Take It Back: A Battle Plan for Democratic Victory

TOP TEN REASONS WHY REPUBLICANS SUCK

10. They're so incompetent they couldn't pour pee out of a boot if you wrote the instructions on the heel.

9. They lie like a rug. They lie like a dog. They lie like . . . ummm . . . a dog's rug. We mean, they just lie all the time.

8. They're a pack of crooks.

7. They are unbearably sanctimonious.

6. They have no sense of humor.

5. They're losing the war on terror.

4. They've put our economic future in Beijing's hands.

3. They steal elections.

2. Oh, yeah. They're destroying the planet, too.

1. They suck up to power.

By being too timid and too weak, too hesitant and too confused, Democrats have allowed Republicans to run amok.

Republicans today control everything: the White House, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the federal bureaucracy, the military, and the corporate special interests and their lobbyists. They operate powerful right-wing organizations, right-wing think tanks, and a conservative media that serves as an attack dog against Democrats.

Republicans have used their absolute power to corrupt our democracy, degrade our military, weaken our health care system, diminish our stature in the world, damage our environment, reward the rich, hammer the poor, squeeze the middle class, bankrupt our Treasury, and indenture our children to foreign debt holders.

In this important book, James Carville and Paul Begala show Democrats how they can take it back. They offer a clear-eyed critique of their party's failures and make specific, concrete recommendations on how Democrats can avoid losing elections on divisive issues such as abortion, gun control, gay rights, and moral values and start winning them on health care, political reform, energy, the environment, tax reform, and more.

Carville and Begala say that liberal Democrats are right that too many establishment Democrats kowtow to corporate interests and shamefully supported George W. Bush's rush to war. And moderate Democrats are right to complain that too many Democrats are out of step with middle-class values, too removed from people of faith, too enthralled with intellectual and cultural elites.

But the problem with the Democrats, Carville and Begala argue, is not ideological. It's anatomical. They lack a backbone. Take It Back is a spinal transplant for Democrats and an audacious battle plan for victory.

The Washington Post - Peter Beinart

Carville and Begala don't name names, but they are smart, funny and ruthless in dissecting the mistakes and idiocies of the Democratic campaigns of 2000, 2002 and 2004. The book is most convincing when it is most elitist—a kind of "why can't anyone play this game" attack on the Democratic Party's inability to find strategists as talented as they are…The best thing about Take It Back is its smart tips for how to update the strategy they employed so winningly in 1992 for 2008 and beyond. But the most telling thing…is its unwillingness to argue frankly for such a strategy—because doing so would lead them into conflict with the increasingly powerful party activists who see the Clinton model as obsolete or worse. Carville and Begala may think they are the ones doing the co-opting, but the truth may be closer to the reverse.

James Carville is the best-known and most-loved political consultant in American history. He is also a speaker, talk-show host, actor, and author with six New York Times bestsellers to his credit. Part of a large Southern family, he grew up without a television and loved to listen to the stories his mama told. Mr. Carville lives with his wife, Mary Matalin, and their two daughters in New Orleans.

Paul Begala was a chief strategist for the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign, which carried thirty-three states and made Bill Clinton the first Democrat to win the White House in sixteen years. He served as counselor to the president in the Clinton White House, where he coordinated policy, politics, and communications. He is the author of four books, including Is Our Children Learning?: The Case Against George W. Bush; It's Still the Economy, Stupid; and Buck Up, Suck Up...and Come Back When You Foul Up (with James Carville). Begala is a CNN political commentator and a research professor of public policy at Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute. Paul earned both his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas, where he was student body president. He and his wife live quietly in Virginia with their four boys and a German shepherd. (Okay, so they don't live too quietly.)