Herding Donkeys
The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics
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4.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
After the 2004 election, the Republican Party held the White House, both houses of Congress, twenty-eight governorships, and a majority of state legislatures. One-party rule, it seemed, was here to stay.
Herding Donkeys tells the improbable tale of the grassroots resurgence that transformed the Democratic Party from a lonely minority to a sizable majority. It chronicles the inside story of Howard Dean's visionary yet deeply controversial fifty-state strategy, charting his unpredictable journey from insurgent presidential candidate, to front-running flameout, to chairman and conscience of the Democratic Party in an unexpected third act. Ari Berman reveals how the Obama campaign built upon Dean's strategy when others ridiculed it, expanding the ranks of the party and ultimately laying the groundwork for Obama's historic electoral victory—but also sowing the seeds of dissent that would lead to legislative stalemate and intraparty strife.
Revelatory and entertaining, in the vein of Timothy Crouse's The Boys on the Bus and Rick Perlstein's Nixonland, Herding Donkeys combines fresh reportage with a rich and colorful cast of characters. It captures the untold stories of the people and places that reshaped the electoral map, painting a vivid portrait of a shifting country while dissecting the possibility and peril of a new era in American politics.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Berman plumbs the roots of Barack Obama's 2008 victory, reaching back four years to a failed Democratic presidential campaign that left loyalists dispirited and the White House, Congress, and a majority of state legislatures in Republican control. Berman, a correspondent for the Nation, describes how the drama and sordidness of the Clinton years left many Democrats feeling that "their party had lost its compass, and just maybe its soul." Enter insurgent upstart candidate Howard Dean, who revived a 50-state campaign strategy that failed to net him the White House, but energized a populist political base and harnessed its energy with the Internet and a "plethora of new tools that would fundamentally change political campaigns and the nature of public communication." Obama ran using a similar blueprint, and the book's accounts of Democratic revival in traditional Republican strongholds read well, making political organizing an exciting, inspiring process but Berman's insider perspective obscures some of the broader conditions, notably growing disenchantment with Republican policies that also contributed to Obama's victory. Berman covers the tactical and strategic shifts within the Democratic party that have reconfigured the national political calculus, to the point where the GOP must mimic their approach in the coming congressional elections.
