What It Took to Win

A History of the Democratic Party

By: Michael Kazin

Narrated by: Lee Goettl

In What It Took to Win, the eminent historian Michael Kazin identifies and assesses the Democratic Party's long-running commitment to creating "moral capitalism" - a system that mixed entrepreneurial freedom with the welfare of workers and consumers. And yet the same party that championed the rights of the white working man also vigorously protected or advanced the causes of slavery, segregation, and Indian removal. As the party evolved towards a more inclusive egalitarian vision, it won durable victories for Americans of all backgrounds. But it also struggled to hold together a majority coalition and advance a persuasive agenda for the use of government.

Kazin traces the party's fortunes through vivid character sketches of its key thinkers and doers, from Martin Van Buren and William Jennings Bryan to the financier August Belmont and reformers such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Sidney Hillman, and Jesse Jackson. He also explores the records of presidents from Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Throughout, Kazin reveals the rich interplay of personality, belief, strategy, and policy that define the life of the party - and outlines the core components of a political endeavor that may allow President Biden and his co-partisans to renew the American experiment.

©2022 Michael Kazin (P)2022 Tantor

A must read

Thoroughly enjoyed the content and the reader...provided significant information on the party's evolution since its founding

1820 to 2020, all the in-fighting in da D party!!!

I'm very fortunate that Audible included this book in prime because I may have overlooked it. I took a long road trip right before the 2024 election, about 7-8 hours both ways, and this turned out to be the perfect book to try and conquer while driving. It has big, long chapters covering major epochs and eras and telling a deep and fluid story of how inner-party dynamics played out within the party and the country. I liked how the book focused more on the internal struggles within the party and the forces trying to control the party than other books that would be more zoomed out and talk about American politics in a more apolitical way. Politics is messy and dirty and involves compromise, collaboration, and, most importantly, building shared identities between disparate peoples. It succeeded but did not have much to say about how Democrats distinguished themselves from Republicans. And only briefly covered in later chapters how Republicans dominated the political landscape post-LBJ, and what Democrats could have possibly done to avoid that onslaught. The prescriptions are a bit too Bernie Bro, and it seems like his own analysis of the failed candidacies of Humphrey, McGovern, and Mondale seem to point to how a pro-union, culturally liberal marriage failed. Perhaps Kazin was hoping Dems would hide their culturally liberal leanings and go hard on the pro-worker and pro-union stuff, instead of how to some extent Dukakis, Clinton, Gore and even Obama seemed to go the other way, sporting themselves as pro-business, cultural liberals. The Bernie Bro pandering pops up a little bit more and more, but the narrative is still strong and seems honest enough. I think the further back you go the easier it is to be objective, and he does a real good job with the whole progressive turn lead by William Jenning Bryan, which he wrote a book about and hope ill have a chance to read. A really deep and fascinating narrative about the various groups that jockeyed and jostled for political power, and how this internal struggle continued forward for 200 years, from the birth of the party machine under Martin Van Buren in 1820 to Biden's covid victory in 2020. Really wished this author had it in him to write a narrative of the 200 years from the Whig/Republican side as well.

Timely and informative History Book

What it Took to Win is the best history book I have seen in a while.

Without missing the bigger historical picture and people, the book details more fringe historical figures, such as Francis Perkins Perkins. The information can be dense like in any history book, so I will probably listen to it a couple of times. However, this is also a reflection of a well-researched and written work.

The book is timely ending at the beginning of the Biden administration and discussing the relevance of Bernie Sanders, Alejandra Osorio Córtez, and other relevant contemporary Democrats. Moreover, the book matches its present-day relevance with an insightful portrayal of the Democratic Party's origins.

I look forward to this book's Republican counterpart (hint, hint). The Republican Party evolution would be a fascinating book. I hope this author will do one.

Would Like To've Liked it More

The narrator was the toughest part for me. He sounded professional, but unengaged with the material, and as a result it was hard to focus and retain interest.

The book as a whole was informative, but lacked, perhaps, some narrative focus or spine to make me feel that I had ingested something memorable (and relatable) when finished. I felt as if I received informative bits of each era, but not necessarily the knots that bound them through time. Then again, that may've been an issue with the narrator.

It was not bad, but I certainly was hoping for something more.