From the Publisher
"Pundits have viewed Donald Trump as an orange-haired meteor unexpectedly crashing into American politics. John Campbell shows that he is more like an earthquake, a result of fault lines and tectonic pressures that have been building for years." -Jacob S. Hacker, Director, Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University, and co-author of American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper
"The rise of Donald Trump cries out for historical perspective, and no one is better equipped to offer that than John Campbell." -Lane Kenworthy, Professor of Sociology and Yankelovich Chair in Social Thought, University of California-San Diego "The election of President Trump was a shock, and it has led to many accounts of the dramatic events involved. John Campbell's book is utterly different, moving from events to the deep structural causes that made that election possible. Here we have intellectual insight based on powerful social science-massively moving forward our understanding of this key issue of the modern world." -John A. Hall, James McGill Professor of Comparative Historical Sociology, McGill University"An accessible analysis of the social trends that prefaced the shock to democracy of Donald Trump's electoral victory...free of fake news, a smart, engaging road map regarding 'what happened.'"- Kirkus"After acknowledging that he too was perturbed and surprised by Donald Trump's 2016 election, in this reflective analysis, Campbell argues that Trump's victory was created by what has become the usual cast of causal suspects: economic transformation, such as growing income inequality; racial division exacerbated by the reactions of many whites to Barack Obama's presidency; a rising ideological divide fed by media narratives (MSNBC versus Fox News); and sharpening party polarization, initially at the elite level but now also among the voting public. Drawing upon a wide range of social science sources and applying his insightful interpretation, Campbell gives a succinct but sophisticated context for trying to make sense of this radical development. This is a timely and important book."-CHOICE, E. T. Jones, emeritus, University of Missouri—St. Louis
Kirkus Reviews
2018-04-11
Accessible analysis of the social trends that prefaced the shock to democracy of Donald Trump's electoral victory.Campbell (Sociology/Dartmouth College; co-author, The Paradox of Vulnerability: States, Nationalism, and the Financial Crisis, 2017, etc.) applies facility in disciplines including history, economics, and sociology in developing a coherent argument for the political event that left Republicans and Democrats alike "nearly at a loss for words trying to explain how it had all happened." Regarding this book, he writes, "we all need to understand what the forces were that propelled someone like this so rapidly and so unexpectedly to the pinnacle of political power." The author develops a multifaceted argument—explored in coherent chapters regarding race and ethnicity, political ideologies, and political polarization—that long-term decay of the economic prospects of most Americans was caused by aggressive corporatization and a compromised political system following a hazily recalled "golden age" of postwar prosperity and prefacing a vicious resurgence of cynical nativism and white nationalism. Campbell thus argues that Trump "zeroed in almost entirely on the economy [while] wrapping economic issues in nationalist, xenophobic, racist, and in some cases sexist rhetoric." Contrastingly, the author suggests the so-called golden age of prosperity, far from being universal, created long-term fault lines "that would eventually polarize America in ways that were then impossible to foresee." He addresses this throughout the book, demonstrating a confident grasp of complex narratives including the fracturing of the post-New Deal consensus over Vietnam, labor strife, and the Republican indulgence of bigotry via their "Southern strategy." Also, both Republicans and Democrats amplified the drug war to appear tough on crime despite its punitive effects primarily on minority communities. Indeed, Campbell returns to Clintonian centrism as key to understanding the Democrats' political weakness, adding extra irony to Hillary Clinton's startling electoral defeat. The author untangles this complex, frustrating topic with clear prose, solid analysis, and a stance sufficiently moderate to appeal to Trump voters experiencing buyer's remorse.Free of fake news, a smart, engaging road map regarding "what happened."
