Realigning America

Realigning America PDF Author: R. Hal Williams
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700633871
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book Here

Book Description
The presidential election of 1896 is widely acknowledged as one of only a few that brought about fundamental realignments in American politics. New voting patterns replaced old, a new majority party came to power, and national policies shifted to reflect new realities. R. Hal Williams now presents the first study of that campaign in nearly fifty years, offering fresh interpretations on the victory of Republican William McKinley over Democrat William Jennings Bryan. In tracing the triumph of gold over silver in this fabled "battle of the standards," R. Hal Williams also tells how the Republicans-the party of central government, national authority, sound money, and activism-pulled off a stunning win over the Democrats-the party of state's rights, decentralization, inflation, and limited government. Meanwhile the People's Party, one of the most prominent third parties in the country's history, which also nominated Bryan, went down to a defeat from which it would never recover. Williams plunges readers into a contest that set new standards in financing, organization, and accountability, and he analyzes the transition from the long-dominant "military style" of campaign to the "educational style" that appealed to a savvier electorate. He also presents key players in new light: he views Bryan not simply as a gifted speaker whose "Cross of Gold" speech took the Democratic convention by storm, but as a more calculating politician with his eye squarely on the nomination; he depicts McKinley's campaign manager Mark Hanna not as the one-dimensional fundraising machine painted by history but rather as a shrewd, insightful politician who understood what was required to get his man elected; and he presents retiring president Cleveland as an increasingly out-of-touch, irrelevant chief executive whom the Democrats repudiated in a way no other party ever had a sitting president. With the Republicans' star on the rise and the Democrats banished to the South and the cities, the 1896 election was more than a victory of one party over another, it marked the emergence of new ways of politicking that makes this campaign especially relevant for twenty-first-century readers.

Realigning America

Realigning America PDF Author: R. Hal Williams
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700633871
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book Here

Book Description
The presidential election of 1896 is widely acknowledged as one of only a few that brought about fundamental realignments in American politics. New voting patterns replaced old, a new majority party came to power, and national policies shifted to reflect new realities. R. Hal Williams now presents the first study of that campaign in nearly fifty years, offering fresh interpretations on the victory of Republican William McKinley over Democrat William Jennings Bryan. In tracing the triumph of gold over silver in this fabled "battle of the standards," R. Hal Williams also tells how the Republicans-the party of central government, national authority, sound money, and activism-pulled off a stunning win over the Democrats-the party of state's rights, decentralization, inflation, and limited government. Meanwhile the People's Party, one of the most prominent third parties in the country's history, which also nominated Bryan, went down to a defeat from which it would never recover. Williams plunges readers into a contest that set new standards in financing, organization, and accountability, and he analyzes the transition from the long-dominant "military style" of campaign to the "educational style" that appealed to a savvier electorate. He also presents key players in new light: he views Bryan not simply as a gifted speaker whose "Cross of Gold" speech took the Democratic convention by storm, but as a more calculating politician with his eye squarely on the nomination; he depicts McKinley's campaign manager Mark Hanna not as the one-dimensional fundraising machine painted by history but rather as a shrewd, insightful politician who understood what was required to get his man elected; and he presents retiring president Cleveland as an increasingly out-of-touch, irrelevant chief executive whom the Democrats repudiated in a way no other party ever had a sitting president. With the Republicans' star on the rise and the Democrats banished to the South and the cities, the 1896 election was more than a victory of one party over another, it marked the emergence of new ways of politicking that makes this campaign especially relevant for twenty-first-century readers.

Realigning America

Realigning America PDF Author: Richard Hal Williams
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780700617210
Category : Political campaigns
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first book in nearly 50 years on the 1896 presidential contest, one of the most intriguing and important elections in our nation's history. A vibrant account by a leading scholar that offers new perspectives on the key players and shows how American politics and electioneering shifted at this pivotal moment.

