Book

Through the voices of working-class, religious people who no longer vote Democratic, Why the Democrats Are Blue shows how and why the “party of the little people” has alienated its most reliable voters, reducing the base of a once-proud national party to the coastal enclaves that support cultural liberalism.

The book traces the change to a little-known commission created at the epic 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The commission was designed to make the party’s presidential nominating system more democratic.

That was the theory. The reality was different.

A small band of college-educated, antiwar progressives took over the commission. With few people paying attention, they used anti-democratic measures to create a more upper-class-dominated coalition and presidential nominating system.

Reviewers’ Praise For

“Somewhere along the line, the parties switched places, with consequences, including the Democrats’ loss of their durable majority”that are plain to see. But how it happened still seems a puzzle, and, in his new book, Why the Democrats Are Blue: Secular Liberalism and the Decline of the People’s Party, Mark Stricherz has provided a crucial piece for solving that puzzle.”

— Ramesh Ponnuru, columnist and National Review Editor in Chief

“To comprehend the realignment of modern politics in favor of the Republican Party you have to understand the process by which Democrats made themselves Blue–essentially made themselves a post-Christian, European-style party–and this book will go a long way towards helping you understand how that happened.”

— Orrin Judd, reviewer at Brothers Judd