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

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.

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.