"His Problem with Political Science Is That It Leads to Conclusions He Finds Inconvenient"

"Political science may not tell us everything about politics, but it certainly explains the broad contours: Clinton's party was bound for a major course correction. Indeed, the political science actually undermines the response to the 1994 midterms that prevailed in Washington, which was that America had rejected Bill Clinton’s liberalism, or possibly even the New Deal itself. But, contrary to Frank's fears, this sort of bloodless academic analysis carried hardly any weight among the political elite, who preferred to understand events by telling stories, albeit ones with the opposite moral than Frank's preferred version."


Jonathan Chait in New York responds to Thomas Frank's criticism in Salon of "effing geniuses."