Racial Realignment

Racial Realignment PDF Author: Eric Schickler
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691153884
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 378

Get Book Here

Book Description
Few transformations in American politics have been as important as the integration of African Americans into the Democratic Party and the Republican embrace of racial policy conservatism. The story of this partisan realignment on race is often told as one in which political elites—such as Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater—set in motion a dramatic and sudden reshuffling of party positioning on racial issues during the 1960s. Racial Realignment instead argues that top party leaders were actually among the last to move, and that their choices were dictated by changes that had already occurred beneath them. Drawing upon rich data sources and original historical research, Eric Schickler shows that the two parties' transformation on civil rights took place gradually over decades. Schickler reveals that Democratic partisanship, economic liberalism, and support for civil rights had crystallized in public opinion, state parties, and Congress by the mid-1940s. This trend was propelled forward by the incorporation of African Americans and the pro-civil-rights Congress of Industrial Organizations into the Democratic coalition. Meanwhile, Republican partisanship became aligned with economic and racial conservatism. Scrambling to maintain existing power bases, national party elites refused to acknowledge these changes for as long as they could, but the civil rights movement finally forced them to choose where their respective parties would stand. Presenting original ideas about political change, Racial Realignment sheds new light on twentieth and twenty-first century racial politics.

Realignment in American Politics

Realignment in American Politics PDF Author: Bruce A. Campbell
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292739974
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Get Book Here

Book Description
To have a voice in shaping government policy has been a goal of the American people since the nation's founding. Yet, government seems even less accessible now than in the past. An increasing rate of incumbency in Congress, the unwieldy committee system that controls legislation, and the decline of political parties have all weakened representation and alienated Americans from the seat of power. The one remaining way to produce major and coherent change in national policy is through partisan realignment—a sharp, enduring shift in voter support of the two major parties. This book is about the phenomenon of realignment in American politics. It not only brings together and assesses previous work in the area but also breaks new ground in the analysis of the effects of realignment on political elites and public policy. In addition, it is the first study to present an integrated theory of realignment that can be applied to the understanding of mass, elite, and policy change in times of social crisis. Contributors include Lawrence McMichael, David Nexon, Louis Seagull, Robert Lehnen, Philip Converse, Gregory Markus, Lester Seligman, Michael King, David Brady, Kenneth Meier, Kenneth Kramer, David Adamany, Charles Stewart, Susan Hansen, and the editors.Bruce A. Campbell taught political science at the University of Georgia. He is the author of The American Electorate.

The Next Realignment

The Next Realignment PDF Author: Frank J. DiStefano
Publisher:
ISBN: 1633885089
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482

Get Book Here

Book Description
Introduction: the next realignment is coming -- America's first and second party systems: the early republic's love-hate affair with two-party politics -- America's second and third party systems: the rise of Jackson and collapse of the Whigs -- America's third and fourth party systems: the incredible story of William Jennings Bryan -- The fifth party system: how the New Deal forged the parties we know and maybe love -- The liberal and conservative myth -- The American ideal of liberty -- The progressive plan -- The virtue of a republic -- The fury of populism -- The choice: renewal or collapse -- The last hurrah of the fifth party system -- The pendulum of Great Awakenings -- The fourth Great Awakening and the 1960s -- The end of the industrial era -- An unravelling -- What happens next -- Renewal, not decline -- The party of the American Dream.

Electoral Realignments

Electoral Realignments PDF Author: David R. Mayhew
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300130031
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Get Book Here

Book Description
The study of electoral realignments is one of the most influential and intellectually stimulating enterprises undertaken by American political scientists. Realignment theory has been seen as a science able to predict changes, and generations of students, journalists, pundits, and political scientists have been trained to be on the lookout for “signs” of new electoral realignments. Now a major political scientist argues that the essential claims of realignment theory are wrong—that American elections, parties, and policymaking are not (and never were) reconfigured according to the realignment calendar. David Mayhew examines fifteen key empirical claims of realignment theory in detail and shows us why each in turn does not hold up under scrutiny. It is time, he insists, to open the field to new ideas. We might, for example, adopt a more nominalistic, skeptical way of thinking about American elections that highlights contingency, short-term election strategies, and valence issues. Or we might examine such broad topics as bellicosity in early American history, or racial questions in much of our electoral history. But we must move on from an old orthodoxy and failed model of illumination.

