Boiling Point: Democrats, Republicans, and the Decline of Middle-Class Prosperity

Phillips's hard-hitting analysis of the middle-class decline in the U.S. is a worthy sequel to The Politics of Rich and Poor , in which he predicted a populist revolt against Reagan-Bush policies that favored the rich. Here the onetime Republican campaign strategist spells out in painstaking detail how the Reagan-Bush agenda benefited the nation's wealthiest 1% at the expense of a middle class battered by inequitable taxes, deteriorating public services, increasingly unaffordable health care and education, shrinking employee benefits, job cutbacks and declining household net worth. Clinton tapped middle-class frustration using populist rhetoric, but unless his administration delivers on its promises to the eroding middle class while revitalizing the economy, the Democrats will be voted out of office in 1996, suggests Phillips. He stresses that the Democrats must replace yesteryear's internationalism with greater emphasis on domestic issues and must curb the abuses sponsored by financial elites and welfare statists alike. An urgently important book. Author tour. (Feb.)