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We've Got People: From Jesse Jackson to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the End of Big Money and the Rise of a Movement
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may seem like she came from nowhere, but the movement that propelled her to office – and to global political stardom – has been building for 30 years. We’ve Got People is the story of that movement, which first exploded into public view with the largely forgotten presidential run of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a campaign that came dangerously close to winning. With the party and the nation at a crossroads, this timely and original book offers new insight into how we’ve gotten where we are – and where we're headed.
433 pages, Paperback
First published May 23, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
March 13, 2020
Propulsive and full of insight, We've Got People: From Jesse Jackson to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the End of Big Money and the Rise of a Movement vividly sketches the fall and rise of the left in America since Reagan’s election. Across two wide-ranging parts, each consisting of several fast-paced, pithy chapters, Ryan Grim tracks how and why the dream of a multiracial, multigenerational progressive alliance failed to materialize for decades in the face of conservative minority rule and wildly unpopular policies. He later considers how, in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the internet has enabled leftist campaigns to successfully implement effective grassroots-based funding strategies, in addition to popularizing amongst activist groups non-hierarchical organizational structures in which power is radically dispersed. Grim’s thesis is incisive, and he imaginatively argues his case.
September 7, 2020
It's fine, but the politics are HuffPo bullshit.
The word "Progressive", in Grim's hands, has no meaning beyond "Not a Republican, or incumbent male Democrat." If Clinton's a Progressive, I'm a freaking Posadist.
If yer to the right of the DSA - bugger off.
Seems to miss the general idea that the DCCC isn't subservient to for profit corporations, it IS one. Literally. It is a corporation, that makes money; that's it's structural form and function.
Grim throws some shade at Daou, which is hilarious reading this now that Daou is well to Grim's Left, or the left of this book anyhow,t hat "Readers may be too young to remember Daou being anti-establishment" or whatever comment is just priceless. Not Grim's fault things change tho, just funny.
I'm getting real tired of HuffPo and TYT. This read HuffPo, thru and thru. Tho, you do gotta respect those footnotes, his footnote game is on freaking point, man.
Like I said, it's fine, the journalism is good and interesting to read over, pick up a few things I missed the first time around, stuff. But the Op-Ed is . . . so bad. I re-listened to the Chapo episode he was on cause I was like "How did Matt not just tear into this guy?" Short answer, in the interview he mostly stuck to"Emmanuel is a cowardly bully". Which, like, fair enough. He didn't say "Progresive" 50 times, and apply it to everyone from Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton to Bernie freaking Sanders.
Dammit, man, freaking liberals. Excuse me, Progressives.
To be fair - nothing I say here should really reflect on Grim, I'm sure he's lovely; I just don't like the book much cause it's kinda liberal and I'm in some kind of ennui, bordering on blackpill breakdown - I'll prolly feel better after the election and that %#$!@ hope is gone.
Edit: Oh, and I got, if anything, angrier following this review in November 2019, for historically obvious reasons basically reducible as "Hope didn't leave, it was assassinated, and its home burned to the ground."
The word "Progressive", in Grim's hands, has no meaning beyond "Not a Republican, or incumbent male Democrat." If Clinton's a Progressive, I'm a freaking Posadist.
If yer to the right of the DSA - bugger off.
Seems to miss the general idea that the DCCC isn't subservient to for profit corporations, it IS one. Literally. It is a corporation, that makes money; that's it's structural form and function.
Grim throws some shade at Daou, which is hilarious reading this now that Daou is well to Grim's Left, or the left of this book anyhow,t hat "Readers may be too young to remember Daou being anti-establishment" or whatever comment is just priceless. Not Grim's fault things change tho, just funny.
I'm getting real tired of HuffPo and TYT. This read HuffPo, thru and thru. Tho, you do gotta respect those footnotes, his footnote game is on freaking point, man.
Like I said, it's fine, the journalism is good and interesting to read over, pick up a few things I missed the first time around, stuff. But the Op-Ed is . . . so bad. I re-listened to the Chapo episode he was on cause I was like "How did Matt not just tear into this guy?" Short answer, in the interview he mostly stuck to"Emmanuel is a cowardly bully". Which, like, fair enough. He didn't say "Progresive" 50 times, and apply it to everyone from Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton to Bernie freaking Sanders.
