Learning from Loss
The Democrats, 2016–2020
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- 25,99 €
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- 25,99 €
Publisher Description
The Democrats' decision to nominate Joe Biden for 2020 was hardly a fluke but rather a strategic choice by a party that had elevated electability above all other concerns. In Learning from Loss, one of the nation's leading political analysts offers unique insight into the Democratic Party at a moment of uncertainty. Between 2017 and 2020, Seth Masket spoke with Democratic Party activists and followed the behavior of party leaders and donors to learn how the party was interpreting the 2016 election and thinking about a nominee for 2020. Masket traces the persistence of party factions and shows how interpretations of 2016 shaped strategic choices for 2020. Although diverse narratives emerged to explain defeat in 2016 - ranging from a focus on 'identity politics' to concerns about Clinton as a flawed candidate - these narratives collectively cleared the path for Biden.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Masket (The Inevitable Party), a political science professor at the University of Denver, delivers a meticulous and lucidly written analysis of how Democratic insiders came to believe Joe Biden should be the party's candidate in the 2020 presidential election. Countering media portrayals of Biden's victory as a "last-minute fluke," Masket contends that it was the result of a yearslong process of determining what went wrong with Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and how to apply those insights to picking the next candidate. Drawing on surveys, interviews, and polls, he documents a shift by Democratic voters from preferring "issue agreement" to "electability" in a candidate, discusses how party activists learned from the inability of Republican leaders to coalesce around an alternative to Donald Trump, and explores how the widespread (yet inconclusive) narrative that Clinton lost because she focused too much on "identity politics" (and not enough on working-class whites) dampened support for female and Black candidates in the Democratic primary. Masket supports his arguments with a plethora of evidence, though many of his conclusions will be familiar to readers who closely follow political news. Still, this is a thorough rundown of how the Democratic establishment has responded to the shock of losing in 2016.