• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Support the Center - Policy Website

Supporting Political Reform to Break the Two-Party Duopoly

  • About
    • Upcoming Topics
  • We Need Contributors
  • Domestic Politics
  • International Politics
  • Interviews
    • Clinton People
    • Trump People
    • Other Interviews
  • Contact Us
  • Shop
  • Cart
  • Checkout
  • My account
  • Posts

Domestic Politics

How Did Our Politics Degenerate? A Review of “Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics”

March 19, 2017 by admin

Support the Center - How Did We Get Here
Support the Center – How Did We Get Here?

In 1991, 26 years ago, Thomas Edsall, assisted by his wife, Mary, published an astoundingly relevant book, “Chain Reaction, The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics”, that explains how the Democratic coalition created by Franklin Roosevelt, active and dominant from 1932 through 1964, lost its focus on broad central concerns, and instead became subject to attacks from a revitalized Republican, conservative movement, that was able to peg the Democratic party and liberals as elitist, and government as primarily a force for the promotion of special minority rights and re-distribution for groups such as poor blacks, Hispanics and gays.   In the debate, taxes were positioned by conservatives as primarily an agent of re-distribution to these groups at the expense of the middle class.  Democrats, for their part, did not address these concerns, and instead focused on special interest politics (most recently on transgender bathroom access).  In the process, working and lower middle-class white voters were peeled away from the Democratic coalition to align (ironically) with traditional Republican policy-makers whose goals and practice has been to primarily benefit the very wealthy.

[Read more…] about How Did Our Politics Degenerate? A Review of “Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics”

Filed Under: Domestic Politics, History - How Did We Get Here

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Page 3

Primary Sidebar

Recent Articles

  • Bill Hurst – Letter #2 to Baroda Township Voters – Looking At Economic Policy Strategically and Avoiding Bright Shiny Objects
  • Letter # 1 to Baroda Township Residents – Centrist Thinking and the Need to Preserve Our Democracy
  • Letter #3: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Presidential Election and the Risk It Poses to US Democracy
  • “Our Great Political Divide: Causes, Impacts, and Prospects” – A New Book by William G. Hurst
  • Understanding US Identity Politics

Archives

  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • January 2021
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • July 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • July 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017

Copyright © 2025 · News Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in