Rating: 
Summary: Essential reading for the 2004 elections
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Great Playbook for the 2004 Election
Review: Anyone who follows politics knows that the United States is split virtually in two. This book explores the roots that has helped lead to the split in the United States. Greenberg, who is a Democratic pollster and married to a Democratic Congresswoman from Connecticut, also gives each side strategies to help break the parity and become the dominant party throughout the country. Quite frankly, Democrats would do well to heed his advice. Regardless of who the nominee of the Democratic Party is, my advice is once the nomination is wrapped up, you need to sit down with your staff and exploit this book for every shred of advice and insight that it offers. Democrats can win again and with Stanley Greenberg's great book at their side, they will break the parity and once again become the majority party in the United States. Overall, an excellent book for anyone interested in the current parity in the United States and what can be done to end it.
Rating:
Summary: Great Playbook for the 2004 Election
Review: Anyone who follows politics knows that the United States is split virtually in two. This book explores the roots that has helped lead to the split in the United States. Greenberg, who is a Democratic pollster and married to a Democratic Congresswoman from Connecticut, also gives each side strategies to help break the parity and become the dominant party throughout the country. Quite frankly, Democrats would do well to heed his advice. Regardless of who the nominee of the Democratic Party is, my advice is once the nomination is wrapped up, you need to sit down with your staff and exploit this book for every shred of advice and insight that it offers. Democrats can win again and with Stanley Greenberg's great book at their side, they will break the parity and once again become the majority party in the United States. Overall, an excellent book for anyone interested in the current parity in the United States and what can be done to end it.
Rating: 
Summary: An Earnest and Interesting Book
Review: 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
Rating:
Summary: You don't have to be a Clintonista to enjoy this one...
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Understand Who Votes for Whom and Why
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Still trying to make the populist connection
Review: Stan Greenberg is clearly no slouch when it comes to political analysis but he is wrestling with the same question he has wrestled with for two decades; how to make working and middle class voters vote "correctly".
Greenberg has an insightful way of dividing up the US electorate and his polling data is rich and useful, regardless of the reader's persuasion. He advises Democrats to take the appeal of cultural conservatism seriously, but what he recommends is the same grab bag of populist policy positions Democrats have been pushing since the 1980s with mixed results (with the exception of welfare reform). He assumes more progressive taxation, labor market regulation and government spending work as well in practice as in theory and thus if Democrats can finesse the cultural issues (without actually deviating from cultural liberalism) they should win the votes of the nonwealthy. Given what has occurred over the past two decades, his argument is unconvincing.
Rating:
Summary: Highly readable, surprisingly funny
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Essential reading for the 2004 elections
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Worthwhile read for anyone interested in the election
Review: 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.
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