Crashing the Gate, two days left for special edition

Publishers Weekly covers our book, and notes the unconventional way our publisher is marketing the book:

Moulitsas Zuniga is pleased to publish with a progressive press. "The way people consume information has changed," he said. "Hence, the way to market books has to adapt."

For Chelsea Green that means not only having finished books available in late February for a manuscript delivered in mid-December, but coming up with an unusual marketing program. In addition to barraging the more than one million daily visitors to the authors' Web sites with information on the book, Chelsea Green is planning a political campaign, complete with campaign buttons, a national field office and local volunteers. Baldwin hired Glenn Smith, whose credits include serving as campaign manager for Ann Richards's first successful run for Texas governor, to head up the book blitz, which will include seven events a month in April and May, from Austin, Tex., to Washington, D.C. Chelsea Green will also partner to market the book with a range of progressive groups.

Chelsea Green is a small press, so the presales are helping fund that promotional book tour.

So, a few reviews have been written so far. We've got good reviews from Matt Stoller and Aaron Barlow.

There's a mixed review from Eugene at My Left Wing, and a good ol' fashioned trashing at Pandagon.

We are taking on every sacred cow in the party, so it's clear that those who disagree with certain points will not like parts of the book. Eugene took exception to our chapter on the single issue groups, and it's no doubt that's a controversial chapter. But those groups have had such a stranglehold on party identity that few people have dared criticize them. Yet surprisingly (to us), every single person we talked to, both inside and outside the party establishment, pointed a finger at the issue groups as a problem. It's hard to ignore the issue groups when debating the problems and future of the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, Jedmunds at Pandagon takes exception at our explicit refusal to deal with ideology. We knew that would be an avenue of attack for the book's detractors. But as we wrote in the book:

Ask ten people what the Republican Party stands for and you'll get roughly the same ten answers: lower taxes, smaller government, strong national defense, and family values. We can argue about the GOP's fealty to those principles and the ample evidence of hypocrisy, but it's a strong brand born of a very well-defined conservative world-view and set of values. Now ask ten people what the Democratic Party stands for, and you're likely to get ten different answers, many of them negative, courtesy of the Republicans that realized that if the Democrats didn't have a brand, they'd offer one up.

When we first set out to write this book, we figured the entire thesis would revolve around the lack of branding and the lack of a coherent vision. As it turned out, this hasn't been a book about policies or new ideas or message, even though those are critically important in taking back our country. We like to believe the ideas that will lead the Democratic Party to a new governing majority already exist, but they need to be articulated clearly.

The book evolved into a much broader discussion of the nascent people-powered mass movement of the netroots and the grassroots, because the progressive message is likely to emerge from there. It has to come collectively from the party rank and file in all fifty states. The hardest movement-building work is happening in the trenches, outside D.C., and those people are the key to the party's future. We have common principles that bind Democrats from places as diverse as Cambridge, Massachusetts, or Madison, Wisconsin, to places like Big Sandy, Montana, or Raleigh, North Carolina. It is those common principles that need to be teased out, packaged, and delivered in wide public forums.

It's not me and Jerome's job to tease out our message. Our job was to identify the bottlenecks preventing a message from emerging -- the lack of a Vast Left Wing Conspiracy (think tanks, leadership institutes, and media machine), corrupt and ineffective consultants, and yes -- issue groups that put their own interests above the broader goals of the progressive movement. The goal shouldn't be to defend NARAL, it should be to defend a women's right to choose. The goal shouldn't be to defend the Sierra Club, but to defend the environment. And if you care about those issues and others, it's hard to look at recent history and think that those groups have been even remotely effective.

If you think Bob Casey Jr. in Pennsylvania is an evil DINO satan incarnate, then yeah, you won't like this book. If you are interested in building a broad progressive movement that can win and rescue our nation from the incompetent ideologues currently running it to the ground, then you'll like it more.

But either way, we hope the book presents a starting point on a debate that has long been supressed.

Remember, the Special Edition of the book will only be available until Wednesday. So order now if you want to get the Progressive Partner version of the book (slightly different cover and thank you letter, you get the book 3-4 weeks before it hits bookstores, you help fund the book's promotional efforts, and every dime you pay goes to progressive organizations).

And another blurb, this one unsolicited from UVA political scientist Larry Sabato:

No one is spared in this lively, pointed book -- and that makes it a lot of fun. Demcorats should read Crashing the Gate to find their way out of the political wilderness. Republicans should read it to understand what their opponents might do if they get smart. Independents should read it to see what vigorous, two-party comeptition will really look like.