Salena Zito

After finishing “The Great Revolt” (GR), I questioned myself on why I had chosen this book in the first place. While I had found bits and pieces of some interest, I was disappointed overall and wanted to learn from my mistake. I had been looking forward to some good post-election, in-depth analyses and was eagerly awaiting a book by Mark Halperin and John Heilmann, but that effort was canceled a few months back. I heard a positive comment about GR, and checked it out, but I did not pay enough attention to a few warning flags, e.g., Zito and Todd’s backgrounds. I did not read the review in my hometown Washington Post, but noted only a quote in Amazon’s Editorial Reviews: “A remarkable book” – Washington Post. After the fact I read Carlos Lozada’s (non-fiction reviewer for the Post) article on the book. Read it ! Had I read it earlier I would have passed on GR; I don’t recall seeing “remarkable” in his review. One last resolution for future non-fiction book selections - I will drive over to my local bookstore and spend ten minutes scanning such books in the future before making the personal commitment to read the next.

So, how is the book structured? It’s 266 pages, and focuses almost exclusively on Trump and Trump supporters. The authors identify seven archetype voters supporting Trump in ten particular Midwest counties, and then focuses a chapter on each of the seven, e.g. King Cyrus Christians. The “meat” of each chapter is a mini-bio on three or four voters in each chapter with commentary from the voter on her/his life and why the interviewee voted for Trump. There is also some general profile data on the town and/or county with some stats, but far less than I had hoped for. There are a few additional chapters, e.g. “Localism, not Globalism”, which attempt to give a big picture view of common themes and a view of what might be coming next.

There is no balance here. This is 90+% about Trump; it is not a post-election study of what happened. Most Trump supporters will devour every word. I wanted a bigger picture of what happened across the country and how each campaign drove the results. This was not the book for me. Secondly, the first two or three of these mini bios were interesting for me, but after a while they became rather similar, with far too much emphasis on their lives (why I’ve driven a school bus for the past 20 years….), and not enough focus on why these voters voted the way they did, as well as why they didn’t vote for the other candidate. It is not clear to me if the voters could not articulate their motivations in more depth or if the interviewers failed to draw that detail out. One aspect of the 2016 election that has fascinated me is the very strong negative emotion many voters felt for Hillary Clinton, and I have been trying to understand why. That emotion surfaced in GR naturally, and there were a few toss away quotes about not paying attention to the voter’s town, or looking down on us, etc. but it left me with the sense that no, there’s something else there, but that answer is not in this book. Issues such as immigration and racism were not given sufficient attention; I can only wonder why not. Finally, I thought the book was at its weakest when it tried to extrapolate the data and suggest what might lie ahead. The authors are clearly suggesting a movement. I think it’s way to early to tell, and history may suggest otherwise. I didn’t find any of those pages insightful.

Reading GR was not a totally negative experience. I did find it interesting that so many of the subjects interviewed had voted for Obama. It is a really key point in the book and while I appreciated the “aha!” I was disappointed that the reasons for switching parties in 2016 were not expanded.… (mehr)