| The Collapse Of The Democratic Presidential Majority: Realignment, Dealignment, And Electoral Change From Franklin Roosevelt To Bill Clinton Contributor(s): Lawrence, David G. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0813399815 ISBN-13: 9780813399812 Publisher: Routledge OUR PRICE: $54.10 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: August 1997 Annotation: "The two Clinton victories do not mark a break in a pattern of mediocre Democratic performance in presidential elections. The 1996 presidential victory was combined with Republican retention of both houses of Congress. We find little evidence here of a resurgence of the kind that could spark even the most optimistic Democratic activist to speak of a new or renewed Democratic majority, or even of a new or renewed Democratic presidential majority. Bill Clinton's re-election is a great triumph for Bill Clinton; it is certainly a good thing for the Democrats. But it was clearly a very personal triumph that neither generated across-the-board gains for the Democratic party in 1996 nor created a stable basis for the party's electoral success in the future. Nothing that happened in 1996 suggests that the dealigned electoral politics that have dominated the last thirty years is coming to an end. In 2000, Bill Clinton moves from electoral politics to electoral history. The forces that twice elected him enter the uncertainty that characterizes all electoral politics in a dealigned age." |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Political Science | Political Process - Campaigns & Elections - Political Science | Political Ideologies - Democracy - Political Science | Political Process - Political Parties |
| Dewey: 324.973 |
| Lexile Measure: 1520 |
| Series: Transforming American Politics |
| Physical Information: 0.67" H x 6.05" W x 9.05" (0.80 lbs) 240 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: American electoral politics since World War II stubbornly refuse to fit the theories of political scientists. The long collapse of the Democratic presidential majority does not look much like the classic realignments of the past: The Republicans made no corresponding gains in sub-presidential elections and never won the loyalty of a majority of the electorate in terms of party identification. And yet, the period shows a stability of Republican dominance quite at odds with the volatility and unpredictability central to the competing theory of dealignment.The Collapse of the Democratic Presidential Majority makes sense of the last half century of American presidential elections as part of a transition from a world in which realignment was still possible to a dealigned political universe. The book combines analysis of presidential elections in the postwar world with theories of electoral change?showing how Reagan bridged the eras of re- and dealignment and why Clinton was elected despite the postwar trend. |