Person

Timothy Shenk

Bylines

Related Excerpts

Know Your Enemy
Podcast
Know Your Enemy

Realignments

Timothy Shenk describes his book as "a biography of American democracy told through its majorities, and the people who made them." The book attempts to define the character and conditions necessary for fashioning a durable electoral majority — in those moments when existing partisan and coalitional structures were reshuffled and articulated anew. In other words: a realignment. What are the implications of past realignments and is something similar possible today?
Democratic donkey necktie.

The Consultants Who Lost Democrats the Working Class

The rivalry of two men tells the story of how Democrats fumbled with their traditional base—and how they can win again.
Political cartoon of Franklin Roosevelt pulling the Democratic Party donkey with Uncle Sam, Congress, and Republicans behind them.

Pitching the Big Tent

The secret, often missing ingredient to building a majoritarian progressive coalition.
Then–Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama in Mitchell, S.D.

What Does It Take to Win?

A new history of American politics examines the past and future of political realignments.
Governor George Wallace stands defiant at the University of Alabama.

A View of American History That Leads to One Conclusion

For many historians today, the present is forever trapped in the past and defined by the worst of it.