Praise for Why the Democrats are Blue
It would have required a lot of prescience to predict in 1965 that American politics, for so many decades based on economic divisions, would soon split over social issues and, especially, abortion. But not even a very prescient observer could have correctly predicted which party would take which side in the coming battles. On abortion, in particular, it looked obvious which way it would break: The Democrats were the party of Catholic Northerners and Southern whites, the party that believed in using the power of government to protect the weak; the Republicans were the party with historical ties to Planned Parenthood.
Somewhere along the line, the parties switched places, with consequences–including the Democrats’ loss of their durable majority–that are plain to see. But how it happened still seems a puzzle, and, in his new book, Why the Democrats Are Blue: Secular Liberalism and the Decline of the People’s Party, Mark Stricherz has provided a crucial piece for solving it. Ramesh Ponnuru
To comprehend the realignment of modern politics in favor of the Republican Party, you have to understand the process by which Democrats made themselves Blue--essentially made themselves a post-Christian, European-style party--and this book will go a long way towards helping you understand how that happened.
Orin Judd
Will the Democrats roar through a triumphant election this year and take back the White House? Or will they blow it once again because they can't regain enough of the Catholic and blue-collar voters they have lost in recent decades?
It's too early to tell, but those who wonder why the Dems have such problems with major parts of their old coalition should read Why the Democrats Are Blue. And Democrats who want their party to moderate or abandon its support of abortion should read the book to find why the party decided to support abortion in the first place.
Like, in their own ways, Ramesh Ponnuru in The Party of Death and David Carlin in Can a Catholic Be a Democrat?, Stricherz makes a powerful case that social liberalism has hurt the Democrats.
W. James Antle III
Why the Democrats are Blue
effectively describes how Catholics used to be a power in Democratic leadership. The book captures the limbo of the Catholic who is now exiled from the Democratic party. Stricherz tells a well-researched story of how structural party changes made by seemingly minor figures can hijack a party.
Kevin Jones
In my travels across the country since the days of Jack Kennedy, I have seen the political transformation of Reagan Democrat areas such as Macomb County, Michigan, Scranton, Pennsylvania and South Boston. I know that these Catholics and blue-collar workers did not leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party abandoned them. In fact, as Mark Stricherz shows, wealthy, liberal activists hijacked the national party, leaving millions of Catholics and working-class voters with no home in either party. An important and original book, Why the Democrats are Blue tells the story of a political revolution that the media never told us about.
Ray Flynn
former President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors
former Ambassador to the Vatican
Sadly, it's all true. Mark Stricherz has written a fascinating history of how the Democrats got themselves into this mess, and how they could still get out of it.
The Democratic Party is the oldest political party in the world, but it has changed its character and approach sharply three times--in 1896, in the 1930s and in the late 1960s. Mark Stricherz in Why the Democrats Are Blue tells the story of how this third change came about — and how a small group of secular activists and insiders shaped the character of one of our great political parties in ways that persist to this day.
Michael Barone
Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
Senior Writer, U.S. News & World Report
Co-author, The Almanac of American Politics
To buy the book, click the cover
