Left Out!: How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush

by Joshua Frank

Book Overview

"The evidence unearthed here will unnerve many progressives who nurse their news from the nipples of the New York Times. But it's not too late to wean yourselves. Frank's sober assessment offers progressives a nourishing shot at redemption at the most tremulous hour of the republic."--Jeffrey St. Clair

Noam Chomsky once pointed out that a lot can be learned by examining the left end of the mainstream political debate because it reveals...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1567513107
• ISBN13: 9781567513103
• Release Date: March 2005
• Publisher: Common Courage Press
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

The Democrats are almost as bad on many issues as Republicans

This book seems to have been very quickly written. It seems sloppy and lacking clarity at times. At the same time, the first half of the book at least, is very well researched. The first half of the book is devoted to Howard Dean. Frank quotes an official at a right wing Vermont think tank who remarked during Dean's presidential campaign that the candidate's populist liberal persona was quite different from the persona of Howard Dean the Governor of Vermont from 1991-2003. Dean instituted welfare reform in Vermont and enthused over Clinton's national version of it. On law and order issues, he was a typical demagogue,. In 1999, as governor he blocked the provision for Vermont of 115,000 dollars in federal grants for legal representation for mentally ill defendants. He praised Newt Gingrich's schemes for medicare. He repeatedly declared himself against any government run health program, a position which he seemed to reverse during his campaign. As governor he postured as a fiscal conservative in the usual fraudulent ways of politicians. He cut 7 million dollars in funds for state education and teacher's retirement, 4 million in health care for the elderly, 2 million in welfare benefits for the disabled and 1.2 million in medicare. Of course while he cut funds for the working class and the most vulnerable in the relatively small population of Vermont, he appropriated 30 million for new prisons (and for the pockets of prison contractor corporations and the rest), seven million for a low interest loan program for businesses and cut the state income tax by eight percent. By 2002, Dean had increased funding for Vermont's prisons by 150 percent but for it's colleges and universities, only increased 7 percent. Dean is a strong supporter of Israel's oppression and apartheid in the Occupied territories. He supported the first Gulf War and said in February 2003 that he would support a unilateral U.S. attack on Iraq if Saddam failed to comply with UN resolutions (or at least if the U.S. claims that he hasn't complied with them)within a one or two month deadline.. Even more to the right, Frank notes, "anti-war" Wesely Clark, a war criminal and convert to the Democratic party apparently when Bush wouldn't appoint him to any position in the War on Terror, wrote in the British press in April 2003 that Bush and Blair should be proud of themselves for their "liberation." Frank writes that Norman Solomon gave 1500 dollars to Clark's campaign. Dean aroused the fervent opposition of Vermont grassroots activists with his environmental policies. He continually sided with big agricultural interests against persons complaining that pesticides were causing cognitive disorders, producing noise, dust, flies, reducing property, etc. His administration was notorious for issuing permits for virtually any development permit and the result was massive sprawl, strip malls, the elimination of small farms, etc. It is ironic that while during his presidential campaign, h

Can't spell Conservative without Con;Can't spell Liberal without Lie

Frank's book is a detailed indictment of both sides of the aisle,but reserves his deepest disappointment and contempt for those great "enablers" of US Fascism-the liberals.With apparently two Supreme Court vacancies(thankfully,Rehnquist has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel-let's hope the end is agonizingly painful and humiliating-let's Schiavo the m'f'er!)to be filled,we'll be able to view first hand the rank duplicity with which the Dem's will permit the appointment of Franco's little brother-AG,today's AG.Frank's analysis will become materially manifest,and we'll all get a good chuckle and "I told ya so!" on the bus to the gulag.

Left Out! Is an Important Record of 2004 Democratic Party Failure and the Anybody But Bush Phenomeno

In a world of war, turmoil, growing scarcity, growing income disparities, and unapproachable and unreproachable governance, Americans today are asking questions... lots of questions. Today, while visiting San Francisco's beloved City Lights Bookstore, I couldn't help noticing the frenzy of interest locals and visiting tourists had for the comprehensive collection of books located in what owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti eccentrically calls the "muckraking" section. To a couple from North Carolina overwhelmed by the choice of books before them I recommended three: Gore Vidal's Imperial America, Thomas Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas?, and Joshua Frank's Left Out! Each book expertly reveals a critical face of America that contemporary history books and mainstream news are too timid to examine. In Imperial America, Vidal unmasks how the creation of a National Security State at the end of WWII usurped the founding fathers' Republic, ostensibly ended dissent, hobbled citizens at home and promulgated evil abroad. In What's the Matter With Kansas? Thomas Frank unmasks the secret of the Republican Party's appeal to rank and file constituents who will never benefit-- in actuality are losing-- from the policies their party actually promulgate. In Left Out!, Joshua Frank takes his own iconoclastic aim at the Democratic Party. For those who labored and sacrificed on the party's behalf in 2004, what he has to say is bitter medicine. In sum: rather than push Bush from the White House, the Democratic Party ensured his victory by demanding unquestioning obedience from liberals even as it failed to capitalize on any competitive advantage it may have had against Republicans in the battle of ideas. Most consequentially, it failed to reflect the anti-war sentiments of the majority of its constituents. Frank writes: "The blatant narrowness of our mainstream political discourse and the continuing convergence of the two major parties in the US are such that the Democrats and other liberals actually helped reelect George W. Bush for a second term. I certainly don't buy that this election was stolen like so many liberals are convinced. But hypothetically, if election '04 was rigged, it should have never been close enough for Bush to steal. John Kerry should have won by a landslide. The Democrats simply failed to distinguish themselves on a host of critical issues." Frank puts the leading Democratic Party contenders, their promoters, and enablers under a microscope and asks what in fact did the Democrats stand for? Again, the overwhelming facts he presents are painful. Armed with the records and the facts, Frank shows that none of the Democratic Party presidential candidates were all or even much of what their idealistic supporters thought they were. For those who should have known better, Frank exposes the fallaciousness of supporting unyielding candidates whom they hoped to influence: the ABB, or "Anybody But Bush" phenomenon. Much of my fascination w

Reality Check

Like the voice who cried 'the emperor has no clothes,' Joshua Frank provides no quarter to the guilty as he peels away layer after layer of the paint of propaganda ... laying bare the myths and mendacity that fuel the American political machine. Left Out! is a wake-up call for anyone still clinging to the futile, desperate hope that the future exists within our alleged two-party system. Like a modern-day I.F. Stone, Joshua Frank is ruthless when necessary but his compassion and honesty are never in doubt.