About this item
To save both democracy and a decent economy, here's why it's crucial that Americans elect a truly progressive president.The 2020 presidential election will determine the very survival of American democracy. To restore popular faith in government -- and win the election -- Democrats need to nominate and elect an economic progressive. The Stakes explains how the failure of the economy to serve ordinary Americans opened the door to a demagogic president, and how democracy can still be taken back from Donald Trump.Either the United States continues the long slide into the arms of the bankers and corporate interests and the disaffection of working Americans -- the course set in the past half century by Republican and Democratic presidents alike -- or we elect a progressive Democrat in the mold of FDR. At stake is nothing less than the continued success of the American experiment in liberal democracy. That success is dependent on a fairer distribution of income, wealth, and life changes -- and a reduction in the political influence of financial elites over both parties.The decay of democracy and economic fairness began long before Trump. The American republic is in need of a massive overhaul. It will take not just a resounding Democratic victory in 2020 but a progressive victory to pull back from the brink of autocracy. The Stakes demonstrates how a progressive Democrat has a better chance than a centrist of winning the presidency, and how only this outcome can begin the renewal of the economy and our democracy.A passionate book from one of America's best political analysts, The Stakes is the book to read ahead of the 2020 primaries and general election.
About the Author
Robert Kuttner is cofounder and coeditor of The American Prospect magazine, and the Meyer and Ida Kirstein chair at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. He was a founder of the Economic Policy Institute, and serves on its executive committee. Kuttner is author of eleven books, including the 2008 New York Times best seller, Obama's Challenge. His other writing has appeared in The Atlantic, the New Yorker, Harpers, the New York Review of Books, the New Republic, Foreign Affairs, Dissent, New Statesman, Harvard Business Review, Columbia Journalism Review, Political Science Quarterly, and the New York Times Magazine and New York Times Book Review. He has contributed major articles for the New England Journal of Medicine as a national policy correspondent. He is a featured columnist for Huffington Post.He previously served as a national staff writer on the Washington Post, chief investigator of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, economics editor of The New Republic, and was a longtime columnist for Business Week and for the Boston Globe, syndicated by the Washington Post. He is the two-time winner of the Sidney Hillman Journalism Award, the John Hancock Award for Excellence in Business and Financial Journalism, the Jack London Award for Labor Writing, and the Paul G. Hoffman Award of the United Nations Development Program for his lifetime work on economic efficiency and social justice. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Fellow, German Marshall Fund Fellow, and John F. Kennedy Fellow.Educated at Oberlin College, The London School of Economics, and the University of California at Berkeley, Kuttner is the recipient of honorary degrees from Swarthmore College and Oberlin. In addition to Brandeis, he has also taught at the University of Massachusetts, the University of Oregon, Boston University and Harvard's Institute of Politics. He lives in Boston with his wife, Joan Fitzgerald, a professor of public policy at Northeastern. He is the father of two grown children and has six grandchildren.robertkuttner.com
