商品簡介
A deeply reported look inside the new conservative movement working to undermine American democracy.
It's been a bad few years for Democrats. Congressional Republicans have held bills hostage and blocked judicial appointments. The Supreme Court has eviscerated campaign finance laws, opening elections to the highest bidder. Meanwhile, twenty-two states have passed laws making it harder to cast a ballot--especially for young people, poor people, and people of color, who not coincidentally tend to vote liberal.
Progressives have often seen these moves as cynical attempts to gain an electoral advantage or stymie the Democrats' agenda. But reporter Zachary Roth dug deeper and discovered something even more alarming: A growing number of Republicans are afraid of the popular will—and they're doing everything they can to limit it.
Since our country's founding, the right has worried about democracy degenerating into mob rule. But in the age of Obama, with young and minority voters increasingly flexing their political muscles, those fears have resurfaced with a vengeance. And now conservatives are fighting back. In The Great Suppression, Roth introduces us to the politicians, scholars, and activists at the forefront of this new movement. He takes us inside the successful scheme to give the GOP a long-term lock on Congress, no matter what the election results say, and travels to the east Texas town where a group of white conservatives used a legal loophole to oust the majority black school board without a vote. He exposes the state officials and corporate lobbyists who are teaming up to stamp out grassroots democracy on everything from minimum wage laws to the environment. He unmasks the libertarian lawyers reclaiming judicial activism in order to strike down legislation and roll back the New Deal. And he shows us how efforts to curb the popular will are playing out on the ground, hurting the most vulnerable Americans and preventing progress on issues that desperately need attention.
A sharp, searing polemic in the tradition of Rachel Maddow and Matt Taibbi, The Great Suppression is an urgent wake-up call about a threat to our most cherished values, and a rousing argument for why we need democracy now more than ever.
作者簡介
Zachary Roth is a national reporter for MSNBC. He was born and raised in London and lives with his family in Brooklyn.
