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Left Behind: The Democrats' Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality
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20/99
Critics' Rating Index
40/99
Readers' Rating Index
90/99
Scholars' Citation Index
51/99
Volume of Reviews
10/99
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About This Book
The 40-year history of how Democrats chose political opportunity over addressing inequality—and how the poor have paid the price For decades, the Republican Party has been known as the party of the arguing for "business-friendly" policies like deregulation and tax cuts. But this incisive political history shows that the current inequality crisis was also enabled by a Democratic Party that catered to the affluent. The result is one of the great missed opportunities in political a moment when we had the chance to change the lives of future generations and were too short-sighted to take it. Historian Lily Geismer recounts how the Clinton-era Democratic Party sought to curb poverty through economic growth and individual responsibility rather than asking the rich to make any sacrifices. Fueled by an ethos of "doing well by doing good," microfinance, charter schools, and privately funded housing developments grew trendy. Though politically expedient and sometimes profitable in the short term, these programs fundamentally weakened the safety net for the poor. This piercingly intelligent book shows how bygone policy decisions have left us with skyrocketing income inequality and poverty in America and widened fractures within the Democratic Party that persist to this day.
Reviews
"Catnip for policy wonks and political junkies, offering solid lessons for Democrats going forward."
"should make almost any left-of-center reader retroactively furious about the 1990s and the inability of its architects to foresee the twenty-first century they were creating ..."
"For example, she faults Bill Clinton's praising of the working poor who 'played by the rules' for serving to 'stigmatize those poor people who allegedly did not.' That was one of three or four places where I scribbled in the margin, 'Oh, please.'"
"Every historian has political views."
"Historian Geismer...delivers an incisive critique of the Democratic Party's embrace of 'market-based' solutions to social problems in the 1980s and '90s ..."
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