Voting to Kill - Review (Partial)

“Voting to Kill” by Jim Geraghty is a book that seeks to explain the transformation of the Democratic Party from the party of FDR, Truman and Kennedy to that of the perpetually anti-war party.

This book has been so engrossing so far (I am half-way through), I gotta say there have been very few non-fiction books that kept me turning the pages so fast. So far, Jim has covered Americans’ reaction to 9/11, Democrats and their actions on national security issues since 1968, Democrat and Republican reactions to 9/11, war in Afghanistan, elections in 2002, 2004 and the buildup to the war in Iraq. A pretty big list you say? It is and it is very well laid out with tons of cites that make me wish the book were in HTML format and I could simply click on the citations as links and read them.

I was really surprised as to how little I knew of American politics before the Clinton era. I am even more surprised as to how vividly I remember how disgusted I had felt at events like Cynthia McKinney’s shameless pandering to the Saudi Prince whose money Giuliani rightly rejected. There are numerous such instances mentioned in the book and each of them reminded me of my ill feelings towards the people who acted so obtusely those days. It almost makes me believe in Jim’s theory….that Democrats are digging their own graves as long as national security trumps all other issues for the general voting population.