Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party

Coming just in time for election season, Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party chronicles the extraordinary stories of five politicians and activists: three progressive heroes who exhibited rare political courage - and through it found unexpected political success, and two spineless weasels who embraced The Politics of Fear and rode it to ultimate failure. The book reveals how Senator Paul Wellstone used his courage to overcome a quirky personality, an occasionally hysterical style and, most of all, an ideology considerably to the left of his constituents, eventually becoming a national hero. It tells the dramatic story of how the same foundations and corporations that engineered the right-wing takeover of the Republican Party used junk political science to move Democrats to the right as well. Hurowitz shows how the legacy of Bill Clinton, widely proclaimed his generation's greatest political talent, will actually burden the Democratic Party and the progressive movement for decades to come. A work of astounding insight, Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party promises to transform political discourse in 2008.

The problem is not that the Democratic Party doesn't support a progressive agenda, according to Hurowitz (president, Democratic Courage, "a political action committee dedicated to electing a progressive, courageous, and winning president"), but that they are governed by a politics of fear in which they lack the guts to fight for such an agenda. He hopes his book will convince the Democrats that fighting enthusiastically for such an agenda will actually result in political success. As part of his argument he profiles the late Senator Paul Wellstone, MoveOn.org, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as examples of what can be gained by a politics of courage and President Bill Clinton and former Senator Tom Daschle as exemplars of spinelessness and political defeat. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)