One way in which this book doesn't fit in with the sort of standard account of sort of how the left not quite lost the working class but sort of struggles of the left with the working class is that there's often a presumption that would say that sort of class politics

inherently superior and maybe even sort of the natural way that electoral

coalitions should divide and I would very much like to see this bottom-up working-class oriented Democratic coalition exist.

But I see those class divided, the have-nots on one side versus the halves on the other,

that is much more the exception than the

rule not just an American political history but across much of the world today

especially the wealthy world so Israel that is the story of how basically over the last 50 years in

Israeli politics the far right has become the reasonable right, the old right

has become the new right has become the new left, the old center has become the new left and

the old left has dropped off a cliff. Essentially ceased to exist. In one sense,

it's like the most precipitous and total defeat of the left.

Like there was a period of gridlock

and then like total dissolution.

You know, it happened gradually and then quickly.

And that's even more striking when you realize

how dominant the Labor Party was in Israel. even more

striking when you realize how dominant the labor party was in Israel

for the first 30 years, more or less, of that country's

existence.

It's 1977 when the right wins electoral power

for the first time, but they did it with an electoral coalition that was rooted in

Mizrahi, also in a Sephardic Jews. There's a sense among Mizrahi Jews who are disproportionately

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