
Being Right Is Not Enough
What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $17.47
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Sandra Swafford
-
By:
-
Paul Waldman
About this listen
The 2006 election was a major turning point for the Democratic Party, but they'll need more than the Republicans' poor poll numbers to build a new progressive majority. Can progressives turn the tables by understanding and adapting the highly successful strategies and tactics developed by the right?
In Being Right Is Not Enough, political analyst Paul Waldman offers Democrats and progressives a clear-eyed, multifaceted strategy for victory in elections, policy debates, and the fundamental battle between progressivism and conservatism. The time has come, he says, for progressives to borrow several pages from the right-wing playbook and beat them at their own game. The book outlines an exhaustive list of things progressives must do, and do soon, including:
- Create a single progressive movement - not a collection of interest groups - devoted to the twin goals of fighting conservatism and advancing a progressive worldview.
- Agree on a core set of progressive principles and create a progressive master narrative that unifies them.
- Understand that political success comes not from the details of policy plans but from the communication of character and values.
- Stop pandering to the voters who dislike them the most and find new ways to create a lasting majority.
- Devote themselves not to short-term victories but to a long-term vision of the progressive America they want to create - even if it will take decades to get there.
- Stop worrying about whether the elite media approve of them.
- Stop being timid and become warriors for their cause.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Audacity of Hope
- Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
- By: Barack Obama
- Narrated by: Barack Obama
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In July 2004, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum. Now, in The Audacity of Hope, Senator Obama calls for a different brand of politics: a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship and alienated by the "endless clash of armies" we see in Congress and on the campaign trail; a politics rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit at the heart of "our improbable experiment in democracy".
-
-
My Fellow Conservatives, Give This A Listen
- By Dallas D.L. on 02-12-15
By: Barack Obama
-
The Case for Trump
- By: Victor Davis Hanson
- Narrated by: David Lertham
- Length: 20 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Case for Trump, award-winning historian and political commentator Victor Davis Hanson explains how a celebrity businessman with no political or military experience triumphed over 16 well-qualified Republican rivals, a Democrat with a quarter-billion-dollar war chest, and a hostile media and Washington establishment to become president of the US—and an extremely successful president.
-
-
Fascinating!!
- By Wayne on 03-07-19
-
It Was All a Lie
- How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump
- By: Stuart Stevens
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Stuart Stevens spent decades electing Republicans at every level, from presidents to senators to local officials. He knows the GOP as intimately as anyone in America, and in this new book he offers a devastating portrait of a party that has lost its moral and political compass. This is not a book about how Donald J. Trump hijacked the Republican Party and changed it into something else.
-
-
A party gone astray
- By Devin on 08-07-20
By: Stuart Stevens
-
Why We're Polarized
- By: Ezra Klein
- Narrated by: Ezra Klein
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Why We’re Polarized, Klein reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics.
-
-
Good as an intro, skip if you’re a wonk
- By Tony on 01-29-20
By: Ezra Klein
-
Democracy in Chains
- The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America
- By: Nancy MacLean
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Behind today's headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did.
-
-
A must read if you believe in democracy
- By H. L. Nelson on 10-11-17
By: Nancy MacLean
-
Muzzled
- The Assault on Honest Debate
- By: Juan Williams
- Narrated by: Juan Williams
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Prize-winning Washington journalist Juan Williams was dismissed by NPR for speaking his mind and saying what many Americans feel - that he gets nervous when boarding airplanes with passengers dressed in Muslim garb. NPR banished the veteran journalist in an act of political correctness that ultimately sparked nationwide outrage. Muzzled is a hard-hitting critique of the topics and concerns we can't talk about without suffering retaliation at the hands of the political correctness police.
-
-
Fair and Balanced
- By Elton on 08-23-11
By: Juan Williams
-
The Audacity of Hope
- Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
- By: Barack Obama
- Narrated by: Barack Obama
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In July 2004, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum. Now, in The Audacity of Hope, Senator Obama calls for a different brand of politics: a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship and alienated by the "endless clash of armies" we see in Congress and on the campaign trail; a politics rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit at the heart of "our improbable experiment in democracy".
-
-
My Fellow Conservatives, Give This A Listen
- By Dallas D.L. on 02-12-15
By: Barack Obama
-
The Case for Trump
- By: Victor Davis Hanson
- Narrated by: David Lertham
- Length: 20 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Case for Trump, award-winning historian and political commentator Victor Davis Hanson explains how a celebrity businessman with no political or military experience triumphed over 16 well-qualified Republican rivals, a Democrat with a quarter-billion-dollar war chest, and a hostile media and Washington establishment to become president of the US—and an extremely successful president.
-
-
Fascinating!!
- By Wayne on 03-07-19
-
It Was All a Lie
- How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump
- By: Stuart Stevens
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Stuart Stevens spent decades electing Republicans at every level, from presidents to senators to local officials. He knows the GOP as intimately as anyone in America, and in this new book he offers a devastating portrait of a party that has lost its moral and political compass. This is not a book about how Donald J. Trump hijacked the Republican Party and changed it into something else.
-
-
A party gone astray
- By Devin on 08-07-20
By: Stuart Stevens
-
Why We're Polarized
- By: Ezra Klein
- Narrated by: Ezra Klein
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Why We’re Polarized, Klein reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics.
