Anyone read "The Great Divide: Retro vs. Metro America" yet? Free copy!

[wyldwolf]

http://www.retrovsmetro.org/book/

The Great Divide is a blueprint for how the Democratic Party can regain, and maintain, control of the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives. John Sperling and his co-authors acknowledge that the U.S. has seldom been truly united, and there currently exists such a wide gap that the U.S. is effectively two nations: "one traditional and rooted in the past, and one modern and focused on the future." They are divided along racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, political, and geographic lines. The battle, they write, is not Left versus Right; rather, it's Metro versus Retro America. Retro America is defined by the South, the Midwest, and the Rocky Mountain states; Metro America consists of the two coasts and the Great Lakes states. The authors argue that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are national parties, so there is no point in behaving as such. They recommend that the Democrats concede the Retro states and focus entirely on the Metro states, which should be their base. This would allow the party to develop a coherent message that would connect with voters and to take advantage of the fact that Metro states account for 65 percent of the population. Then, once a strong base is built, the Democrats can work on unifying America as a whole.

[ramapo]

1. Took a look

Too much to digest reading it online and the graphics probably won't print that well (or quickly) so I've been thinking of shelling out the $40.

There's a ton of demographic research in it and should be a great reference.

[jsw_81]

2. I read the first chapter online

It was somewhat interesting but I noticed that several of the graphs/maps were inaccurate. The map of the 1996 election, for example, has several Clinton states going for Dole and vice versa. This was surprising after all the hype about how much research went into this book; hopefully they'll correct the errors if there's a second printing.