People thought I was smoking. I hope you are right.
Nobody would believe me until the country was swept by a blue wave in 2018, but not then either. I couldn’t even convince James Carville. So, not until the 2020 blue wave.
I sent my book outline to Thomas Dunne, who was loyal and published nearly all my recent books. He and Stephen S. Power, executive editor at Thomas Dunne Books, came to see me at my office. Tom said he had already copyrighted a title, RIP GOP, which fit what I wanted to write. It was perfect.
Compelled by the moment, I got up at 4:30 most mornings and wrote for hours as a kind of therapy and relief that I was doing my part. I blew past the 70,000 words of my book contract. I met every deadline for the first time in my life. Remarkably, Stephen would send back line edits within a day or two. Something was happening there, too.
I was able to step to a new scale of research and work to influence key players because a cadre of progressive allies were also asking themselves, What more can I do? And they pushed Democracy Corps into areas we could hardly have imagined.
Page Gardner created the Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund and the Voter Participation Center to advocate for the underrepresented, which has come to encompass the rising American electorate—African Americans, Hispanics, millennials, and unmarried women, those whose values and liberties are most under threat as the GOP throws off all limits to hold on to power. With more than a little help from Ron Rosenblith, Gardner pushed her programs to be the most innovative and accountable and challenged us to do the same. Progressive donors invested more than $50 million in her efforts in 2018 alone.
Felicia Wong is president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute, which leveraged the work of Joseph Stiglitz to elevate a bold policy agenda to rewrite the rules of the economy. She understood the big forces that would fight them and how much their policy work needed to be embedded in a narrative and employ messages that could win the public debate. She invested in a sustained, innovative, and engaged program that should have allowed a Democratic presidential candidate to win on the economy.
When President Trump and the Republicans finally passed a bold, shameless tax cut for corporations and the richest and argued they were delivering tax cuts for the middle class and the “greatest economy ever,” it was Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and a force of nature in the labor movement, who said, “I’m in.” They backed a year-long effort to listen to the working people, the supposed beneficiaries, and expose who it really benefited. We branded it as a “tax scam for the rich” and helped campaigns win the economic and tax battle in 2018.
Lori Wallach is director of Global Trade Watch in Public Citizen and stands alone among progressive leaders, understanding how much globalization and our prevailing trade agreements have hurt working people. She bravely fights on, building coalitions finally strong enough to win, and enlisted me in the battle against TPP and to change the renegotiated NAFTA, and listened to my counterintuitive, crazy recommendations. She even made me a believer in the importance of progressives getting the trade issue right or paying a big price at the polls.
James Carville and I founded Democracy Corps nearly twenty years ago, and he pushed for Democracy Corps to conduct research with Republican base voters. It seemed like a mad idea but he asked, “What country would go to war without knowing what’s going on behind enemy lines?” Steven Katzenberg gave us the seed money for the first research, and Steve Bing, who funded us for a decade, allowed us to pay for the research ourselves. That changed fundamentally when Michael Vachon, adviser to Soros Fund Management said, “This work has to happen.”
William and David Harris play a special role in the progressive world that mobilized on so many fronts to confront the danger of Donald Trump. They’ve pressed every day, year on year for a lifetime to see an America free of child poverty. They are relentlessly effective in making progress, and more than anyone they have said, do whatever research you think is right to get a president and Congress that will do the right thing.
Nancy Zdukewicz helped direct Democracy Corps and oversaw all the research it conducted in 2016 and 2018 and coauthored the focus group reports. She assisted in getting my last book, America Ascendant, to press. Henry Hoglund, my project coordinator at Greenberg Research, took over the editorial direction of this book and helped me maintain the quality of the writing as I took the book in so many unexpected directions. Chad Arthur, my lead analyst at Greenberg Research, took over the book in its closing phases, but that meant bringing in our latest research, making the graphs live, and answering every last question of the copy editors. He was joined at the end by Adrian Palau-Tejeda, my new project director, who helped get the book across the finish line.
