Customer Reviews

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

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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

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.

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.

If you're a Democrat who has a hard time understanding why anyone would vote for the GOP, or a Republican who can't see why people vote for the Dems, this book will give you a glimpse into the other side's worldview. In fact, it will do better than that: it will show you how each party consists of loose coalitions of groups with radically different worldviews. The best thing about Greenberg's book is the clarity with which it outlines these constituencues and their priorities. You'll spend the next week after reading it watching political ads with a new interest, second-guessing who the ad is meant to appeal to and why.

Like many public affairs books, it has the look of a long essay that was fluffed up to book length on the request of the author's agent. But there is some very solid analysis of voting patterns here. Whatever happens in the next election, you can bet Greenberg's book will make it more intelligible.

Everything the other reviewers have said about this book is true, and then some. It should appeal to anyone with enough curiosity to get beyond the standard boring "liberal vs. conservative" pap we get from what passes for analysis on TV. Although Greenberg is clearly on the Democrats' side, that's no reason for Republicans to ignore this book - it's full of interesting insights for both parties. I find myself wondering (March 2004) how all the groups Greenberg describes are reacting to the current campaign themes - outsourced jobs and gay marriage amendments. If you're planning to really get into the upcoming bloodbath, this book will make it a lot more interesting.

This book gives the reader a really fascinating perspective on the makeup of the electorate. Greenberg gives a lot of numbers, based mainly on his group's extensive polling and other research. The reader comes away with a good feel for why people vote the way they do.

Although it is not a scholarly monograph by any means, I found this book to be more substantial than most election-year books. In fact I almost didn't buy it because the title made it sound like a quickly written current events bestseller, but it was better than I expected.

It's the best book I've read in a long time about election year politics.

We Democrats look forward to another presidential election, hoping and indeed desperately praying that our man, whoever he turns out to be, does not have the kind of tin ear for the American people that has made us lose six of the past nine Presidential elections. And we know that, with Bush, we now have opposing us the slickest and most cunning political machine in most of our lifetimes, fully backed by a massive right-wing media propaganda machine that is absolutely willing to lie, distort and subvert democracy in every way it can get away with to continue and expand conservative right-wing power.

For Democrats to have any chance to come back, either in the presidential election or as the dominant political party, then, one absolutely vital question must be answered: Why are so many obviously good and decent people willing to vote Republican, even if it is against their best interests--even if, deep down, they know they are being lied to? And what can and must Democrats do to turn the tide?

"The Two Americas" explains what has happened, and offers the answer. America, it explains, is precisely split down the middle. Thirty seven percent of the voting population are loyalist Republicans, and another 37 percent are loyalist Democrats. Incredibly, another eighteen percent are split down the middle as "leaners," nine percent leaning toward the Republicans and nine percent toward the Democrats. So what we have today are two parties who play to equally-sized coalitions of passionate partisans, ignoring the most important issues of the day and turning off the rest of the electorate.

The Democrats, for their part, have become an enclave of African-Americans and sophisticated urban post-moderns (with Union families thrown in), tone-deaf to the issues and cultural beliefs of working- and middle-class America. The Democratic Party also has consistently been too timid, refusing to describe, much less fight for, a comprehensive vision that would offer a true alternative to Reaganism.

If you are a Democrat, this book will introduce you to the other half of America, the people, from blue-collar workers to heartland farmers, who don't see the world the way you do. This book, based on thousands of hours spent talking comprehensively to 15,000 Americans across the country and across the political spectrum from 2001 to March 2003, is a document of incomparable value. It's as if a doctor has finally thoroughly examined a patient and found the reason he is inexplicably wasting away. Let's hope, for the sake of all our futures, that the patient will listen.

This book provides an excellent description of the American society and its current dilemma. Guns control, abortion, prayers at schools, and many other subjects have an equal number of supporters and detractors, and that is reflected in the polls. Why can't a political platform atract a vast majority of the Americans? This is the deadlock which the author refers to in the title.
Based on many surveys, he can identify many tipologies of citizens tbat help us understand their beliefs and thus, their electoral behavior.

A comprehensive blueprint for thoughtful, responsible discussion and for the pivotal decisions that are ours to make at a critical juncture in American politics in an age of globalization. An essential, engaging handbook of political strategy perfectly timed for the 2004 elections. Read this book sooner rather than later.

This book was published in 2004 and is loaded with results of polls to indicate preferences of voters on all sorts of issues. It covers the issues and shows the direction that the Democrats and Republicans must take if they hope to sway voters from one party to the other. The book amplifies the miriad of issues that face both the voters and the party stratgeists.One of the difficult things is that ,while there are many issues,the voter must in his final analysis, choose one candidate over another.
Whe also see that a great number of voters have a large amount of party loyalty and will not vote against party loyalty,regardless. So,what this means is that the center ground and voter willingless to make their vote count is really what elections are all about. Each party has agendae and pressures that divide the voter. In the book we see why and how both parties play up or play down issues in hopes go gaining the most votes at the time.
The book is written more from the standpoint of how the Democrats must change to win.Reading this book now,we see that it is obvious that the Democrats failed to move to the center and thus loss the 2004 election. As November 2006 approaches,we will again see if the shifts will occur; and again in 2008.
One thing that has often occurred to me over the years ,particularly with the election of the President, falls under personality and traits such as trust,likability
and leadership.I think these factors overide party agenda,certainly in enough numbers from swing voters to result in one candidate winning over another.
Although most party loyalists would not likely agree but I believe that,Kennedy,Roosevelt, Truman,Eisenhower, Reagan and Bush were all winners on that score. As much as the media tried to destroy George W. Bush, when you get right down to it the swing voter liked these qualities better with him than with John Kerry...and that's why he won.
I am really surprised the author did not address this important factor in his otherwise extensive coverage of issues.
This is why the Debates are so important.It's not which candidate wins on debating skills ;but which one is the one the voter trusts,likes and thinks would make the best leader.