Joe Biden has found his way back to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. After four decades of diminishing prospects for ordinary people, the public likes what Biden is offering. Yet American democracy is in dire peril as Republicans, increasingly the national minority, try to destroy democracy in order to cling to power. It is the best of times and the worst of times. In Going Big, bestselling author and political journalist Robert Kuttner assesses the promise and peril of this critical juncture.
Biden, like FDR in his time, faces multiple challenges. Roosevelt had to make terrible compromises with racist legislators to win enactment of his program. Biden, to achieve the necessary governing coalition, needs to achieve durable multiracial coalitions. Roosevelt had to conquer fascism in Europe; Biden must defeat it at home. And after four decades of neoliberal policy disasters reflecting Wall Street's political influence, Biden needs to go beyond what even FDR achieved, to restore a democratic economy of broad possibility.
From a writer with an unparalleled understanding of the history and politics that have made this moment possible, this book is the essential guide to what is at stake for Joe Biden, for America, and for our democracy.
To save both democracy and a decent economy, here's why it's crucial that Americans elect a truly progressive president. The 2020 presidential election will be pivotal for the credibility of government and for democracy itself, argues Robert Kuttner in this brief and compelling call to arms. Either we continue the twin slides into corrupt autocracy and corporate plutocracy? the course set in the past half century by Republican and Democratic presidents alike? or we elect a progressive Democrat in the mold of FDR. At stake is nothing less than the continued success of the American experiment in liberal democracy, which depends on a fairer distribution of life chances and a reduction of the financial industry's influence in the political sphere. Kuttner goes on to show convincingly that a progressive Democrat also has a better chance than a centrist of winning the presidency in the current political environment. A passionate book from one of our best political analysts, The Stakes will be the book to read ahead of the 2020 primaries.
Before and after World War II, a serendipitous confluence of events created a healthy balance between the market and the polity-between the engine of capitalism and the egalitarian ideals of democracy. Under Roosevelt's New Deal, unions and collective bargaining were legalized. Glass-Steagall reined in speculative finance. At Bretton Woods, a global financial system was devised explicitly to allow nations to manage capitalism. Yet this golden era turned out to be lightning in a bottle. From the 1970s on, a power shift occurred, in which financial regulations were rolled back, taxes were cut, inequality worsened, and disheartened voters turned to far-right, faux populism.
Robert Kuttner lays out the events that led to the postwar miracle, and charts its dissolution all the way to Trump, Brexit, and the tenuous state of the EU. Is today's poisonous alliance of reckless finance and ultra-nationalism inevitable? Or can democracy find a way to survive?