GQR carries on, led proudly by Anna Greenberg and Jeremy Rosner, offering polling and strategy in the United States and globally. Their professionalism and ethics run deep, and they were my subcontractor for all the surveys and focus groups reported in this book. Many just noticed these changes when Anna became the pollster for presidential candidate John Hickenlooper, that my daughter (and Jeremy) had taken over the firm. Quite proud indeed.
GQR is now led by Chief Operator Officer Lindsey Reynolds, who deftly manages how we partner and maximize our shared legacy. Jade Kish heads human relations and operations for GQR, yet takes responsibility for all my hiring. Dave Rooney is systems administrator at GQR, yet sits calmly at the vortex of my work with ready solutions, keeping my whole team integrated globally.
As with all my books, I only risked giving Rosa and my brother, Edward Greenberg, the whole book to read. Ed is a professor of political science with his own major textbooks in political science, and his comments helped me get to much greater clarity and sooner.
One observation was particularly insightful about our times: Who is your audience? He wrote, “Is it the people and groups that are resisting or the broader group of social and political commentators that usually engage with your work?” It was a smart and revealing question. I wrote this book in a determined frenzy and viewed Democracy Corps’ clients and donors as partners and allies, resisting the Trump presidency. So, throughout the book, I wrote what “we” had concluded and done, rather than “I.”
With Ed and the copy editor’s help, I got back to first person, though it underscores how much Donald Trump has disrupted.
I presented the main argument of this book at a conference, “The Trap of Polarization,” at the Italian Academy at Columbia University, as I was turning in the final manuscript to the publisher. I want to thank Professor Michael Walzer, who was wary of my asserting the need to “destroy” the Republican Party. Before President Trump, our democracy was secure because each party would vacate the White House when it lost an election. Would my goal encourage Trump to refuse to leave?
Actually, I never use the term “destroying” in the book. I am pressing for “shattering” electoral defeats and fractures that allow the Republican Party to be renewed and win again.
I also want to reassure Ece Temelkuran, author of How to Lose a Country, that America is not Turkey. Our country is indeed led by a populist ultranationalist with few self-imposed bounds. He would like nothing better than to hang out with authoritarian thugs like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping and with other ultranationalist populists like Benjamin Netanyahu, Victor Orban, Andrzej Duda, Jair Bolsonaro, and Rodrigo Duterte. But Donald Trump is president because he is leading the Tea Party’s losing battle against the New America. His shattering losses represent the triumph of democratic forces, expanding freedom that heralds a new era of progressive reform.
Our children and their spouses—Kathryn Greenberg and Ari Zentner, Anna Greenberg and Dana Milbank, Jonathan Greenberg and Justine Gardner—each is so engaged, committed, creative, accomplished, ethical, and loving. All joined the Women’s March and accept that this is my first book not dedicated to the family.
Our grandchildren—Paola Milbank, Rigby Zentner, Teo Zentner, Sadie Delicath, Jasper Delicath
, and Augustus Greenberg—are part of this moment, too. They cried when Hillary lost. They stopped telling us to switch off the news. They marched and created their own signs.
This is Rosa’s moment. And we all love her for being such a force of nature who will prove me right about this progressive moment. She is the chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee for Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, and line by line, thread by thread, she is restoring the social safety net. She’s restoring research on gun violence. She is already calling them to account for sabotaging the Affordable Care Act, bailing out nonprofit colleges, separating children from their parents at the border, and hollowing out the Department of Labor. How many of us have fifty million views like her confrontation with Betsy DeVos? It will not be long before the next president is signing into law the bills she has fought for over so many years: equal pay for women, paid family leave, paid sick days, and an expanded young child tax cut that cuts child poverty in half. That is why one of the young, freshmen women on the House floor described her as a “feminist disruptor.”
We are partners in each other’s work, and I love her. Rosa lost her 103-year-old mother last year. Luisa and her husband, Theodore, were also forces of nature and partners who said, never take no for an answer.