Dammit, man, freaking liberals. Excuse me, Progressives.
To be fair - nothing I say here should really reflect on Grim, I'm sure he's lovely; I just don't like the book much cause it's kinda liberal and I'm in some kind of ennui, bordering on blackpill breakdown - I'll prolly feel better after the election and that %#$!@ hope is gone.
Edit: Oh, and I got, if anything, angrier following this review in November 2019, for historically obvious reasons basically reducible as "Hope didn't leave, it was assassinated, and its home burned to the ground."
September 30, 2023
Normally (for a lit guy, to my discredit) a history of political thought/economics guy, but this deep dive into the weeds of American electoral and activist politics ca. 1972-2020 was utterly thrilling (as well as for a Canadian tourist in need of a Beltway Baedekker, most illuminating). I hope to write about it more soon.
November 6, 2019
There are two polar sides within the leftward end of the American political spectrum, according to Grim. There is a centrist, corporate faction particularly within the Democratic Party that seeks a path to power through compromise, incrementalism and a strategy of appealing to a perceived "middle" by running Republican-lite candidates in swing districts. This faction is personified by the person of Rahm Emanuel, who plays the part of villain in much of this book.
The other faction is a more liberal, essentially populist faction that, starting with the presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson, has sought a path to power through a strategy of growing the electorate by appealing to the great mass of nonvoters. That has meant making explicit appeals to issues that energize young people and communities of color like criminal justice reform, action on climate change, and tackling college debt.
Obviously, there is a whole spectrum in between, but over the course of the book Grim charts the push and pull of the two factions. The latter largely laid dormant during the Clinton years, only to emerge again in the digital age in the campaign of Howard Dean. That small-dollar, small donor strategy wound up powering Barack Obama to the White House. It was then basically strangled in the cradle when Obama's White House, led by Emanuel, made the decision to dismantle the grass-roots network in favor of a more traditional strategy of ruling from above.
Much of the fecklessness of the Obama years can thus be traced back to the decision to abandon the political lens that propelled him to office in favor of making what we can see in hindsight were essentially useless overtures to bipartisanship and political unity.
Nowhere is that more obvious than in the Clinton campaign of 2016 -- which essentially took the very worst, least effective parts of the Obama White House and tried to turn them into a winning electoral strategy. The election of President Trump can be seen less as an endorsement of his brand of politics than a rejection of the centrist vision of the Democratic Party.
It's why you saw such a storm of energy behind Bernie Sanders in 2016, followed by surprising victories by politicians like AOC in 2018. All the energy is in the leftward end of the American political spectrum and with the construction of electoral machinery that can drive candidates based on a groundswell of small-dollar donations instead of corporate dollars, the time has never been more ripe to seize the reins of power with that populist message.
But as Grim grimly extols in the epilogue, Democratic primary voters are susceptible to centrist arguments about electability. And there remains a strong possibility that the grassroots potential on the ground in 2020 is squandered on an old-guard, centrist candidate like Joe Biden who wouldn't be able to use it effectively. Or perhaps worse, who would use it just effectively enough to win and set up an even more ruthless reactionary in 2024.
It's compelling story that Grim tells with on-the-ground anecdotes from his day to day job as a Capitol Hill reporter for Huffington Post and The Intercept. While occasionally the minutiae of the this campaign or that campaign slows things down, Grim's writing is at its strongest when he's explaining the motivations of otherwise opaque power brokers like Emanuel, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi.
Why did Diane Feinstein REALLY sit on Christine Blasey Ford's letter? When did EMILYs List become so useless? Is Nancy Pelosi a sap for letting the public option die or a hero for saving the ACA altogether?
Grim offers the kind of on-the-ground insights that are often hard to stitch together in day to day reporting. It's more like the kind of stuff you'd learn talking to a Hill reporter over a beer. And I find that pitch pretty compelling.
The other faction is a more liberal, essentially populist faction that, starting with the presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson, has sought a path to power through a strategy of growing the electorate by appealing to the great mass of nonvoters. That has meant making explicit appeals to issues that energize young people and communities of color like criminal justice reform, action on climate change, and tackling college debt.
