Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Alexander Cockburn cannot be summarized. You simply have to experience him. No one else writes with his Swiftian, vitriolic sense of humor. To call him "leftist" is too pat; he is the gadfly's gadfly, the bull in the china shop, the salsa in the enchilada, the town crier waking sleeping citizens. And no entity is more mercilessly and accurately skewered by his pen than the Democratic Party.
"Basically," he writes, "these days the Democratic Party is an ATM machine supervised by corporate flunkeys and fuelled by union leaderships and corporations. Nothing much else. It's not a party in what used to be understood by that word." The recent election results would seem to vindicate Cockburn's criticism. How was it that in 2004 the Democrats faced a widely derided president who presided over four years of economic bad news, an administration that had plunged the nation into an unpopular war, and yet still lost, badly?
In an often savagely comic autopsy of the Democratic Party, Cockburn diagnoses its moral ailments, some of which have been advancing with inexorable tread for decades. With trenchant historical polemic, Cockburn explains what went wrong and examines the party's possible future.
Synopsis
In an often savagely comic autopsy of the Democratic Party, Cockburn diagnoses its moral ailments, some of which have been advancing with inexorable tread for decades. With trenchant historical polemic, Cockburn explains what went wrong and examines the party's possible future.