We know.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
JULY 1, 2019
NOTES
*Please note the links referenced throughout this work may no longer be active.
INTRODUCTION
1. Pew Research Center, “The Partisan Divide on Political Values Grows Even Wider,” October 5, 2017, http://www.people-press.org/2017/10/05/4-race-immigration-and-discrimination/, accessed July 8, 2018.
2. National web survey of eight likely Republican voters was conducted by Democracy Corps and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner on February 11–16, 2016, using a voter file sample. Likely voters were determined based on whether they voted in 2012 or had registered since and stated intention of voting in 2016. Data is among those who identify as Republicans or independents who lean Republican and vote in Republican primaries or caucuses. Margin of error for the full sample is +/-3.47 percentage points at 95 percent confidence. The five categories of Republicans are mutually exclusive categories determined by respondents’ responses on ideology, religion, frequency of service attendance, strength of Tea Party support, and favorability toward the Tea Party. To ensure that the web survey accurately reflects the national Republican Party, the typologies were weighted to the average for each type from Democracy Corps’s last three national surveys.
3. Fred Hiatt, “Stephen K. Bannon Has Won,” The Washington Post, June 17, 2018; Jonathan Freedland, “Explaining Trump, Brexit and Other Expressions of Nationalism,” The New York Times Book Review, December 18, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/books/review/john-b-judis-nationalist-revival.html, accessed May 3, 2019; E.J. Dionne, “Is There Such a Thing as Progressive Nationalism,” The American Prospect, April 1, 2019, https://prospect.org/article/there-such-thing-progressive-nationalism, accessed April 2, 2019; John B. Judis, The Nationalist Revival: Trade, Immigration, and the Revolt Against Globalization, (New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2018).
4. Tara Golshan, “Trump said he wouldn’t cut Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare. His 2020 budget cuts all 3,” Vox, March 12, 2019, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/12/18260271/trump-medicaid-social-security-medicare-budget-cuts, accessed on March 26, 2019; Paul N. Van De Water, Joel Friedman, and Sharon Parrott, “2020 Trump Budget: Disturbing Vision,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, March 11, 2019, https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/2020-trump-budget-a-disturbing-vision, accessed on March 26, 2019.
5. Juliet Eilperin, Josh Dawsey, Seung Min Kim, “‘It’s way too many’: As vacancies pile up in Trump Administration, Senators Grow Concerned,” The Washington Post, February 4, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/its-way-too-many-as-vacancies-pile-up-in-trump-administration-senators-grow-concerned/2019/02/03/c570eb94-24b2-11e9-ad53-824486280311_story.html?utm_term=.ef0119824f25, accessed May 3, 2019.
6. cf. http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/01/22/tomi-lahren-final-thoughts-blasting-womens-march-linda-sarsour-mean-girls, http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/01/20/womens-march-are-watching-movement-or-just-group-therapy-for-trump-haters.html.
1 THE NEW AMERICA
1. Pew Research Center, “About Four-in-Ten of the World’s Migrants Live in the U.S. or Europe,” June 22, 2016, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/22/about-four-in-ten-of-the-worlds-migrants-live-in-the-u-s-or-europe/.
2. Sabrina Traverse, “U.S. Has Highest Share of Foreign-Born Since 1910, with More Coming from Asia,” The New York Times, September 13, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/us/census-foreign-population.html, accessed January 12, 2019.
3. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics survey, series ID CES3000000001, manufacturing industry, U.S. Department of Labor, extracted February 6, 2018, available at http://www.bls.gov/ces/.
4. Jonathan Freedland, “Explaining Trump, Brexit and Other Expressions of Nationalism,” The New York Times Book Review, December 18, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/books/review/john-b-judis-nationalist-revival.html, accessed May 3, 2019.
