This is Fran Blue Gal for Crooks and Liars, and I'm very delighted to be talking today with Joan Walsh of Salon.com.

Hello, Joan.

Hi, Fran.

Good to talk to you.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm thrilled.

You have a wonderful new book out called What's the Matter with White People?

And the subtitle is Why We Long for a golden age that never was. A golden age

that never was. And I think people are paying a lot more attention to the first half of that

title than the second half and how provocative that is. I noticed that Ron Christie is calling you a

racist now and there just seems to be a lot of reaction to this provocative title to your book.

Why did you, why did you title it that way and tell me a little bit about it?

Well, of course it's provocative and of course it's a little bit tongue in cheek.

But, you know, on the left, we spend a lot of time

wondering and worrying about the white working class and why did they abandon the Democratic Party

and can we ever get them back or get more of them back. President Obama actually did better

with white people in the white working class than President Clinton,

Al Gore, John Kerry, which people don't really tend to remember. They focus more on

his negative approval ratings among whites, which we can talk about later. But at least for a moment

in 2008, we were able to pull

some of those folks back.

So I'm used to left-wing liberal people wringing their hands over white people.

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