Middle Class Dreams

The United States is in the midst of a historic political upheaval. Its middle class is increasingly disillusioned with official Washington and with the two major parties, neither of which is able to inspire confidence. Now Stanley Greenberg, the nation's preeminent analyst of public opinion, gives a brutally honest account of the causes and effects of this middle-class rebellion. Greenberg shows how Democrats and Republicans have historically wooed the middle class and why these traditional party strategies produced thirty years of growing party failure. He outlines the daunting challenges each major party faces in order to win back the middle-class voters in this new period of our history. In this major new and revised edition of his book, Greenberg analyzes the 1994 election upheaval and offers some provocative opinions about the presidential election of 1996. Acclaim for the previous edition: "What makes [this] book interesting, in part, is knowing that you're seeing some of the concealed endoskeleton of the presidency, the strategic political calculation that must be in Clinton's mind as he manages each succeeding crisis but that he can never discuss openly." -Nicholas Lemann, The New Republic "An ambitious book, ...more intellectually provocative than an insider's tell-all."-Janet Hook, New York Times Book Review "A substantial contribution to contemporary thinking about politics. Students of campaigns and elections, public policy, and public opinion will find things of value in this book."-Darrell M. West, Brown University