An incisive analysis from Washington Post journalist Edsall (The
New Politics of Inequality, 1984) of the political equivalent of a
continental drift: the electoral realignment in which Republicans
have won the White House five out of the last six times since 1964.
Edsall's explanation for this shift is not unique: The GOP, he
says, has used two overlapping issues, race and taxes, to splinter
the old New Deal coalition, pitting whites - resentful of busing,
affirmative action, and other federal remedies to aid blacks and
other minorities - against these programs' beneficiaries. Edsall
traces how Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, and Richard Nixon, with
varying degrees of success, exploited these issues as well as the
cultural tensions arising from the 60's rights revolution on behalf
of other groups (e.g., criminal defendants, gays, the handicapped).
The now-familiar scenario found "Reagan Democrats" (southern white
populists and northern blue-collar ethnics) linking with affluent
Republicans in shifting government benefits away from recipients of
liberal largesse. Although giving only glancing attention to the
influence of war-and-peace issues on the electorate, Edsall
impressively supports his analysis of the Democratic decline at the
presidential level with extensive polling and demographic data,
interviews with lapsed Democrats, and a devastating portrait of
liberalism at bay, "intellectually fearful" of addressing the ills
of the black underclass and thus continuing to alienate disaffected
voters and leaving the party a toothless defender of the working
class and poor. A powerful companion to Nicholas Lemann's The
Promised Land (p. 32) and Kevin Phillips's The Politics of Rich and
Poor (1990) in detailing the racial and class tensions that are
rending America's social fabric and poisoning its body politic.
(Kirkus Reviews)
The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics
"One of the richest, most nuanced studies of American politics and voting behavior in recent years. . . . Timely and important."—Sol Stern, New York Newsday
Three volatile issues—race, rights, and taxes—drive American politics today. They have come to intersect with an entire range of domestic issues, from welfare policy to suburban zoning practices. In an explosive chain reaction, a new conservative voting majority has replaced the once-dominant Democratic presidential coalition, and a new polarization has pitted major segments of society against one another.
How did this massive power shift occur? Thomas Byrne Edsall of the Washington Post and Mary D. Edsall provide answers in this compelling analysis, cited by Newsweek as "[one of] the books that shape[d] the debate" in the 1992 presidential campaign.
For this edition, Mr. Edsall has added an Afterword—as up to date as the shocking Los Angeles riots—on emerging trends in the politics of race, as mirrored in the attack of the Republican party on what its spokesmen characterize as "the failed social programs of the 1960s and 1970s."
"Brilliantly illuminates the Democratic Party's mistakes and its problems. . . . Should be read by anyone with an interest in American politics. . . . A remarkably candid and insightful account of the Democrats' steady decline. . . . In the United States today, race—not class—dominates the domestic political agenda. And the price for the once-proud Democratic Party, as the Edsalls so superbly demonstrate, has been division, desertion and defeat."—David Oshinsky, New York Times Book Review
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