5. J. D. Vance would go on to found Revolution of the Rest: https://www.revolution.com/entity/rotr/, a VC seed firm focused on investing in early stage ventures not located in New York, Boston, or Silicon Valley.
6. Pew Research Center, “Key Findings About American Life in Urban, Suburban, and Rural Areas,” http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/22/key-findings-about-american-life-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-areas/, accessed July 8, 2018.
7. Ibid., accessed May 22, 2018.
8. Robert Putnam and David Campbell, American Grace (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), Kindle location 1945, 331, 1500–1571; Robert P. Jones, Daniel Cox, and Juhem Navarro-Rivera, “A Shifting Landscape,” Public Religion Research Institute, February 26, 2014, p. 11. Mark J. Perry, “Stunning College Degree Gap: Women Have Earned Almost 10 Million More College Degrees Than Men Since 1982,” American Enterprise Institute, May 13, 2013; Wendy Wang, Kim Parker, and Paul Taylor, “Breadwinner Moms,” Pew Research Center, May 29, 2013, p. 6; Pew Research Center analysis of Decennial Census (1960–2000) and American Community Survey data (2008, 2010), cited in “Barely Half of U.S. Adults Are Married—a Record Low,” Pew Research Center, December 14, 2011, pp. 1–2; Leigh Gallagher, The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving (New York: Penguin Group, 2013), pp. 19, 146.
9. Survey of 2,511 adults nationwide by Pew Research Center, November 29–December 5, 2012, cited in “Modern Parenthood,” Pew Research Center, March 14, 2013, pp. 9–14; “Women in the Labor Force: A Databook,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Report 1040, February 2013, p. 15; Wendy Wang, Kim Parker, and Paul Taylor, “Breadwinner Moms,” Pew Research Center, May 29, 2013, pp. 1, 4.
10. Data from David Autor and Melanie Wasserman, “Wayward Sons: The Emerging Gender Gap in Labor Markets and Education,” Third Way, March 2013, p. 12, presented in “Diverging Fortunes for Men and Women,” The New York Times, March 20, 2013; Stephanie Coontz, “How Can We Help Men? By Helping Women,” The New York Times, January 11, 2014.
11. Stanley Greenberg, “Unlearning the Lessons of Hillbilly Elegy,” The American Prospect, January 8, 2019, https://prospect.org/article/unlearning-lessons-hillbilly-elegy-0, accessed January 12, 2019.
12. Survey of 2,002 adults nationwide by Pew Research Center, October 7–27, 2013, reported in “On Pay Gap, Millennial Women Near Parity—for Now,” pp. 8, 29.
13. Ibid.
14. Ron Brownstein, “Millennials to Pass Baby Boomers as Largest Voter-Eligible Age Group, and What It Means,” July 25, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/25/politics/brownstein-millennials-largest-voter-group-baby-boomers/index.html; Michael Dimock, “Defining generations: Where Millennials end and Generation Z begins,” Pew Research Cent
er, January 17, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/, accessed May 3, 2019.
15. Pew Research Center, “The Partisan Divide on Political Values Grows Even Wider,” October 5, 2017, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/02/13/8-facts-about-love-and-marriage/.
16. Survey of 1,821 adults with an oversample of eighteen- to thirty-three-year-olds by Pew Research Center, February 14–23, 2014, cited in “Millennials in Adulthood,” Pew Research Center, March 7, 2014, p. 14; Michael Dimock, “Defining generations: Where Millennials end and Generation Z begins,” Pew Research Center, January 17, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/, accessed May 3, 2019.
17. Joe Cortright, “The Young and Restless and the Nation’s Cities,” City Report, City Observatory, October 2014, p. 1.
18. Kaepernick filed a grievance against the league alleging that NFL team owners worked together to keep him off the field in the wake of his kneeling protest. The NFL denied that this happened, but reached a confidential settlement with Kaepernick and another player, Eric Reid, in 2019; https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/9/6/17820158/colin-kaepernick-eric-reid-collusion-grievance-protest-settlement.
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