The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It - Softcover

Greenberg, Stanley B.

3.39

49 ratings by Goodreads

9780312318390: The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312318391 ISBN 13: 9780312318390

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2005

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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 result: partisans are more partisan, politics more polarized, America more divided.

The Two Americas: 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.

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Review:

Having spent a career closely watching the numbers, veteran Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who advised Bill Clinton in his 1992 victory, sees a nation entrenched into two opposing ideological camps, neither side getting much done. And so he presents solutions, of course to Democrats but also Republicans if they care to read the book, on how to break the gridlock and solidify power. Greenberg offers a history lesson, showing how for the last 50 years, neither party has had a solid grip on power and, as a result, lacked the mandate to lead. Instead, both fire up their base of supporters and scrap for small electoral groups in order to give them a tiny majority among national office holders. Armed with history and voluminous statistical data, Greenberg identifies the core constituencies of each party and assigns them catchy names in order to make his analysis more entertaining and easier to follow. The Republicans' base includes such groups as the "F-You Old Men," white blue-collar seniors with no college education, while over on the left side, the Democrats are anchored by groups like the "Secular Warriors," people who rarely attend church and don't own guns. Extensive polling took place in three communities that are battlegrounds on the electoral map and all three receive catchy nicknames as well: "Tampa Blue" (working class Florida), "The Heartland" (Iowa farm country), and "Eastside Tech" (the white-collar tech-heavy suburbs east of Seattle). After reading the pulse of these representative voters, Greenberg recommends the GOP offer up a second-generation Reagan campaign, emphasizing hope, independence, and industriousness. For the Democrats, his suggestions include taking classic Democratic themes of opportunity and equality and updating to encompass modern issues like environmental and health care concerns. This book was released in the early stages of the 2004 Democratic primaries and in the early going, the successful candidates seemed to be embracing Greenberg's notions, hoping to unseat a President Bush a second time. --John Moe

About the Author:

Stanley B. Greenberg is CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. He has served as advisor and pollster to President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, Prime Minister Tony Blair, Presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, Prime Minister Ehud Barak, German Chancellor Gerhard Schr�eder and Bolivian President Gonzalo S�nchez de Lozada. He was key to the war room team that last defeated President Bush and is also the author of Middle Class Dreams.

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