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WHERE HAVE ALL THE DEMOCRATS GONE?

THE SOUL OF THE PARTY IN THE AGE OF EXTREMES

Backed by solid research, this book sounds a powerful warning that should resonate throughout the Democratic leadership.

Two respected political analysts look at the shifting landscape and find much to worry the Democratic Party.

At first glance, this would seem to be an odd time for this book. The theme is that the Democrats are in trouble, which is strange to think about when the party holds the White House, the Senate, and two dozen governorships. However, American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Judis and Talking Points Memo editor at large Teixeira focus on the broader trends underlying political changes. They acknowledge that their allegiance lies with the Democrats, and they are displeased with what they see as the party’s radical turn to the left. In an influential 2002 book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, the authors argued that Democratic-leaning ethnic minorities would grow while the Republican base would shrink, but they emphasized that the Democrats would have to actively court votes from the Latino and Asian American populations, while striving to keep white, blue-collar voters. This critical point was often ignored, and the past decade has seen large chunks of these groups switch to the Republicans. Teixeira and Judis examine the Democratic “shadow party” of foundations, lobby groups, quasi-socialist academics and Wall Street donors, which loudly pushes an agenda of identity politics and free trade that is out of alignment with mainstream values. Attacking anyone who disagrees as a deplorable racist does not help to win support. Joe Biden has tried to distance himself from the extreme end of the spectrum, but the rot runs deep. The strongest card for the Democrats seems to be the unpopularity of Trump, but that will not be enough to overcome the long-term impact of the trends the authors analyze. The obvious solution is for the party to move back toward the center, but the authors do not sound optimistic about it.

Backed by solid research, this book sounds a powerful warning that should resonate throughout the Democratic leadership.

Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023

ISBN: 9781250877499

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: July 19, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023

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A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979

ISBN: 0061965588

Page Count: 772

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

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ELON MUSK

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

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A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.

To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023

ISBN: 9781982181284

Page Count: 688

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023

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