Code Red: How Progressives and Moderates Can Unite to Save Our Country

by E. J. Dionne Jr.

Overview

"An exquisitely timed book ... Code Red is a worthwhile exploration of the shared goals (and shared enemies) that unite moderates and progressives. But more than that, it is a sharp reminder that the common ground on which Dionne built his career has been badly eroded, with little prospect that it will soon be restored.” —The New York Times Book Review

New York Times bestselling author and Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. sounds the alarm in Code Red, calling for an alliance between progressives and moderates to seize the moment and restore hope to America’s future for the 2020 presidential election.

Will progressives and moderates feud while America burns? Or will these natural allies take advantage of the greatest opportunity since the New Deal Era to strengthen American democracy, foster social justice, and turn back the threats of the Trump Era?

The United States stands at a crossroads. Broad and principled opposition to Donald Trump’s presidency has drawn millions of previously disengaged citizens to the public square and to the ballot boxes. This inspired and growing activism for social and political change hasn’t been seen since the days of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies and the Progressive and Civil Rights movements. But if progressives and moderates are unable—and unwilling—to overcome their differences, they could not only enable Trump to prevail again but also squander an occasion for launching a new era of reform.

In Code Red, award-winning journalist E. J. Dionne, Jr., calls for a shared commitment to decency and a politics focused on freedom, fairness, and the future, encouraging progressives and moderates to explore common ground and expand the unity that brought about Democrat victories in the 2018 elections. He offers a unifying model for furthering progress with a Politics of Remedy, Dignity, and More: one that solves problems, resolve disputes, and moves forward; that sits at the heart of the demands for justice by both long-marginalized and recently-displaced groups; and that posits a positive future for Americans with more covered by health insurance, more with decent wages, more with good schools, more security from gun violence, more action to roll back climate change.

Breaking through the partisan noise and cutting against conventional wisdom to provide a realistic look at political possibilities, Dionne offers a strategy for progressives and moderates to think more clearly and accept the responsibilities that history now imposes on them. Because at this point in our national story, change can’t wait.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250256478
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/04/2020
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

E.J. DIONNE, JR., is a columnist for The Washington Post, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, visiting professor at Harvard University, and professor at Georgetown University. He is a co-author of the recent New York Times bestseller One Nation After Trump and author of Why the Right Went Wrong.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Opportunity We Dare Not Miss 1

1 The Power of 60 Million Votes 19

Understanding What the 2018 Election Taught Us

2 Missing in Action 43

Radicalized Republicans and the Problem with Bipartisanship

3 Progressivism's Crooked Path 73

A Short History of Circular Firing Squads and Enduring Achievements

4 Are the Socialists Coming? 101

The Collapse of the Reagan Consensus and the Urgency of Economic Renewal

5 The Clinton and Obama Legacies 117

The Unfinished Work and Blind Spots of Two Successful Presidencies

6 Getting from Here to There 129

Visionary Gradualism and the Economics of Dignity

7 Out of Many … What, Exactly? 157

The Politics of Recognition and the Politics of Class

8 "Take Back Control" 181

Nationalism, Patriotism, and Solidarity

9 Who in the World Are We? 197

A Foreign Policy for Democracy-and Main Street

10 Why Change Can't Wait 213

And Why It Takes a Coalition to Save a Country

Acknowledgments 220

Notes 225

Index 253

Editorial Reviews

12/23/2019

Washington Post columnist Dionne (One Nation After Trump) calls on the progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic Party to find common ground in this fair-minded and optimistic assessment of American politics in the run-up to the 2020 elections. Arguing that the backlash to President Trump has given Democrats the chance to build a New Deal–style coalition that can fight climate change, shrink income inequality, expand health-care coverage, and improve public education, Dionne points to the 2018 midterms, when centrists and leftists combined to flip 43 seats in the House of Representatives, as a model for what can be achieved in 2020. He incisively details the factors that led to Trumpism, including Ronald Reagan’s adherence to Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy of pandering to white voters’ racial anxieties and the “serious social and economic imbalances” left behind by the Clinton and Obama presidencies. Dionne’s eagerness to drill down into voter demographics and look at the 2018 and 2016 electorates from so many statistical angles may cause some readers to lose the thread of his central arguments, and his gradualist approach is more pragmatic than inspiring. Still, Democrats closely following the early stages of the 2020 presidential race will find this reasonable, evidence-based account to be a valuable source of information. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Veteran political analyst E. J. Dionne, in his valuable new book, [Code Red], got this exactly right: We have no responsible Republican Party anymore. ... If the country is going to be governed responsibly, that leadership can come only from Democrats and disaffected Republicans... It is crucial, therefore, argues Dionne, that moderate and progressive Democrats find a way to build a governing coalition together.” —Thomas Friedman, The New York Times