Obviously, there is a whole spectrum in between, but over the course of the book Grim charts the push and pull of the two factions. The latter largely laid dormant during the Clinton years, only to emerge again in the digital age in the campaign of Howard Dean. That small-dollar, small donor strategy wound up powering Barack Obama to the White House. It was then basically strangled in the cradle when Obama's White House, led by Emanuel, made the decision to dismantle the grass-roots network in favor of a more traditional strategy of ruling from above.
Much of the fecklessness of the Obama years can thus be traced back to the decision to abandon the political lens that propelled him to office in favor of making what we can see in hindsight were essentially useless overtures to bipartisanship and political unity.
Nowhere is that more obvious than in the Clinton campaign of 2016 -- which essentially took the very worst, least effective parts of the Obama White House and tried to turn them into a winning electoral strategy. The election of President Trump can be seen less as an endorsement of his brand of politics than a rejection of the centrist vision of the Democratic Party.
It's why you saw such a storm of energy behind Bernie Sanders in 2016, followed by surprising victories by politicians like AOC in 2018. All the energy is in the leftward end of the American political spectrum and with the construction of electoral machinery that can drive candidates based on a groundswell of small-dollar donations instead of corporate dollars, the time has never been more ripe to seize the reins of power with that populist message.
But as Grim grimly extols in the epilogue, Democratic primary voters are susceptible to centrist arguments about electability. And there remains a strong possibility that the grassroots potential on the ground in 2020 is squandered on an old-guard, centrist candidate like Joe Biden who wouldn't be able to use it effectively. Or perhaps worse, who would use it just effectively enough to win and set up an even more ruthless reactionary in 2024.
It's compelling story that Grim tells with on-the-ground anecdotes from his day to day job as a Capitol Hill reporter for Huffington Post and The Intercept. While occasionally the minutiae of the this campaign or that campaign slows things down, Grim's writing is at its strongest when he's explaining the motivations of otherwise opaque power brokers like Emanuel, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi.
Why did Diane Feinstein REALLY sit on Christine Blasey Ford's letter? When did EMILYs List become so useless? Is Nancy Pelosi a sap for letting the public option die or a hero for saving the ACA altogether?
Grim offers the kind of on-the-ground insights that are often hard to stitch together in day to day reporting. It's more like the kind of stuff you'd learn talking to a Hill reporter over a beer. And I find that pitch pretty compelling.
July 23, 2019
Good historical overview of the split in the Dem party. Somewhat highly focused on recent events, as opposed to the historical through-lines, which I was not expecting. Anyone who cares about electoral politics and considered themselves a "progressive" or a "leftist" Democrat, but wonders why Democrats seem dead-set against actually doing anything progressive should read this. Pairs well with Listen, Liberal by Thomas Frank imo
April 26, 2021
Ryan's a friend and I'm completely biased, but what he does a good job at is telling a very specific story but never leaving the overarching narrative behind - that Democrats grew alienated from their own voters after the 1970s and 80s, that they aligned with big money and doubted that popular coalitions could even plausibly exist, and that a new generation (not necessarily younger) getting involved in politics starting in the 2000s rebelled sharply against this, creating fault lines within the party that still exist today. Everything filters through this lens, and animates the storytelling. And it's the right lens.
June 6, 2019
Couldn't put it down -- finished in less than a week. Grim's reporting on the insurgent left is and has always been "must read" stuff, but unlike most beat reporters, it's somehow better in long-form, with a narrative and historical context. Very well written, incredibly frank interviews from people of all political stripes (at least on the left and center-left), and just incredibly compelling. Any leftist/progressive will be absolutely infuriated, but at the same time, will be left with a sense that -- maybe, this time, things will be different?
July 25, 2019
Rahm Emanuel sucks way worse than I knew.
August 17, 2019
Wow, Rahm Emanuel sucks ass!
September 21, 2019
A+ but not enough Bernie 😄
December 26, 2022
November 8th 2016 - a day of reckoning for the Democratic Party. The defeat of Hilary Clinton to a celebrity demagogue was embarrassing in itself, but effectively allowing all branches of government to fall to a uniquely unscrupulous Republican administration was an unmitigated disaster. It didn’t have to be this way. The DNC could have backed their own maverick, Bernie Sanders (I know, fat chance), his remarkable first run for the nomination has dictated policy discussion in the 2020 Presidential primaries so far. Indeed, polls show his flagship policies are popular with the majority of American people and he continues to poll significantly over Donald Trump. Instead DNC operatives worked against him, effectively rigging the primary for their golden girl. The perception of Hilary as an elite, corporate-friendly and therefore untrustworthy candidate was essential in votes redirecting to Trump, who despite also being blatantly corrupt, promised to "drain the swamp”. The American working class issued a clarion rebuke to the Democratic establishment.
