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"A LONGER TREND...IS LEADING AMERICAN POLITICS FROM THE CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN MAJORITY OF THE 1980s TO A NEW DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY. DEMOCRATS AREN'T THERE YET, BUT BARRING THE UNFORESEEN, THEY SHOULD ARRIVE BY THE DECADE'S END." -- from the Introduction
At the end of the 1960s, Kevin Phillips, battling conventional wisdom, correctly foretold the dawn of a new conservative era. His book The Emerging Republican Majority became an indispensable guide for conservatives through the 1970s and 1980s -- and, indeed, for all those attempting to understand political change at the time. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, with the presidency and the House in Republican hands, political experts John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira convincingly use hard data -- demographic, geographic, economic, and political -- to forecast the dawn of a new progressive era. Their book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, is the indispensable guide to this era.
In five well-researched chapters, the authors show how the most dynamic areas of the country are trending Democratic. Once the party of the Rust Belt, Democrats are now the party of Silicon Valley and of North Carolina's Research Triangle. Once the party of Archie Bunker and Ralph Kramden, the Democrats are now also the party of professionals, working women, blacks, Asian-Americans, and Hispanics.
These new Democratic voters embrace what the authors call "Progressive centrism." They take umbrage at Republican calls to privatize social security, ban abortion, and cut back environmental regulations. They are leery of subjecting science and the family to fundamentalist religious precepts. They welcome the free market as a spur to growth and initiative, but they don't want companies to be free to pollute the environment, mistreat their workers, or defraud their stockholders.
As the GOP continues to be captive to the religious right and K Street business lobbies, The Emerging Democratic Majority is an essential volume for all those discontented with their narrow agenda -- and a clarion call for a new political order.
