The New York Times calls Jacob Hacker the "intellectual 'it boy'" of the Democratic Party. Three years out of Harvard, he wrote that the Clinton healthcare plan failed because it was a hodgepodge of ideas without many natural allies. He says the nation didn't turn conservative so much as that Republicans learned how to game the political system and package their agenda better than the Democrats. Now that the Democrats are back in power, he's written a new book contending that the way for them to stay there is by talking about the dwindling economic security of the middle class.
KCRW