When did the Democratic Party start prioritising money over representing the people? Ryan Grim traces this trajectory with explorative detail in the brilliant We've Got People. Indicated in the subtitle, this is an old story that goes back to 1988. The Rev. Jesse Jackson almost clinched the Democratic Presidential candidacy against Michael Dukakis, who was favoured as more 'electable' by leaders (he would go on to be trounced by H.W. Bush). Nevertheless, the forgotten legacy was Jackson's invigorating ‘Rainbow Coalition’ grassroots campaign. Thousands of new voters across the country were inspired by many of the policy positions espoused by progressives like Sanders today: single-payer healthcare, gay rights, gender pay equity, reparations for descendents of slaves, an end to the drug war.
Barack Obama built up a similar campaign in 2008 talking a big progressive game, yet, as Grim shows, his legacy is greatly undermined by Rahm Emanuel's corporate-friendly direction as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and later Obama's chief of staff. Emanuel claims to have regained the house for the Democrats in 2006 yet packed it with conservative Democrats who consistently voted against Obama's agenda. 'Triple Rainbow', one of many fascinating chapters in the opening book, focuses on the struggle by grassroots progressive groups to force the Obama administration to move on LGBT rights, specifically the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. Ultimately waiting 2 years for progress, the clear frustration at the Obama admin's cooperative incrementalist strategy would have implications towards added disillusionment for Hilary's nomination.
Grim turns to hope in the second book, providing significant insights on the contemporary progressive insurgency which is going from strength to strength. One of the biggest superstars is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose underdog victory over Joe Crowley in the Democratic primaries is an exemplary event. Whether it's uncovering the scandalous accusations of Brett Kavanaugh or examining the inner workings of Betomania, Grim's perspicacious reporting is brimming with interesting details and juicy personal quotes from intimate players.
And We've Got People couldn't come at a more important time. Pelosi's feckless leadership of the House is in stark contrast to an increasingly impassioned grassroots, uncorked by a misogynist, racist dotard in office. Despite regaining control after the 2018 mid-terms, Pelosi continues to abet Trump by rebuffing calls for impeachment proceedings and even going so far as to enable - signing off a bill that gives a blank check to jail children on the Mexican border (a full-blown disaster). Pelosi prefers to reserve her patronising, pithy remarks for the young progressive members of her party - AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley - those arguing for an uncompromising approach to solve big problems. Grim's theory is sound, Democratic leadership is stuck in the past. We need change.
When did the Democratic Party start prioritising money over representing the people? Ryan Grim traces this trajectory with explorative detail in the brilliant We've Got People. Indicated in the subtitle, this is an old story that goes back to 1988. The Rev. Jesse Jackson almost clinched the Democratic Presidential candidacy against Michael Dukakis, who was favoured as more 'electable' by leaders (he would go on to be trounced by H.W. Bush). Nevertheless, the forgotten legacy was Jackson's invigorating ‘Rainbow Coalition’ grassroots campaign. Thousands of new voters across the country were inspired by many of the policy positions espoused by progressives like Sanders today: single-payer healthcare, gay rights, gender pay equity, reparations for descendents of slaves, an end to the drug war.
Barack Obama built up a similar campaign in 2008 talking a big progressive game, yet, as Grim shows, his legacy is greatly undermined by Rahm Emanuel's corporate-friendly direction as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and later Obama's chief of staff. Emanuel claims to have regained the house for the Democrats in 2006 yet packed it with conservative Democrats who consistently voted against Obama's agenda. 'Triple Rainbow', one of many fascinating chapters in the opening book, focuses on the struggle by grassroots progressive groups to force the Obama administration to move on LGBT rights, specifically the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. Ultimately waiting 2 years for progress, the clear frustration at the Obama admin's cooperative incrementalist strategy would have implications towards added disillusionment for Hilary's nomination.
