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27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Earnest and Interesting Book, January 10, 2004
This review is from: The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It (Hardcover)
Anyone who picks up a book on the current state of party politics in the U.S.A. is compelled to take note first of the author's political stance. Stanley B. Greenberg, author of THE TWO AMERICAS, was a pollster for Bill Clinton and Al Gore and a key member of Clinton's campaign team. He is married to a Democratic congresswoman from Connecticut. The same full-disclosure mandate surely applies to reviewers of such books as well. OK, this reviewer is a registered Democrat, a senior citizen/retiree, middle-class, Catholic New Englander resident for many years in the Middle West. Those preliminaries out of the way, perhaps we can get down to reviewing the book. Greenberg starts with the obvious: the electorate is evenly divided between the two parties, a situation he regards as "ugly" and unhealthy. Each party sees the possibility of breaking the deadlock to its own advantage, but neither seems able to pull the trick off. Using the pollster's standard tools of interviews, focus groups and projections, he slices and dices both parties into interest groups according to age, education level, income, religious feelings and geographical distribution. His text is full of bar charts and "thermometers" that register the feelings of each sub-group on all sorts of questions. He traces the history of America's shifting political allegiances, in particular those of the past 50 years, a period when neither party was able to achieve any lasting dominance (or, to use his favorite word, "hegemony"). Seeking out middle ground between the parties, he devotes special attention to three typical geographical areas where neither party dominates --- the suburbs east of Seattle, the farm country of central Iowa and suburbs around Tampa. Then he lays out a potential victory strategy for each party, and concludes that whichever one takes advantage of his insights will have victory within its grasp. It is in this last section that Greenberg's own bias is evident. His Republican victory strategy amounts largely to the GOP energizing its core loyalists and adding enough fringe voters to them to ensure a win. He convenes a fictional meeting of George W. Bush's campaign team at which Bush is largely a mute bystander, more interested in catching a baseball game on television. But for the Democrats, Greenberg lays out a detailed campaign platform designed to appeal to middle class and uncommitted voters whom he feels the party has lost in recent years. He believes the 2004 election will be decided fully as much on "cultural" issues (guns, religious feeling, education level, "family values") as on substantive issues like health care or foreign policy. He has critical things to say about each party's strategy in recent elections: the Republicans have pushed an agenda (tax cuts, small government) in which most voters are simply not interested, the Democrats have given up on the middle class, where much of their strength should lie. Many voters, he finds, are alienated from the Republicans but aren't attracted to the Democratic alternative. All of this is certainly provocative. What one makes of it will depend largely on whether one thinks pollsters are the infallible seers they advertise themselves as, or just educated estimators of the public mood. I suspect the strategists of both parties will comb through this book for usable tactics, without necessarily swallowing it whole. There are a number of factors in play that Greenberg either ignores or mentions only in passing. He has little or nothing to say about the obvious public alienation from politics in general reflected in declining turnout, the impact of television on modern campaigns, the rampant weakening of party loyalty out there beyond Washington D.C., the baleful influence of partisanship-driven redistricting, the obvious financial advantage held by the Republicans, the possible impact of additional campaign finance reform on future campaigns, or such a wild-card issue as abortion. And of course he is handicapped by not knowing as he writes the identity of the Democratic nominee for 2004. This is an earnest and interesting book, one that political junkies (like me) will devour like manna from heaven. Much of its data, however, could be invalidated overnight by some unforeseen event or sudden shift in the political winds. It's still a long time until election day, folks. --- Reviewed by Robert Finn
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent framework to better understand the electorate., February 16, 2004
This review is from: The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It (Hardcover)
This is the book "du jour" about how to win Presidential election, and how our nation is now almost perfectly split between Republicans and Democrats. Each party accounts for about 46% of the voters. So, to win the White House you need to attract independents and swing voters. Our most recent two-term Presidents understood the importance of appealing to such voters. Reagan appealed to the "Reagan Democrats" in the eighties. While in the nineties, Clinton the ultimate new Democrat centrist, balanced the Budget, generated economic and job growth, and thus preempted Republican economic platforms. Nowadays, appealing to the 8% independents is very difficult because their value system does not fit within the two party system. Their values range from the classic socially liberal/fiscally conservative to the iconoclastic socially conservative/fiscally liberal, and anything in between. Greenberg's framework is really helpful in getting a Presidential candidate to earn a majority of the independents and swing voters. His information is extremely detailed, and emanates from cluster analysis. This is a statistical method that is increasingly popular in Presidential campaign strategy. You aggregate the general population in numerous clusters or groups sharing similar behaviors, voting patterns, value systems, education, income, and what have you. Greenberg illustrates several different examples of such clusters within cities such as Tampa or Seattle, or state as Iowa. Each cluster is given a different colorful name such as Tampa Blue, Seattle Eastside Tech, and Heartland Iowa. Each cluster can have subclusters reflecting more specific demographics such as the Super-Educated Women (Democrat loyalist) or Privileged Men (Republicans). The old motto "information is power" is truer than ever. This upcoming Presidential election is the battle of the demographic statistical databases. And, according to Greenberg and other sources, the two parties are again about even. The Democrats have acquired a database of 158 million voters dubbed "DataMart." While the Republicans have a database of 165 million people named "Voter Vault." These databases have over 300 "lifestyle variables" allowing the database managers to forecast voting patterns, and effectiveness of political campaigns. Armed with Greenberg's type of information, a Presidential candidate can now customize his message(s) to these various clusters of swing voters. Thus, the art of political eloquence nowadays is to target your speech addressing specific issues to your local or regional audience without contradicting yourself from one town to the next. The Presidential candidate who best understands the data, customizes his speeches with effective issues, and implement the best strategy will win more swing voters and win the overall election. Within the Democratic Primaries, Kerry and Edwards understand well this sophisticated game. Dean and Clark who had surging early successes in polls and fundraising did not understand this game so well. Dean being a single note Bush-bashing mouthpiece, and Clark doing the same thing focused exclusively on foreign policy and Iraq in particular. Thus, Kerry and Edwards's superior understanding of Greenberg's type of information made them superior candidates despite both lagging in fundraising and polls early on. Just to clarify any confusion, Greenberg and Edwards "Two Americas" frameworks are very different. For Greenberg it represents polarized politics with nearly half the country being Republican and the other being Democrat. For Edwards, the "Two Americas" is a class hierarchy with one America consisting of the super-rich who have readily access to the best services from the private sector, and often benefit from questionable government subsidies and tax loopholes. The other America consists of the rest of us who struggle with the rising costs of health care, higher education, and insurance. In summary, Greenberg's two Americas are divided along a political axis, and the two Americas are roughly equal (46% of the population each). Edwards' two Americas are divided along an income axis; and, one represents only 1% of the population (the Super Rich). While the other represents 99% of the population. Greenberg's book is excellent, very well written, and incredibly informative. It is rather unique and ultimately current. I am hard pressed to recommend any like-books. Instead, I come up with a few recent articles that complement very nicely what Greenberg is talking about. One of them is "In Search of the Elusive Swing Voter" by Joshua Green in the January/February issue of The Atlantic Monthly. The other one is "Eatanswill revisited" a special report in The Economist of January 31st, 2004. Informed with this new information, you will find the Presidential Election the most fascinating media event for the remainder of the Year.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly readable, surprisingly funny, July 24, 2004
This review is from: The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It (Hardcover)
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.
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