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In May 1970, Four Days After Kent State, Construction Workers Chased Students Through Downtown Manhattan, Beating Scores Of Protestors Bloody. As Hardhats Clashed With Hippies, It Soon Became Clear That Something Larger Was Happening; Democrats Were At War With Themselves. In The Hardhat Riot, David Paul Kuhn Tells The Fateful Story-how Chaotic It Was, When It Began, When The White Working Class First Turned Against Liberalism, When Richard Nixon Seized The Breach, And America Was Forever Changed. It Was Unthinkable One Generation Before: Fdr's Forgotten Man Siding With The Party Of Big Business And, Ultimately, Paving The Way For Presidencies From Ronald Reagan To Donald Trump. In The Shadow Of The Half-built Twin Towers, On The Same Day The Knicks Rallied Against The Odds And Won Their First Championship, We Relive The Schism That Tore Liberalism Apart. We Experience The Tumult Of Nixon's America And John Lindsay's New York City, As Festering Division Explodes Into Violence. Nixon's Advisors Realize That This Tragic Turn Is Their Chance, That The Democratic Coalition Has Collapsed And That These, Quite Candidly, Are Our People Now. In This Nail-biting Story, Kuhn Delivers On Meticulous Research And Reporting, Drawing From Thousands Of Pages Of Never-before-seen Records. We Go Back To A Harrowing Day That Explains The Politics Of Today. We Experience The Battle Between Two Tribes Fighting Different Wars, Soon To Become Different Americas, Ultimately Reliving A Liberal War That Maimed Both Sides. We Come To See How It All Was Laid Bare One Brutal Day, When The Democratic Party's Future Was Bludgeoned By Its Past, As If It Was A Last Gasp To Say That We Once Mattered Too.
How did the 1970 Hardhat Riot in New York City serve as the catalyst for the white working class's departure from the Democratic Party and the subsequent realignment of American politics? David Paul Kuhn, a veteran political journalist, utilizes thousands of pages of previously unexamined records to reconstruct the violent confrontation between construction workers and anti-war protesters. He argues that this specific event exposed a terminal fracture within the Democratic coalition, providing a strategic opening for the Republican Party to court the working-class vote. By analyzing the intersection of labor unrest, cultural polarization, and Nixon-era political maneuvering, Kuhn illustrates the origins of the modern populist divide.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Critics and political historians frequently note the book's success in connecting a singular, localized event to broader, long-term shifts in national political identity. Experts highlight the depth of the archival research as a significant contribution to understanding the erosion of the New Deal coalition.
Page Count:
320
Publication Date:
2020-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0190064722
ISBN-13:
9780190064723
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