Grim turns to hope in the second book, providing significant insights on the contemporary progressive insurgency which is going from strength to strength. One of the biggest superstars is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose underdog victory over Joe Crowley in the Democratic primaries is an exemplary event. Whether it's uncovering the scandalous accusations of Brett Kavanaugh or examining the inner workings of Betomania, Grim's perspicacious reporting is brimming with interesting details and juicy personal quotes from intimate players.
And We've Got People couldn't come at a more important time. Pelosi's feckless leadership of the House is in stark contrast to an increasingly impassioned grassroots, uncorked by a misogynist, racist dotard in office. Despite regaining control after the 2018 mid-terms, Pelosi continues to abet Trump by rebuffing calls for impeachment proceedings and even going so far as to enable - signing off a bill that gives a blank check to jail children on the Mexican border (a full-blown disaster). Pelosi prefers to reserve her patronising, pithy remarks for the young progressive members of her party - AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley - those arguing for an uncompromising approach to solve big problems. Grim's theory is sound, Democratic leadership is stuck in the past. We need change.
November 20, 2019
A very interesting story, but very poorly written and/or edited. I got so frustrated I couldn't make it out of the second chapter.
March 2, 2020
From historically independent-minded political reporter Ryan Grim comes a tale of missed opportunities and fleeting glimpses of potential in the political fortunes of the Democratic party in the US of the past 40 years. In a lush, almost excessively-detailed series of electoral and legislative cautionary tales, Grim marshals an impressive amount of experience and data to make the case that the big-money backlash against popular movement-driven liberalism, which started in the mid-1970s and showed itself most dramatically in Reaganism and the Republican congressional wave of 1994, instilled in the Nancy Pelosis and Rahm Emmanuels a deeply, fundamentally-flawed conventional wisdom that has again and again stifled the grassroots energy that could have halted our slide toward ever greater inequality, the corruption of our political system, and the ecological calamity we now face. The insidious idea: that the truly wise and pragmatic way to advocate for working people is to court corporate power by only advocating for the most meager, incremental change possible. Grim effectively shows instance after instance of this old canard leading democratic party leadership to work at cross-purposes with the party's base. This has meant rejecting the involvement of movement organizations that one would think would be natural allies in favor of an inside-track politics that has resulted again and again in ineffective policy outcomes and an inability to activate the energy of people power that at its best, could be the Democratic party's answer to the Republicans' embrace of the interests of billionaires and sociopathic industries, and the party's path back to power after a decades-long slide. Fundamentally, this book is a pragmatic and principled call for the Democratic party to again become true to its name and embrace the sometimes messy, not always controllable will of the poor and working-class people that comprise the vast majority of who our government exists to serve. It does at times read slowly due to the sheer level of journalistic detail (I might advise skipping the many footnotes) but will be a valuable trove of sobering stories for me to break out in the future to share with those still wedded to the destructive conventional wisdom of "moderation" and "electability". It's important that more Americans understand just how wide the gulf between self-image and reality can be when it comes to well-intentioned people whose career interests depend on loyalty and patronage.
January 19, 2020
This could have been an excellent book if it had better editing. Grim’s insights and arguments, which are the best part of the book, get lost in a narrative that is all over the place. I found his frequent use of long, borderline incoherent quotations from various politicians to be especially annoying. That being said, I’m happy I read it because it has valuable content, even if it wasn’t an enjoyable read. The chapters at the end that describe the rise of AOC were my favorite part.
My biggest takeaway from this book is that politicians, no matter how progressive they claim to be, rarely move on progressive legislation unless pressured heavily by a mass movement below from below. It was true of Lincoln and LBJ, and what Grim shows is that it was also true of the Obama administration.
Some things I learned:
- I never knew the details of Jesse Jackson’s rainbow coalition. There is a lot to be learned from it politically and historically.
- Rahm Emanuel sucks way more than I previously thought. An absolute poison in the Democratic Party and to Obama’s administration.
- I didn’t realize that both Clinton and Obama ran in 2008 on platforms that were against gay marriage. And it took a lot of pressure in the form of grassroots organizing and protests to get the Obama administration to support gay marriage.
My biggest takeaway from this book is that politicians, no matter how progressive they claim to be, rarely move on progressive legislation unless pressured heavily by a mass movement below from below. It was true of Lincoln and LBJ, and what Grim shows is that it was also true of the Obama administration.
