A book of immediate interest to progressive and centrist activists in this election year.
A liberal activist offers a playbook to reclaim America from the right wing.
The former chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, Wikler writes that his state “circa 2011–2017 was the United States of America in the Trump era,” with battles for power played out before Donald Trump entered office. One was an attempt to create legislative supermajorities and to lock out any liberals from the state judiciary—and from school boards, municipal offices, and so on, from top to bottom. That wasn’t a bad plan, Wikler holds, and, indeed, the first plank in his platform of political resistance is for Democrats to focus on winning state and local offices as well as national ones, so that “we can dictator-proof state and local government to ensure that the 2028 election is free and fair.” Realistically, he adds, given the pendulum of electoral politics, “you should expect a backlash in 2030,” one that it will be especially important to ride out in a census year by which legislative districts are apportioned, with all the gerrymandering this invites. Winning office isn’t the end of the work, he adds, for what remains is to convince the electorate that their votes count, especially in a time when margins are “agonizingly small,” with George W. Bush winning Florida, for instance, by only 537 votes. Wikler counsels talking to the “people with whom you have the closest connection” and concentrating on bread-and-butter issues, especially at the local level, which he boils down to a maxim: “If you care about democracy, talk about roads”—and, for that matter, “affordability.” Loftier issues count, too, such as reforming or doing away with the Senate filibuster, but, for the most part, his book focuses closely on Main Street and all that can be done there.
A book of immediate interest to progressive and centrist activists in this election year.Pub Date: July 21, 2026
ISBN: 9781324131434
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
Welcome reading for anyone concerned with real rigged elections.
Tired of the lies about the 2020 election? Buckle up: Trump is just warming up, and his allies may be getting craftier.
“This is not a book about January 6, 2021. It is a book about January 6, 2025,” write legal scholars Lessig and Seligman. We are lucky, Lessig suggests, that John Eastman and his fellow plotters “picked the dumbest possible strategy for pursuing what we feared they were trying to accomplish”: namely, trying to convince Mike Pence that he had the constitutional authority to refuse to certify the results by which Joe Biden won the presidency. One might argue that the second dumbest strategy was to send an army of fascist goons to the Capitol to try to enforce Eastman’s argument. However, Lessig and Seligman argue, there are holes in the Constitution wide enough to drive a burning dumpster through, and they might allow an interested party to falsely claim victory in a closely contested race and win the election. The authors presume that any such gaming-the-system effort will come from MAGA Republicans, though they add that a Democrat could easily use the same tactics. Readers may need a law degree to follow some of the arguments, but others are quite accessible. One argument that Lessig has been mounting for some time, for instance, is that the winner-take-all method employed by most states for electoral votes needs to be replaced with an apportionment system so that the Electoral College count will align with the popular vote. On that score, the authors warn, the prospect of rogue electors—or more, rogue governors who control those electors—is very real, and numerous other threats could enable someone smarter than the last bunch to mount “a cataclysmic attack on our democracy.”
Welcome reading for anyone concerned with real rigged elections.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780300270792
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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