Being Right Is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn from Conservative Success - Hardcover

Waldman, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471789607 ISBN 13: 9780471789604

Publisher: Trade Paper Press, 2006

Synopsis

""Waldman's book is terrific-good sense mustered with evidence, well argued, and sharply written to boot. I agree fervently with almost everything he writes. This is the indispensable book for the 2006 elections.""
--Todd Gitlin, author of The Sixties and The Twilight of Common Dreams
""A well-sourced, partisan blueprint for undoing Republican control of the nation.""
--Publishers Weekly
""Here's the ticket for Democrats to get back in power: read this book, understand what it means to be a true American progressive, expose conservatives as the mean elitists they are, get tough, and fight back. Nobody paints the strengths of progressives and the weaknesses of conservatives like Paul Waldman.""
--Bill Press, author How the Republicans Stole Christmas
""With clarity and passion, Paul Waldman demonstrates persuasively that the forces of the right have not 'taken over the country, ' as the media often lazily put it. They've only taken over politics. That can be reversed, and Waldman shows exactly how.""
--Michael Tomasky, Editor, the American Prospect

About this title

About the Author

PAUL WALDMAN is a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, and a founder of gadflyer.com. His writing has also been featured in the ""American Prospect,"" ""The Washington Post,"" ""The Washington Monthly,"" and ""Salon.com,"" as well as many scholarly journals.

From the Back Cover

""Waldman's book is terrific-good sense mustered with evidence, well argued, and sharply written to boot. I agree fervently with almost everything he writes. This is the indispensable book for the 2006 elections.""
--Todd Gitlin, author of ""The Sixties and The Twilight of Common Dreams""

""A well-sourced, partisan blueprint for undoing Republican control of the nation.""
--""Publishers Weekly""

""Here's the ticket for Democrats to get back in power: read this book, understand what it means to be a true American progressive, expose conservatives as the mean elitists they are, get tough, and fight back. Nobody paints the strengths of progressives and the weaknesses of conservatives like Paul Waldman.""
--Bill Press, author ""How the Republicans Stole Christmas""

""With clarity and passion, Paul Waldman demonstrates persuasively that the forces of the right have not 'taken over the country, ' as the media often lazily put it. They've only taken over politics. That can be reversed, and Waldman shows exactly how.""
--Michael Tomasky, Editor, the ""American Prospect""

From the Inside Flap

The 2006 elections could be a major turning point for the Democratic Party, but they'll need more than poor poll numbers for Bush to build a new progressive majority. What will it take to break the right wing's stranglehold on power? Can progressives turn the tables by understanding and adapting the highly successful strategies and tactics developed by the right?

In Being Right Is Not Enough, political analyst Paul Waldman offers Democrats and progressives a clear-eyed, multifaceted strategy for victory in elections, policy debates, and the fundamental battle between progressivism and conservatism. The time has come, he says, for progressives to borrow several pages from the right-wing playbook and beat them at their own game. The book outlines an exhaustive list of things progressives must do, and do soon, including:

• Create a single progressive movement—not a collection of interest groups—devoted to the twin goals of fighting conservatism and advancing a progressive worldview
• Agree on a core set of progressive principles and create a progressive master narrative that unifies them
• Understand that political success comes not from the details of policy plans but from the communication of character and values
• Stop pandering to the voters who dislike them the most and find new ways to create a lasting majority
• Devote themselves not to short-term victories but to a long-term vision of the progressive America they want to create—even if it takes decades to get there
• Stop worrying about whether the elite media approve of them
• Stop being timid and become warriors for their cause

Waldman provides more than a list of suggestions. He specifies techniques and strategies aimed at increasing the number of progressive commentators and pundits in the media, identifying strengths and weaknesses that should guide progressive strategies in the future, and defining progressive ideology in terms that all Americans will embrace.

Just what the pollster ordered for the Democratic Party, Being Right Is Not Enough provides a hard-hitting, insightful, and pragmatic vision for progressives of every stripe who are tired of losing and ready for victory.

Reviews

A senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the former associate director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Waldman briefly indulges in matter-of-fact self-blame while lauding the Right for its hard work and cheering on future Democratic activism in this well-sourced, partisan blueprint for undoing Republican control of the nation. Let's "inaugurate the age of the progressive warrior," Waldman (Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn't Tell You) trumpets, proposing that Democrats take a cue from their opponents in order to do so. He maps out a rhetorical strategy, a "thematically unified master narrative" in answer to the "four pillars of conservatism": low taxes, small government, strong defense and traditional social values. "We're all in it together" is Waldman's progressive answer, a maxim that encompasses five principles: "government that works for everyone, opportunity for everyone, security for everyone, individual freedom for everyone, progress for everyone." Under each principle one can fit any topical issue (e.g., corporate accountability), Waldman explains. He details more grounded, if less conventional, strategies as well: attract moderate voters to the Democratic Party by attacking moderate Republican politicians instead of radical conservatives, and focus on the Southwest instead of the South. Daunted progressives may take heart in Waldman's pragmatic if untested ideas. (May)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Trade Paper Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0471789607
• ISBN 13: 9780471789604
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 266