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Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics
Penguin
August 2007
On Sale: August 16, 2007
336 pages ISBN: 1594201331 EAN: 9781594201332 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Political
Drawing on remarkable access to myriad factions of the
Democratic Party, The New York Times Magazine writer
Matt Bai distills the party's future prospects and current
dilemmas in this raucous and devastating account of the
party's search for The Argument that fits the
twenty-first century
Great political movements need
more than a bunch of shared principles; they need an
argument. The New Dealers had one. So did the Goldwater
conservatives. So what's the progressive argument? What new
path are Democrats urging us to choose in the era of
Wal-Mart, Al Qaeda, and YouTube? Matt Bai seeks answers in
The Argument, a book that brings you deep inside the
turbulent, confusing new world of Democratic politics, where
billionaires and bloggers are battling politicians and
consultants over the future of a once-great party.
Beginning with the devastating election of 2004 and ending
with an unexpected triumph in the 2006 congressional
elections and the run-up to the 2008 campaign, Bai's book
follows such memorable power brokers as Howard Dean, the
billionaire George Soros, the union leader Andy Stern, the
blogger Markos Moulitsas, and the leaders of moveon.org as
they vie for control of the new Democratic landscape. In the
pages of The Argument, we are introduced to these activists
not just as political figures but as fascinating and flawed
characters-ordinary people motivated by ideology or ambition
or even personal tragedy.
At stake is the future of
the Democratic Party and, quite possibly, of American
politics itself. At a time when assorted pundits offer their
own prescriptions for Democratic success in the 2008
presidential election, Bai uses rich narrative and vivid
portraits to illuminate the party's challenges. In scene
after scene from around the country-with union bosses in
Chicago, with Dean in Alaska, with movie stars in Hollywood
and financiers in New York-Bai reveals a movement that is
learning how to win again, even as it struggles to
articulate a compelling argument for progressive government
in a confusing new century.
Readers of The
Argument will recognize the unsparing insight and gift
for storytelling that have made Matt Bai one of the
country's most widely read observers of the American
political scene-and its most trusted authority on the
Democratic Party.
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