Leopold has spent much of his career agitating for union causes. and though he’s persistently criticized the Democratic Party, it’s because he’s chiding them for too often advancing interests of wealthy donors over workers, which he sees both as a moral problem and bad electoral strategy. Wall Street’s War on Workers goes further, however, penetrating one of the chief media deceptions of the 21st century, namely that working-class voters are driven by racism and xenophobia, and not by a more simple, enraging motive: they’ve been repeatedly ripped off, by the wealthy donors to both parties.

As we discuss below, Leopold is going to have a hard time getting booked on Morning Joe or receiving shout-outs in Paul Krugman columns when his book features sections like “The Mischaracterization of White Working­ Class Politics” and “The Continued Mischaracterization of Populism.” The book is in the tradition of Thomas Frank’s seminal history of anti-populism, The People, No, which described the original Populist Party clashing with New York banking interests on issues like free silver, and quickly found itself caricatured, forever, as bigoted, stupid, and dangerous. Leopold is telling a similar story, but is more focused on the idiosyncrasies of the current clash, which he sees as rooted in competing narratives about a number: 30 million, his estimate of the number of laid-off Americans since 1996[.]