What Is the Democratic Party?

‘Voting against their own interests’ The popular progressive understanding of the Republican party and conservative movement is something like this: It is, at heart, a conspiracy of corporate oligarchs who use a collection of so-called social issues — religion, bigotry, racial resentment, anti-immigrant sentiment — to stir up the rubes in support of its own parochial economic agenda, tricking them into “voting against their own interests” in the popular progressive phrase. Wall Street guys pulling the strings and writing the checks, foot-washing snake-handlers manning the barricades. This isn’t really true,...