Some things I learned:
- I never knew the details of Jesse Jackson’s rainbow coalition. There is a lot to be learned from it politically and historically.
- Rahm Emanuel sucks way more than I previously thought. An absolute poison in the Democratic Party and to Obama’s administration.
- I didn’t realize that both Clinton and Obama ran in 2008 on platforms that were against gay marriage. And it took a lot of pressure in the form of grassroots organizing and protests to get the Obama administration to support gay marriage.
May 16, 2021
An exciting journalistic account of the rise of the American progressive movement from Jesse Jackson in the 1980's to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the 2010's. In Grim's account, Rahm Emanuel emerges as the arch-villain who led the Democrats astray by taking money from big corporations in order to fight the Reaganites. Not only did this program disconnect Establishment Democrats from the ground, but it also delayed the alignment of the Democrats with their natural constituencies, i.e. the working class and the rainbow coalition of various minorities, thus producing Trumpism. Grim describes his book as a second draft of history, but to my mind it is very close, perhaps too close, to journalism's first draft. It is impossible to tell history's verdict on the current progressive moment. Grim's optimism makes me feel anxious.
January 25, 2021
Ryan Grim tells a good, comprehensive story with a lot of valuable context and history for recent events most readers probably remember well. It didn't leave me convinced that realigning the Democratic Party into a true working class party is actually possible, but I think it makes a strong case that the movement within the party has made a real, positive difference and that even resistance liberals could be worth working with. It will be interesting and important to see where this movement goes now that Joe Biden is president.
January 1, 2020
Actually did not know as much as I did. Made a great case for how much of a hack and ghoul rahm Emmanuel is. Learned a lot about the experimentation with tactics all the new organizers deployed. Also cleared a lot of misconceptions about the bevy of new Democratic candidates running for office after 2016. It has also painted Beto o’rourke in a far more sympathetic light than I had expected, as well as detailing just how transformative and disruptive AOC’s election actually was. A lot of information that anyone could potentially take lessons from.
June 15, 2019
We've Got People offers fascinating insight into the history and machinations of the modern Democratic Party. Ryan Grim lays out his thesis that big money has captured the leaders of the Democratic Party and only a popular movement to take back the party can stave off not only its own destruction but the well-being of the country and the world. This is meticulously supported by a well-sourced narrative that begins with the forgotten presidential run of Jesse Jackson and ends in 2019. Especially strong portions of the book are chapters on Jesse Jackson's campaign, Rahm Emanuel (hiss!) and his influence on the Obama administration, and Nancy Pelosi. Grim's reporting and research offer truly amazing anecdotes about the backroom happenings of the financial crisis and associated bailouts, leadership, and elections. It is both inspiring and infuriating.
My only real critique of the book is there are some lapses in cohesion and arc. For one, there are a few chapters that feel dependent on later chapters. It's difficult because the whole story is intertwined in many ways but, for example, a few characters seem to be fully introduced after they are mentioned. Similarly, some chapters, while interesting, diverge a bit from the central thrust. This is no doubt due to so many individual articles being merged into one book. I'm sure if this book gets a second edition, these little kinks will be ironed out.
If you're interested in this moment in American politics, skip the breathless stories about Trump and read Ryan Grim's book. Then do like many of the heroes of his book and make change happen. The only way out of this mess is through popular democratic mobilization.
My only real critique of the book is there are some lapses in cohesion and arc. For one, there are a few chapters that feel dependent on later chapters. It's difficult because the whole story is intertwined in many ways but, for example, a few characters seem to be fully introduced after they are mentioned. Similarly, some chapters, while interesting, diverge a bit from the central thrust. This is no doubt due to so many individual articles being merged into one book. I'm sure if this book gets a second edition, these little kinks will be ironed out.
If you're interested in this moment in American politics, skip the breathless stories about Trump and read Ryan Grim's book. Then do like many of the heroes of his book and make change happen. The only way out of this mess is through popular democratic mobilization.
December 24, 2019
Really worthwhile and timely chronicling of the tensions and insurgencies within the Democratic Party over all sorts of issues during this long period of Reagan-initiated conservative hegemony in the U.S. Ties a lot of threads together, adds a lot of the original reporting and deep context into things that weren't really fleshed out or highlighted at the time in mainstream news accounts.
