Jim Webb
Politician
Jim Webb is the former Democratic Senator from Virginia. He wrote, introduced, and guided to passage the Post-9.11 GI Bill, the most significant veterans legislation since World War II, and co-authored legislation which exposed 60 billion dollars of waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan wartime-support contracts. A long-time advocate of fixing America’s broken criminal justice system, Mr. Webb was spotlighted in The Atlantic as one of the world’s “Brave Thinkers” for tackling prison reform and possessing “two things vanishingly rare in Congress: a conscience and a spine.” He went on to give a response to the State of the Union which has been regarded as one of the stronger State of the Union responses in recent memory.
He previously served as Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan and is the recipient of the Purple Heart. Webb is also an Emmy Award winning journalist, a filmmaker, and the author of ten books. Since retiring, Webb has continued to be a prolific writer and has written for many national journals including USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.
Jim Webb participated in The White Working-Class Political Revolution with David Kuhn, Charlie Cook, and Moderator Clyde Haberman on January 7, 2021. Kuhn, Webb, Cook, and Haberman discussed how the white working-class was driven away from the Democratic party and towards Republicans and how that schism continues to drive class conflict and political polarization today. The discussion also broached the Democrats inability to make inroads with this demographic and if white working-class voters support Republicans in spite of their own policy preferences.
