Thomas Frank: Who is the forgotten man?

In his victory speech following the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump proclaimed that the 'forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer'.

American political analyst, historian and journalist, Thomas Frank, has long chronicled the decline of the American middle class and the cries for more meaningful action on income inequality. In his recent book, Listen Liberal, he warned that the Democrats are a class party in the most basic sense of the phrase, and that the socioeconomic group whose interests they represent most enthusiastically – the satisfied and prosperous professional class – simply doesn’t care all that much about income inequality

During his visit to Australia, Frank will speak on the Democratic Party’s failures over the last few decades and look at the rise of the American Right, which has become reinvigorated by the arrival of hard times.

Thomas Frank  is the author of Listen Liberal, Pity the Billionaire, The Wrecking Crew, and What's the Matter with Kansas? A former columnist for The Wall Street Journal and Harper's, Frank is the founding editor of The Baffler.

Frank is an American political analyst, historian, journalist, and columnist for Harper's Magazine. He analyzes trends in American electoral politics and propaganda, advertising, popular culture, mainstream journalism, and economics. His topics include the rhetoric and impact of culture wars in American political life and the relationship between politics and culture in the United States.

Dr David Smith is jointly appointed between the United States Studies Centre and the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney. Smith has a PhD in political science from the University of Michigan and a BA from the University of Sydney. His research examines political relations between states and minorities, with a focus on religion in the US. His book Religious Persecution and Political Order in the United States was published by Cambridge University Press in 2015. Following Thomas Frank's address, he'll be joined by David Smith for further discussion and an audience Q&A