A timely, urgent call for political engagement.
How acting on local issues can empower voters.
In her debut book, journalist Winter makes a compelling case for the importance of state and local races in promoting progressive politics. Too often, Democrats have focused on federal elections, overlooking statehouses, while Republicans invest money and strategy in local races. The result, writes the author, is that Republicans “continue to have outsize power on the state level across the country,” affecting crucial issues such as gun laws, health care, and voting rights. Focusing on state politics in the swing states of Missouri, Colorado, and Florida, Winter argues persuasively that “seemingly disparate local laws in fact have broad national consequences.” She chose those states “because they each have something to tell us about how Democrats and progressives lost, and how they might win again—not within a single campaign cycle but over the long haul.” Of the three states, Colorado stands as a model of success, with organizers who worked energetically for nearly two decades “to keep Colorado Democrats and progressives in the game.” They gained control of the state Senate in 2000, and although they lost it two years later, their victory showed them that they could win. Seeing that Republicans were funded by extremely wealthy individual donors and conservative organizations (for example, the Koch brothers and Americans for Prosperity), Colorado progressives tapped local multimillionaires for contributions; their support attracted other left-leaning philanthropic and political donors. In addition, the organizers coordinated their efforts in advertising, mailings, recruiting volunteers, and in targeting key districts and races. Florida stood in sharp contrast. Although Democrats campaigned fiercely in presidential years, after they left, the state had no progressive infrastructure. Moreover, “left-leaning donors and interest groups came to consider Florida Democrats a lost cause,” leaving “a patchwork of underfunded and sometimes mismanaged organizations and volunteer chapters.” In Missouri, Republicans pounced on “charged cultural issues—guns, abortion, and race” to fragment Democratic voters. For voters frustrated with national politics, Winter sees local politics as “a venue where we can do something.”
A timely, urgent call for political engagement.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-56858-838-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bold Type Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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