American Elections

For much of American history, evangelicalism was aligned with progressive political causes: nineteenth-century evangelicals fought for the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, and public education. But contemporary conservative activists have defaulted on this majestic legacy, embracing instead an agenda virtually indistinguishable from the Republican Party platform.

A Ruling Class have emerged in America against the hopes and designs of our Founding Fathers. Over the last hundred years, they have rejected the Constitution and expanded their own power, slowly at first and now rapidly. These people believe their actions are justified, because they think they are smarter than the rest of us - so smart they can run our lives better than we can.

Beginning with the debate between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton over the future of the nation and continuing through the Civil War, the New Deal, the Reagan Revolution, and Obama and the Tea Party, many pols have asked, "What would the founders do?" instead of "What is the common good today?" Recently both the right and the left have used the founders to sort through such issues as voting rights, campaign finance, free speech, gun control, taxes, and war and peace.

In 2003, General Wesley Clark ran for the Democratic Party's nomination for President of the United States. Since then, he has become a major figure on the political scene, commenting on television and keynoting conferences. Focusing on his major life battles - from his difficult youth in Arkansas, through the horror of Vietnam, the post-war rebuilding of national security and the struggles surrounding the new world order after the Cold War - this groundbreaking audiobook draws lessons from General Clark's unique experiences and reveals his plan for America, at home and in the world.

The framers of the Constitution battled over it. Lawmakers have tried to amend or abolish it more than 700 times. To this day, millions of voters, and even members of Congress, misunderstand how it works. It deepens our national divide and distorts the core democratic principles of political equality and majority rule. How can we tolerate the Electoral College when every vote does not count the same, and the candidate who gets the most votes can lose?

In one of the most timely political books in years, Gail Collins declares that "what happens in Texas doesn't stay in Texas anymore." Gail Collins's fascination with Texas began rather abruptly in that distant spring of 2009 when she heard Governor Rick Perry - back to the wall, boots to the ground - address a Tea Party rally full of passionate Texans who seemed to be interested in seceding from the Union. "How long had this been going on?" she wondered, on behalf of the rest of the nation. "Was it something that we said?"

Stay Woke directly addresses these stark injustices and builds on the lessons of racial inequality and intersectionality the Black Lives Matter movement has challenged its fellow citizens to learn. In this essential primer, Tehama Lopez Bunyasi and Candis Watts Smith inspire listeners to address the pressing issues of racial inequality, and provide a basic toolkit that will equip listeners to become knowledgeable participants in public debate, activism, and politics.

As the voting public continues to diversify across the United States, political candidates, and particularly white candidates, increasingly recognize the importance of making appeals to voters who do not look like themselves. As history has shown, this has been accomplished with varying degrees of success. During the 2016 election, for example, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders campaigned vociferously among Latino voters in Nevada's early primary, where 19 percent of the Democratic caucus consisted of Latinos.

From the man widely hailed as “the Dean of Moderators” comes a lively and revealing book that pulls back the curtain on more than 40 years of televised political debate in America. A veteran newsman who has presided over 11 presidential and vice-presidential debates, Jim Lehrer gives readers a ringside seat for some of the epic political battles of our time, shedding light on all of the critical turning points and rhetorical faux pas that helped determine the outcome of America’s presidential elections—and with them the course of history.

The 2016 election is conservatives' last, best chance to take back the country. So how can they win? The answer, conservative columnist and analyst Ed Morrissey says, depends on seven battleground counties in swing states Republicans must win. Each county pulled for Obama in one or both of the last two elections, but after eight years of misadventures under the Obama administration, the door is open for Republicans to win them - and the presidency - once again, making a decisive mandate against progressivism for the generation to come.

Rosenthal suggests that right-wing populism is a protean force whose prime mover is the resentment felt toward perceived elites, and whose abiding feature is its ideological flexibility, which now takes the form of xenophobic nationalism. In 2016, American right-wing populists migrated from the free marketeering Tea Party to Donald Trump's "hard hat," anti-immigrant, America-First nationalism. This was the most important single factor in Trump's electoral victory.

In Last Chance to Save American Democracy, political strategist Haven Scott McVarish takes us through the intentional dismantling of democracy begun by Republican party funders after Obama's landslide in 2008. These funders and their willing Republican servants weaponized unlimited dark money, extreme gerrymandering, voter suppression, and diversionary propaganda to make it impossible for Democrats to effectively govern or win a majority. Only Trump’s massive unpopularity allowed Democrats to barely win the trifecta in the 2020 elections.

Award-winning authors Julian E. Zelizer and Karen J. Greenberg bring together the nation's top political scientists, historians, and legal scholars to examine how the lack of stability and integrity of the electoral process has become a threat to national security. Contributors outline how these problems have emerged and propose concrete solutions to move us into a period of greater stability. At once urgent and comprehensive, Our Nation at Risk is the preeminent book on election security and a must listen for anyone invested in the fight for democracy.

Al Franken reveals the alarming story of how Bush (barely) beat Kerry with his campaign of "fear, smear, and queers", and then claimed a nonexistent mandate; Republicans decided that Terri Schiavo would make "a great political issue"; Conservatives sought to undermine Social Security by using a strategy borrowed from...Vladimir Lenin; and more.

In their second book on our current White House occupant, Ivins and Dubose take the wire brush to the Bush presidency and show how he has applied the same flawed strategies he used in governing Texas to running the largest superpower in the world.

A exploration of prominent US Supreme Court cases from recent history (2010-2021) concerning elections and voting rights. Cases discussed include the relevant landmark cases namely: Citizens United, Rucho, Brnovich, Shelby County, and others. Full audio of oral arguments and opinions are included together with analysis of the relevant cases. Hear from the United States Supreme Court in their own words on topics that continue to be debated and shape the American political landscape today. Legal scholar Matt Bewig provides insightful commentary to frame the court's positions.

From the author of The New York Times best sellers Treason and Slander comes an updated Ann Coulter compendium, complete with reader responses and television and talk radio transcripts (Couric, Donahue, Franken). With titles like "Would Mohamed Atta Object to Armed Pilots?", "9 out of 10 Caribou Support Drilling", and "Liberal Pimps for Clintonism", How to Talk to a Liberal covers Coulter's waterfront on her favorite issues and targets, from national security to Hollywood.

Building a riveting narrative around four influential members of Congress - Thaddeus Stevens, Pitt Fessenden, Ben Wade, and the pro-slavery Clement Vallandigham - Fergus Bordewich shows us how a newly empowered Republican party shaped one of the most dynamic and consequential periods in American history.

In 2016, amid an epidemic of police shootings of African Americans, the celebrated NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began a series of quiet protests on the field, refusing to stand during the US national anthem. By "taking a knee", Kaepernick bravely joined a long tradition of American athletes making powerful political statements. This time, however, Kaepernick's simple act spread like wildfire throughout American society, becoming the preeminent symbol of resistance to America's persistent racial inequality.

Here is a tour de force of American politics from one of journalism's most acclaimed commentators. History turns on a dime. A missed meeting, a different choice of words, and the outcome changes dramatically. Nowhere is this truer than in American politics, and in three dramatic narratives based on memoirs, histories, oral histories, fresh reporting with journalists and key participants, and Jeff Greenfield's own knowledge of the principal players, he shows just how extraordinary those changes would have been.