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The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It
The 2000 presidential left the world standing still, but it was no fluke. America is divided right down the middle - the product of a half-century, unique in our country's history, of inconclusive, increasingly heated partisan battle. Tantalizingly close to victory, each party inflames and mobilizes its most loyal supporters and battles to gain even a small edge with some contested groups. Politics has become culture war - a fight about values, faith, the family, how people should live their lives. The partisans are more partisan, politics more polarized, America more divided.
The Two Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It tells the history of each party's failed efforts to dominate the era's politics and ideas, radically changing the political landscape. The book provides an in-depth guide to the new groups at the center of our politics. Internationally renowned political strategist and pollster Stanley Greenberg puts the reader in the room with the strategists and politicians and shows how each party can win, even shatter the impasse.
The Two Americas is a political primer and strategic playbook for this unique era - essential reading for any armchair political strategist or engaged citizen eager to understand our future politics.
The Two Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It tells the history of each party's failed efforts to dominate the era's politics and ideas, radically changing the political landscape. The book provides an in-depth guide to the new groups at the center of our politics. Internationally renowned political strategist and pollster Stanley Greenberg puts the reader in the room with the strategists and politicians and shows how each party can win, even shatter the impasse.
The Two Americas is a political primer and strategic playbook for this unique era - essential reading for any armchair political strategist or engaged citizen eager to understand our future politics.
- GenresPoliticsNonfiction
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 8, 2004
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About the author
Stanley B. Greenberg
11 books15 followersSTANLEY B. GREENBERG is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller It's the Middle Class, Stupid! and polling adviser to presidents, prime ministers, and CEOs across the globe. He lives in Connecticut and Washington, D.C., with his wife, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT).
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 2, 2016
Stanley Greenberg has written a deeply researched, extensively footnoted, highly readable indictment of our current political state, and we should be humbly grateful for it.
From the preface, where he observes the press "...prefers the politics of character...." to reporting anything of substance, to the afterword, in which he presents the two scenarios he developed in the previous 300 pages to his focus groups, Greenberg holds very few cows sacred and presents a relatively even-handed treatment of the current political deadlock.
However, I give you fair warning: If you, the reader, are not of the liberal persuasion, this book may irritate the starch out of you. Remember, I said "relatively even-handed." Also remember, I'm a liberal.
Greenberg starts out with a short review of the last 200 years of political history, showing us that one-party domination is the rule rather than the exception. He devotes much attention to the last fifty years, in which no party has dominated, and even greater attention to the last 25, from the Reagan Revolution in 1980 to the bitterly contested and still controversial 2000 brouhaha, and on to the beginnings of the 2004 campaign. (Incidentally, I was reading the section on President Reagan when he died and for the first few days of our national mourning period. I was struck by irony: the facts in Greenberg's work versus the hyperbole issuing from every talking head on television.) Greenberg's liberal bias is highly evident in this section: he is far too easy on President Clinton. I laughed out loud at "...[he] advanced his proposals for gays to serve in the military, thus dramatically illustrating the breadth of the principle for America's ever-expanding rights." Oh, puh-leeze. The "don't ask, don't tell" policy was hardly a milestone in civil rights.
The author goes on to discuss the makeup of each party's core voters, or base; to present hypothetical, occasionally foul-mouthed, and often amusing "secret planning sessions" in which potential party strategies are plotted; and in the final sections, to propose a plan for each party to break the deadlock and pull the majority of voters in line with its political views. Footnotes and graphs and "chalk talk" illustrations abound throughout.
Greenberg writes in clear lucid prose, plainly setting out his premise while using minimal political jargon. While the book is meaty and dense with facts, the only dry thing about it is Greenberg's somewhat sardonic wit. It is a surprisingly funny book which should be read by every voter, regardless of political party.
From the preface, where he observes the press "...prefers the politics of character...." to reporting anything of substance, to the afterword, in which he presents the two scenarios he developed in the previous 300 pages to his focus groups, Greenberg holds very few cows sacred and presents a relatively even-handed treatment of the current political deadlock.
However, I give you fair warning: If you, the reader, are not of the liberal persuasion, this book may irritate the starch out of you. Remember, I said "relatively even-handed." Also remember, I'm a liberal.
Greenberg starts out with a short review of the last 200 years of political history, showing us that one-party domination is the rule rather than the exception. He devotes much attention to the last fifty years, in which no party has dominated, and even greater attention to the last 25, from the Reagan Revolution in 1980 to the bitterly contested and still controversial 2000 brouhaha, and on to the beginnings of the 2004 campaign. (Incidentally, I was reading the section on President Reagan when he died and for the first few days of our national mourning period. I was struck by irony: the facts in Greenberg's work versus the hyperbole issuing from every talking head on television.) Greenberg's liberal bias is highly evident in this section: he is far too easy on President Clinton. I laughed out loud at "...[he] advanced his proposals for gays to serve in the military, thus dramatically illustrating the breadth of the principle for America's ever-expanding rights." Oh, puh-leeze. The "don't ask, don't tell" policy was hardly a milestone in civil rights.
The author goes on to discuss the makeup of each party's core voters, or base; to present hypothetical, occasionally foul-mouthed, and often amusing "secret planning sessions" in which potential party strategies are plotted; and in the final sections, to propose a plan for each party to break the deadlock and pull the majority of voters in line with its political views. Footnotes and graphs and "chalk talk" illustrations abound throughout.
Greenberg writes in clear lucid prose, plainly setting out his premise while using minimal political jargon. While the book is meaty and dense with facts, the only dry thing about it is Greenberg's somewhat sardonic wit. It is a surprisingly funny book which should be read by every voter, regardless of political party.
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November 13, 2016USA Political deadlock; how dems can win
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