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The Ferocious Power Struggle in American Politics
Simon and Schuster
March 2007
On Sale: March 20, 2007
304 pages ISBN: 0743262069 EAN: 9780743262064 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Political
Divided America tells the biggest story in
American politics today. It's the story behind the emergence
of a ferocious power struggle between conservative
Republicans and liberal Democrats that is tearing the
country's politics apart. Drawing on
extensive polling data and close analyses of presidential,
senatorial, and congressional elections over the past fifty
years, two eminent political scientists show, for the first
time, how partisan warfare has reduced both major parties to
minority status and locked them into fierce power struggles
in each election cycle, thereby making America less stable
and more difficult to govern. Because the two
major parties are now evenly balanced in the national
electorate, control of the White House and Congress can
shift dramatically with each election. Neither Republicans
nor Democrats operate with any "lock" on the presidency,
House of Representatives, or Senate, as demonstrated by the
2006 congressional elections. Earl Black and
Merle Black examine the party battles as they've played
themselves out in the nation's five principal geographic
areas. Each party has developed two important regional
strongholds, as exemplified in the 2004 elections, when
Republicans won all the electoral votes and sizable
majorities of House and Senate seats in the South and
Mountain/Plains states while the Democrats won almost all
the electoral votes and large majorities in the Northeast
and the Pacific Rim states. The Midwest is the perennial
swing region. The authors describe the enormous
changes that have occurred in the electorates of each region
over the past fifty years -- with emphasis on how the size
and partisan affiliations of key groups have changed -- and
show how these transformations have generated today's
unstable two-party battles. Although the relentlessly
competitive nature of modern American politics is generally
appreciated, the regional causes underlying this new state
of affairs are not well understood. Because neither
Democrats nor Republicans can produce national majorities
simply by sweeping their regional strongholds, they are
locked in a fierce power struggle in each election.
Divided America tells the story of these remarkable
developments in clear, vigorous prose and provides a
pragmatic understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of
each party. For the foreseeable future, each
party will be within striking distance of winning -- or
losing -- political power in every national institution.
Understanding the party battles in America's regions is
vital to understanding how today's losers can become
tomorrow's winners
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