December 21, 2010 — Updated with parts 4 and 5 of the interview. Jacob Hacker is co-author of the recently published “Winner-Take-All Politics.” Remapping Debate sat down with him to discuss how and why corporations and wealthy individuals have been so successful since the 1970s — during both Democratic and Republican administrations — in vindicating their interests to the detriment of the vast majority of Americans. Part 1 of the interview is below. Parts 2 through 5 are on the pages that follow.
Part 2 of Remapping Debate’s interview with Jacob Hacker, who is also the co-author with Paul Pierson of “Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy,” picks up with a discussion of how and why pro-labor legislation was defeated in 1978, a time when a Democrat was in the White House and Democrats controlled both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Remapping Debate continues its interview with Jacob Hacker, the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University. The conversation continues with a discussion of why the decline of unions in the United States was not inevitable, and continues with a little known story about who was behind the passage of a strong G.I. Bill for veterans returning from World War II.
Part 4 of Remapping Debate’s interview with Jacob Hacker continues with Hacker describing the decision by Democrats to seize on a deficit reduction platform in recent years as being, in some ways, “a really bad strategic move.”
The final part of Remapping Debate’s inteview with Jacob Hacker, co-author with Paul Pierson of “Winner-Take-All Politics,” begins with a discussion of the statement in the book that information “must be tied to political action, understanding to leverage,” and voters must feel that such action and leverage “can make a difference.”