stay a "red" state until the Democrats start representing those who live here again.

I saw another article about Frank a couple of days ago (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0406.bjerga.html). He struck me as one of all-too-many Democrats who refuses to pay attention to ground truth, preferring to stick with the comfort of simplistic anti-capitalist rhetoric of his youth.

I think his radical populist Kansas of old is a golden-age he has mentally constructed rather than a reality. The way Populists won victories (unlike Bryan, many other Populists, and the Socialists he mentions wistfully) was by being light on the anti-capitalist demagoguery and heavy on the paying attention to people. Frank seems to be the other way around.

Well, it has been a long time since Kansas was in the left column. Alf Landon, FDR's 1936 opponent, came from there. So whatever made Kansas conservative is not the fault of any living Democratic politicians.

Yet in recent memory we sent Dan Glickman to Congress nine times, Rick. And the governorship has pretty much alternated between Democrat and Republican for as long as I've lived here. Somehow, the more moderate candidate always wins. While Kansas consistently votes for GOP presidential candidates (since LBJ) it took the Clinton tax hikes to break the Kansas tradition of sending Democratic Representatives and Republican Senators to Washington. (Our idea of "fair and balanced," you might say.)

I could cite innumerable examples, but I'll stick with one obvious one for now. Why do you think the right-to-lifers come to Kansas to protest? Because Kansas still has the most liberal abortion laws in the nation. If this is truly a "conservative" state, how is that possible?

Frank's thesis is that Kansas has shifted from liberal to conservative, that Kansas populism has somehow seriously mutated, or died. But IMHO Kansas hasn't changed much. The parties have.

PS--Alf Landon lost to FDR in Kansas. The only states he carried were Maine and Vermont.