"Fascinating." —David Leonhardt, The New York Times

"Highly engaging, intellectually sound, and morally grounded... Dionne implores Democrats to recognize their divisions, debate them honestly, be more flexible, and ultimately forge some strategic consensus around a progressive but not extreme vision." —Washington Monthly

“The Washington Post columnist and NPR commentator offers a passionately reasoned argument for why both progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic Party must put aside differences to defeat Donald Trump in 2020.… A well-argued and persuasive treatise by a deeply concerned journalist and citizen.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Democrats closely following the early stages of the 2020 presidential race will find this reasonable, evidence-based account to be a valuable source of information.” —Publishers Weekly

“American political discourse is perhaps more divided than it has been at any time in the country’s history. Republicans versus Democrats, alt-right versus far left: the chasm runs wide and deep… Dionne urges progressives and moderates to find common, rather than shaky, ground for the good of the country and their party’s survival.” —Booklist

Praise for E.J. Dionne, Jr.

“The insights of this award-winning journalist with unique access to politicians make wonderful reading.” —The Washington Post on Why the Right Went Wrong

“[The authors’] sense of possibility offers a refreshing and very American contrast to today’s dystopia.” —Financial Times on One Nation After Trump

“That his bold prediction cannot be dismissed as mere whistling past the graveyard of liberalism is a tribute to Mr. Dionne's thoroughness as a reporter and rigor as a scholar, qualities manifested in his 1991 book, Why Americans Hate Politics.... They Only Look Dead is a luminously intelligent and quietly passionate polemic that deserves to alter the terms of American political debate.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A thrilling book, from one of America’s most universally respected minds. You should buy it.” —Rachel Maddow on Our Divided Political Heart

From the Publisher

2019-11-25
The Washington Post columnist and NPR commentator offers a passionately reasoned argument for why both progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic Party must put aside differences to defeat Donald Trump in 2020.

Seizing on the momentum of the 2018 midterm elections, Dionne Jr. (Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism From Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond, 2016, etc.) is both articulate and enthusiastic about the need for the two liberal sides to work together, and he readily admits that he sounds like "a perhaps unwelcome counselor attempting to ease a family quarrel." The success of the 2018 elections ("Democrats received 25 million more votes than they had in 2014") underscores how the alliance of progressives and moderates, interested in protecting health care and reforming politics, can serve as the "model for the alliance that must come together again in 2020 and beyond." The author discusses the important mobilization of African American and Latinx voters, young people, and, especially, suburban women, many of whom have been disgusted by Trump's "white ethno-nationalism, his lies, his extremist rhetoric, his self-centered irrationality." Indeed, the election was very much about Trump, though not in the way he had hoped. Systematically, the author shows why bipartisanship, once the catchword, is not currently viable with the growing homogeneous, anti-immigrant Republican Party, which looks nothing like the "decent pragmatism" of the party of presidents Lincoln, Eisenhower, or even Nixon. The author then pursues the "crooked path" of the progressive story in America and the resurgence of democratic socialism in reaction to Reaganism and the continued rise of inequality even after the Clinton and Obama years. Indeed, writes Dionne, the "socialist" proposals of universal health care, free college, and even the Green New Deal are not radical. Moreover, a Democratic coalition is needed to repair the many fractured relationships with American allies.

A well-argued and persuasive treatise by a deeply concerned journalist and citizen.

Kirkus Reviews