All in the Family

All in the Family PDF Author: Robert O. Self
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429955562
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 535

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and War on Poverty promised an array of federal programs to assist working-class families. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan declared the GOP the party of "family values" and promised to keep government out of Americans' lives. Again and again, historians have sought to explain the nation's profound political realignment from the 1960s to the 2000s, five decades that witnessed the fracturing of liberalism and the rise of the conservative right. The award-winning historian Robert O. Self is the first to argue that the separate threads of that realignment—from civil rights to women's rights, from the antiwar movement to Nixon's "silent majority," from the abortion wars to gay marriage, from the welfare state to neoliberal economic policies—all ran through the politicized American family. Based on an astonishing range of sources, All in the Family rethinks an entire era. Self opens his narrative with the Great Society and its assumption of a white, patriotic, heterosexual man at the head of each family. Soon enough, civil rights activists, feminists, and gay rights activists, animated by broader visions of citizenship, began to fight for equal rights, protections, and opportunities. Led by Pauli Murray, Gloria Steinem, Harvey Milk, and Shirley Chisholm, among many others, they achieved lasting successes, including Roe v. Wade, antidiscrimination protections in the workplace, and a more inclusive idea of the American family. Yet the establishment of new rights and the visibility of alternative families provoked, beginning in the 1970s, a furious conservative backlash. Politicians and activists on the right, most notably George Wallace, Phyllis Schlafly, Anita Bryant, and Jerry Falwell, built a political movement based on the perceived moral threat to the traditional family. Self writes that "family values" conservatives in fact "paved the way" for fiscal conservatives, who shared a belief in liberalism's invasiveness but lacked a populist message. Reagan's presidency united the two constituencies, which remain, even in these tumultuous times, the base of the Republican Party. All in the Family, an erudite, passionate, and persuasive explanation of our current political situation and how we arrived in it, will allow us to think anew about the last fifty years of American politics.

The End of Realignment?

The End of Realignment? PDF Author: Byron E. Shafer
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299129743
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206

Get Book Here

Book Description
This collection of essays questions whether the theory of electoral realignment, referring originally to a major shift in party preference within the general public, can explain electoral developments in the USA, both of the post-1968 period and of earlier political eras.

Electoral Realignment and the Outlook for American Democracy

Electoral Realignment and the Outlook for American Democracy PDF Author: Arthur C. Paulson
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781555536671
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
A keen look at the ideologically polarized political realities of "red-state" and "blue-state" America.

Bike Snob

Bike Snob PDF Author: BikeSnobNYC
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1452100977
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
“Equal parts critical manifesto and tender mini-memoir about a boy and his bikes” from Eben Weiss, blogger and author of The Enlightened Cyclist (GQ). Cycling is exploding in a good way. Urbanites everywhere, from ironic hipsters to earth-conscious commuters, are taking to the bike like aquatic mammals to water. BikeSnobNYC—cycling’s most prolific, well-known, hilarious, and anonymous blogger—brings a fresh and humorous perspective to the most important vehicle to hit personal transportation since the horse. Bike Snob treats readers to a laugh-out-loud rant and rave about the world of bikes and their riders and offers a unique look at the ins and outs of cycling, from its history and hallmarks to its wide range of bizarre practitioners. Throughout, the author lampoons the missteps, pretensions, and absurdities of bike culture while maintaining a contagious enthusiasm for cycling itself. Bike Snob is an essential volume for anyone who knows, is, or wants to become a cyclist. “This is a social manual that should be bundled with every bike shipped in America.” —Christian Lander, author of Stuff White People Like “I like to think I know a thing or two (or three) about being ruthless and relentless—either trying to win the Tour or fighting cancer. The Snob knows it too. Keeping us dorks in line is tough work. I take pleasure in getting picked on by the Snob, slightly more pleasure in reading his writing, but take the most pleasure punishing his ass (my payback) on the bike either in Central Park or on 9W/River Road. Long live the Snob.” —Lance Armstrong