It is very focused on electoral politics and readers looking for a more comprehensive account of the incipient left, such as it is, might find the lack of focus on any number of things (antiwar activism, Black Lives Matter, labor struggles, DSA just to name a few) glaring absences. But on its own terms, interesting and just very readable. Oh, also I mostly liked all the footnotes and occasional personal details about the author, but I can see how others might find it a bit much.
It is very focused on electoral politics and readers looking for a more comprehensive account of the incipient left, such as it is, might find the lack of focus on any number of things (antiwar activism, Black Lives Matter, labor struggles, DSA just to name a few) glaring absences. But on its own terms, interesting and just very readable. Oh, also I mostly liked all the footnotes and occasional personal details about the author, but I can see how others might find it a bit much.
July 18, 2019
I really enjoyed large swaths of this book, especially the first and last thirds of the book. I found the middle third of the book, focused primarily on the machinations of the Democratic Party, a total slog. I also felt like the book was either rushed to publication or under-edited or maybe both. Regardless, it's definitely worth your time if you're interested in how utterly toothless the Dems are and how a move left would behoove them, but brace yourself for a few minor annoyances.
August 12, 2019
I really enjoyed this book. Truly essential reading for those seeking to gain a deeper understanding of the crucial ways progressive and left-Dem politics have shaped the current moment. Centrism and “third way”-ism will not save us from Trump or the increasingly unpredictable and downright frightening changes to our global climate. Ryan Grim’s account is an inspiring history and commentary on some potential ways forward.
August 22, 2019
A lively mix of reporting and historic references painting a vivid picture of where the Democratic politics came from and where they are going. I wanted it to just keep on going. Definitely look into Grim's reporting for the intercept, well worth the read.
Also, a big thank you to the author who when Audible couldn't fix an audio issue with the book, got back to me within 15 mins of reaching out via twitter with a fixed mp3 of the broken chapter.
Also, a big thank you to the author who when Audible couldn't fix an audio issue with the book, got back to me within 15 mins of reaching out via twitter with a fixed mp3 of the broken chapter.
September 4, 2019
The amount of ground this book covers is kind of a double-edged sword. On one hand, Grim is very insightful and detailed reporter, and the sheer amount of data and sources to parse makes this a truly remarkable work. On the other hand, there's quite a bit of jumping around between individual congressional races and backroom dealings to the point where certain narratives are abandoned midway to begin new ones.
August 19, 2019
Infuriating, uplifting and ultimately enlightening account of Democratic politics since the 80s. Thorough and unsparing in its critique of Democrat's serial failures and weaknesses. Just good to hear somebody say it. Grim is a great writer, and his history is very approachable and transparent. Immediately signed up for his newsletter after finishing.
September 10, 2019
I couldn't put this book down! I learned so much about recent history, current events, campaigns, Dem politics, etc. So much of it rang so true to my experience (the NY politics, the news I followed, the experiences friends have shared about local Dem groups). It left me feeling hopeful, but it ends with a warning I fully endorse.
October 6, 2019
Absolutely loaded with neat stories and juicy gossip, in a way that can make it feel vaguely encyclopedic or overwhelming at points. A great history of Democratic Party inside politics, especially the ‘80s and ‘90s which were unfamiliar to me. It even made me re-mad about the stuff I remembered, like Obama’s failures and centrist fuckery through to the present.
August 15, 2019
Great book!
All I have to say is this book is a must read. It certainly filled in alot of missing info throughout the years. A suprisently great book that I intend to re-read in the future.
All I have to say is this book is a must read. It certainly filled in alot of missing info throughout the years. A suprisently great book that I intend to re-read in the future.
September 7, 2019
This was a fascinating read. Grim’s knowledge of the inside baseball of DC politics is fantastic. And what separates this from other DC, inside baseball books is his political orientation and his appreciation for social movements. It’s an excellent read, esp on post 2008 politics.
October 30, 2019
Holy shit we've gotta drag all the shitty corproate Dems from power, they're gonna kill us all. The Republicans are of course evil and worse but there's not really any interpretation of things where McConnell has done more to create the present environment of than Rahm or Obama did.
July 3, 2019
So necessary for anyone interested in politics!! What we need right now is real change, and Grim demonstrates to us the importance, and the POWER of movements. Highly recommend.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews