Code red : how progressives and moderates can unite to save our country

Code red How progressives and moderates can unite to save our country

E. J. Dionne

Book - 2020

"New York Times bestselling author and Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. sounds the alarm in Code Red, calling for an alliance between progressives and moderates to seize the moment and restore hope to America's future for the 2020 presidential election. Will progressives and moderates feud while America burns? Or will these natural allies take advantage of the greatest opportunity since the New Deal Era to strengthen American democracy, foster social justice, and turn back the threats of the Trump Era? The United States stands at a crossroads. Broad and principled opposition to Donald Trump's presidency has drawn millions of previously disengaged citizens to the public square and to the ballot boxes. This inspired ...and growing activism for social and political change hasn't been seen since the days of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies and the Progressive and Civil Rights movements. But if progressives and moderates are unable-and unwilling-to overcome their differences, they could not only enable Trump to prevail again but also squander an occasion for launching a new era of reform. In Code Red, award-winning journalist E. J. Dionne, Jr., calls for a shared commitment to decency and a politics focused on freedom, fairness, and the future, encouraging progressives and moderates to explore common ground and expand the unity that brought about Democrat victories in the 2018 elections. He offers a unifying model for furthering progress with a Politics of Remedy, Dignity, and More: one that solves problems, resolve disputes, and moves forward; that sits at the heart of the demands for justice by both long-marginalized and recently-displaced groups; and that posits a positive future for Americans with more covered by health insurance, more with decent wages, more with good schools, more security from gun violence, more action to roll back climate change. Breaking through the partisan noise and cutting against conventional wisdom to provide a realistic look at political possibilities, Dionne offers a strategy for progressives and moderates to think more clearly and accept the responsibilities that history now imposes on them. Because at this point in our national story, change can't wait"--

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Subjects
Progressivism (United States politics)
Moderation > Political aspects > United States.
Political leadership > United States.
Political culture > United States.
United States > Politics and government > 2017-
Manifestos.
Genres
Manifestos
Published
New York : St. Martin's Press 2020.
Language
English
Main Author
E. J. Dionne (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
viii, 262 pages ; 22 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9781250256478
  • Introduction: The Opportunity We Dare Not Miss
  • 1. The Power of 60 Million Votes
  • Understanding What the 2018 Election Taught Us
  • 2. Missing in Action
  • Radicalized Republicans and the Problem with Bipartisanship
  • 3. Progressivism's Crooked Path
  • A Short History of Circular Firing Squads and Enduring Achievements
  • 4. Are the Socialists Coming?
  • The Collapse of the Reagan Consensus and the Urgency of Economic Renewal
  • 5. The Clinton and Obama Legacies
  • The Unfinished Work and Blind Spots of Two Successful Presidencies
  • 6. Getting from Here to There
  • Visionary Gradualism and the Economics of Dignity
  • 7. Out of Many ... What, Exactly?
  • The Politics of Recognition and the Politics of Class
  • 8. "Take Back Control"
  • Nationalism, Patriotism, and Solidarity
  • 9. Who in the World Are We?
  • A Foreign Policy for Democracy-and Main Street
  • 10. Why Change Can't Wait
  • And Why It Takes a Coalition to Save a Country
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Index
Review by Booklist Review

American political discourse is perhaps more divided than it has been at any time in the country's history. Republicans versus Democrats, alt-right versus far left: the chasm runs wide and deep. With the 2020 election looming, these political schisms will take on even more significance, and while challengers to Trump may be united in their mission to unseat him, that doesn't seem to be a worthy enough goal to merge the moderate and progressive factions within the Democratic party. Veteran journalist and political commentator Dionne (One Nation After Trump, 2017) examines what these labels mean within both a contemporary and historical context. From the Reagan Revolution to the Obama insurgency, the national political landscape has seen polarizing pendulum swings in the past, and movements such as the Tea Party have crucially altered the GOP. Positing that the Democrats are in danger of an equally alienating rift, Dionne urges progressives and moderates to find common, rather than shaky, ground for the good of the country and their party's survival.--Carol Haggas Copyright 2020 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Washington Post columnist Dionne (One Nation After Trump) calls on the progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic Party to find common ground in this fair-minded and optimistic assessment of American politics in the run-up to the 2020 elections. Arguing that the backlash to President Trump has given Democrats the chance to build a New Deal--style coalition that can fight climate change, shrink income inequality, expand health-care coverage, and improve public education, Dionne points to the 2018 midterms, when centrists and leftists combined to flip 43 seats in the House of Representatives, as a model for what can be achieved in 2020. He incisively details the factors that led to Trumpism, including Ronald Reagan's adherence to Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy of pandering to white voters' racial anxieties and the "serious social and economic imbalances" left behind by the Clinton and Obama presidencies. Dionne's eagerness to drill down into voter demographics and look at the 2018 and 2016 electorates from so many statistical angles may cause some readers to lose the thread of his central arguments, and his gradualist approach is more pragmatic than inspiring. Still, Democrats closely following the early stages of the 2020 presidential race will find this reasonable, evidence-based account to be a valuable source of information. (Feb.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

The Washington Post columnist and NPR commentator offers a passionately reasoned argument for why both progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic Party must put aside differences to defeat Donald Trump in 2020.Seizing on the momentum of the 2018 midterm elections, Dionne Jr. (Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism From Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond, 2016, etc.) is both articulate and enthusiastic about the need for the two liberal sides to work together, and he readily admits that he sounds like "a perhaps unwelcome counselor attempting to ease a family quarrel." The success of the 2018 elections ("Democrats received 25 million more votes than they had in 2014") underscores how the alliance of progressives and moderates, interested in protecting health care and reforming politics, can serve as the "model for the alliance that must come together again in 2020 and beyond." The author discusses the important mobilization of African American and Latinx voters, young people, and, especially, suburban women, many of whom have been disgusted by Trump's "white ethno-nationalism, his lies, his extremist rhetoric, his self-centered irrationality." Indeed, the election was very much about Trump, though not in the way he had hoped. Systematically, the author shows why bipartisanship, once the catchword, is not currently viable with the growing homogeneous, anti-immigrant Republican Party, which looks nothing like the "decent pragmatism" of the party of presidents Lincoln, Eisenhower, or even Nixon. The author then pursues the "crooked path" of the progressive story in America and the resurgence of democratic socialism in reaction to Reaganism and the continued rise of inequality even after the Clinton and Obama years. Indeed, writes Dionne, the "socialist" proposals of universal health care, free college, and even the Green New Deal are not radical. Moreover, a Democratic coalition is needed to repair the many fractured relationships with American allies.A well-argued and persuasive treatise by a deeply concerned journalist and citizen. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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