There are many ways to leave this veil of tears. Barney Frank has chosen his:
Former Rep. Barney Frank, a liberal icon who was a key architect of the landmark Wall Street regulations Democrats enacted in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, has entered hospice care at his home in Maine. And as one of his last acts, he is preparing to release a book repudiating his party’s left flank.
A champion of liberal causes during his 32 years representing Massachusetts in the House, Frank says progressive Democrats have “embraced an agenda that goes beyond what’s politically acceptable.”
[…]
His latest book is set to be released later this year (“I face a literal deadline, so I don’t know how we’ll adjust to that,” he said of the timing). He’s hoping “to use my reputation and my record of being on the left to give courage to many of my colleagues who I know agree with me but are inhibited from saying so.”
“For a lot of my colleagues, the argument has been, ‘well, we don’t support defund the police or open borders, and we don’t say we do,’” Frank said. “But my point is, no, it’s not enough … to be silent. We have to explicitly repudiate it.”
He says he’s “not arguing that anybody should stop his or her advocacy.”
“But it’s one thing to advocate something knowing that you’re going beyond the current viewpoints, and another to make it a litmus test,” he said.
Who, exactly, supports “defund the police” and “open borders”? I’ll admit that “defund” had a moment, but I’m not sure I know of anyone who supported “open borders”. Nevertheless, Barney Frank is going to use his (literally) dying breaths to write a book inveighing against the evils of the left flank of his party, rather than writing what I would have hoped would be an entertaining memoir. I don’t know about the rest of you, but a no-holds-barred Barney Frank autobiography would be a book that I’d pay to read.
But we’re not going to get that book, and I’m at a loss to understand Frank’s bitterness. The left flank of the Democratic Party didn’t snatch electoral defeat from the jaws of victory in the last few elections. They didn’t go out of their way to sabotage legislation that “liberal icons” like Frank supported — the opposite is true. The left flank didn’t throw LGBTQ+ Americans under the bus. In every substantive measure, the left of the party has allied itself with the issues that Frank claimed to support while he was in Congress.
The piece does mention that he’s still proud of Dodd-Frank, though I think the consensus is that it wasn’t enough. Perhaps criticism of Dodd-Frank from the left is what’s got him chapped. I guess the left is just supposed to be meekly grateful for whatever crumbs legislators like Frank throw them.
Anyway, I’ve always liked the guy, and I’m sorry to see him go out like this, writing a bitter score-settler and voicing his support for Janet Mills.
