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    It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics
    It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics
    It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics
    Audiobook6 hours

    It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics

    Written by David Faris

    Narrated by Mike Chamberlain

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The American electoral system is clearly falling apart-as evidenced by the 2016 presidential election. In It's Time to Fight Dirty, David Faris offers accessible, actionable strategies for American institutional reform which don't require a constitutional amendment, and would have a lasting impact on our future.

    With equal amounts of playful irreverence and persuasive reasoning, Faris describes how the Constitution's deep democratic flaws constantly put progressives at a disadvantage, and lays out strategies for "fighting dirty" though obstructionism and procedural warfare: establishing statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico; breaking California into several states; creating a larger House of Representatives; passing a new voting rights act; and expanding the Supreme Court.

    The Constitution may be the world's most difficult document to amend, but David Faris argues that many of America's democratic failures can be fixed within its rigid confines-and, at a time when the stakes have never been higher, he outlines a path for long-term, progressive change in the United States.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateAug 28, 2018
    ISBN9781541449749
    It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics

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    Reviews for It's Time to Fight Dirty

    3.5/5

    16 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I totally agree with the proposed changes. But I don't think it will be nearly as straightforward as the author suggests.
    • 4/5
      If you want some fighting lingo, this book delivers. (“The default negotiating position of the Democratic Party … should be this: You will give us Merrick Garland, or you may go die in a fire.” Though the moderate Garland isn’t where I’d start, I admire the sentiment.) Faris is outraged and wants to swing for the fences, arguing that debating whether the minimum wage should be $13 or $15 is unhelpful while Republicans are playng hardball and successfully obscuring the connection between policies and the parties that support those policies. That’s not to say we shouldn’t campaign on the minimum wage, but it won’t be enough. (Trump is on track to appoint 30% of all federal judges, by the way.) We should abandon the filibuster and any urge to make policy in “bipartisan” fashion until Republicans have reformed themselves. We shouldn’t play Republican dirty—closing down voting stations in white-dominated areas, for example—but we should play to win. That would include statehood for DC and Puerto Rico (he argues that existing polling doesn’t capture the real taste for statehood there), splitting California into seven states (“California is so enormous that if you laid it out end to end, it would almost stretch across the entire black hole of empathy and human feeling at the center of the contemporary Republican Party”), packing the Supreme Court and the lower courts, expanding the size of the House and electing representatives in multimember districts with ranked-choice voting, and comprehensively making it automatic to register and super easy to vote. The California stuff was the freshest idea to me. Although California was purplish until relatively recently, Faris argues that demographic changes would make at least five and possibly all seven of the new states into Democratic states sending Democratic senators to Washington. And, not incidentally, California’s 38 million people would gain more equal representation, and there’d be more of a path for talented California politicians of any stripe to actually get some experience in government. I’d sort of rather abolish the Senate, but it’s an interesting pitch, and he argues that the logistical challenges are indeed daunting but certainly worth the same investment that “our elites generally reserve for invading small, unimportant countries, demolishing their societies, killing their leaders, and watching their young people grow up burning with a thirst for violent revenge.” Expanding the House would also help malapportionment: though gerrymandering is plenty bad, Faris argues that there’s basically no way to district for a 435-member House without packing Democrats together in uncompetitive urban seats.
    • 3/5
      It’s Time To Fight Dirty is built on the false premise that the only way Democrats can take over from Republicans is to be worse than Republicans. They should be at least as obstructive, uncooperative, unreasonable and irrational as the Republicans were during the Obama Administration. This is not a recipe for a better democracy. Or a better country. It is a recipe for disaster – a race to the bottom. But in David Faris’ world, winning is everything. Faris maintains acting civilly only lets Republicans trample poor, honest, gullible Democrats. So far they have reduced the number of polling booths, limited voting time and absentee ballots, required hard-to-get IDs, removed the vote from cons and ex-cons, and twisted districts into bizarre shapes to ensure continuous re-election for themselves. If that weren’t sufficient, there aren’t enough Congressmen (we really need about 900!), Supreme Court justices live too long, there is no statutory holiday for voting and of course Republicans have zero respect for voters or democracy once they’re in. Therefore, Democrats should do precisely the same thing next time they’re in charge. You follow?Republicans are Satan for Faris, and he takes every shot he can. Here’s his take on the Senate Majority Leader:“With his signature, dead-eyed, off-center stare, and his trash-eating half-grin that barely conceals his self-satisfaction with all of the democracy-wrecking shenanigans he’s gotten away with, McConnell is the chief philosopher-king of the Republic of Hypocrisy, whose unrivalled ability to summon an unbroken string of lies and distortions of self-serving nonsense through his teeth helped deliver unfettered power to the GOP in 2016 despite their almost unique unfitness to run a modern country.” And that is just one sentence.He also has a thing for “entire” as in everything Republicans do worse than anything in the entire world or in the entire history of mankind or the entire country, etc, etc.The proposals to fix government are really out there, considering the state of bipartisanship. Faris wants to create eight news states that will vote Democrat (Washington DC, Puerto Rico, and splitting California into seven states along county lines). We must switch to proportional elections, amend the constitution several ways, and no president who loses the popular vote should be able to nominate a Supreme Court justice.I wasn’t sure Faris isn’t actually a Republican out make Democrats look ridiculous.Yes, rather than entice citizens, Republicans work to cut off votes from anyone who might oppose them. But Faris has no viable path for Democrats except to copy them and outdo them in self-serving. What he totally ignores is the simple fact the Democrats have not seen fit to provide a viable presidential alternative. If the Democrats could find an honest, trustworthy and principled flagbearer, this entire rant would be irrelevant. Instead, he proposes no choice whatsoever.David Wineberg