-
-
Good as an intro, skip if you’re a wonk
- By Tony on 01-29-20
By: Ezra Klein
-
Democracy in Chains
- The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America
- By: Nancy MacLean
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Behind today's headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did.
-
-
A must read if you believe in democracy
- By H. L. Nelson on 10-11-17
By: Nancy MacLean
-
Muzzled
- The Assault on Honest Debate
- By: Juan Williams
- Narrated by: Juan Williams
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Prize-winning Washington journalist Juan Williams was dismissed by NPR for speaking his mind and saying what many Americans feel - that he gets nervous when boarding airplanes with passengers dressed in Muslim garb. NPR banished the veteran journalist in an act of political correctness that ultimately sparked nationwide outrage. Muzzled is a hard-hitting critique of the topics and concerns we can't talk about without suffering retaliation at the hands of the political correctness police.
-
-
Fair and Balanced
- By Elton on 08-23-11
By: Juan Williams
-
Un-Trumping America
- A Plan to Make America a Democracy Again
- By: Dan Pfeiffer
- Narrated by: Dan Pfeiffer
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There is nothing more important than beating Donald Trump in 2020, but defeating Trump is just the start of this timely book. Un-Trumping America offers readers three critical insights: first, Trump is not an aberration, but rather the logical extension of the modern Republican Party; second, how Democrats can defeat Trump in 2020; and third, preventing the likes of Trump from ever happening again with a plan to fix democracy.
-
-
If you care about our democracy, listen to this book.
- By kay on 02-25-20
By: Dan Pfeiffer
-
Why the Right Went Wrong
- Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond
- By: E. J. Dionne Jr.
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 20 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why the Right Went Wrong offers a historical view of the right since the 1960s. Its core contention is that American conservatism and the Republican Party took a wrong turn when they adopted Barry Goldwater's worldview during and after the 1964 campaign. Since 1968, no conservative administration could live up to the rhetoric rooted in the Goldwater movement that began to reshape American politics 50 years ago.
-
-
Outstanding, refreshing, inspiring
- By James Adams on 03-19-16
By: E. J. Dionne Jr.
-
Too Dumb to Fail
- How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections (and How It Can Reclaim Its Conservative Roots)
- By: Matt K. Lewis
- Narrated by: Matt K. Lewis
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From a leading voice among young conservatives, an impassioned argument that to stay relevant the Republican Party must look beyond short-term electoral gains and re-commit to historic conservative values. In 1963 Richard Hofstadter published his landmark book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Today, Matt Lewis argues, America's inclination toward simplicity and stupidity is stronger than ever, and its greatest victim is the Republican Party.
-
-
Opposing viewpoint
- By Howard G. on 03-17-16
By: Matt K. Lewis
-
One Nation After Trump
- A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported
- By: Norman J. Ornstein, Thomas E. Mann, E. J. Dionne Jr.
- Narrated by: E. J. Dionne Jr., Norman J. Ornstein, Thomas E. Mann
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
American democracy was never supposed to give the nation a president like Donald Trump. We have never had a president who gave rise to such widespread alarm about his lack of commitment to the institutions of self-government, to the norms democracy requires, and to the need for basic knowledge about how government works. We have never had a president who raises profound questions about his basic competence and his psychological capacity to take on the most challenging political office in the world.
-
-
Pleasurable Factual Density, much needed
- By David on 09-21-17
By: Norman J. Ornstein, and others
-
Working Class Republican
- Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism
- By: Henry Olsen
- Narrated by: Derek Shetterly
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Conventional political wisdom views the two most consequential presidents of the 20th century - FDR and Ronald Reagan - as ideological opposites. FDR is hailed as the champion of big-government progressivism manifested in the New Deal. Reagan is seen as the crusader for conservatism dedicated to small government and free markets. But Henry Olsen argues that this assumption is wrong.
-
-
Refreshing and insightful
- By Thomas Marks on 12-16-19
By: Henry Olsen
-
If We Can Keep It
- How the Republic Collapsed and How it Might Be Saved
- By: Michael Tomasky
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why has American politics fallen into such a state of horrible dysfunction? Can it ever be fixed? These are the questions that motivate Michael Tomasky’s deeply original examination into the origins of our hopelessly polarized nation. “One of America’s finest political commentators” (Michael J. Sandel), Tomasky ranges across centuries and disciplines to show how America has almost always had two dominant parties that are existentially, and often violently, opposed.
-
-
Republican MONSTERS broke our politics.
- By Mike Shelby on 03-29-19
By: Michael Tomasky
-
See No Evil
- 19 Hard Truths the Left Can't Handle
- By: Joel B. Pollak
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Liberals take great pride in their supposed openmindedness. Yet when it comes to hot-button issues like radical Islam, global warming, and abortion, "openminded" liberals go to great lengths to discredit and suppress the ideas of their opponents. Breitbart senior editor Joel Pollak exposes the 19 key ideas that today's liberals are desperate to suppress, revealing the blatant hypocrisy of leftwing leaders and pundits who preach tolerance but practice intolerance.
-
-
See no evil--until you listen to this book
- By eilidh on 02-02-17
By: Joel B. Pollak
-
Trump Aftershock
- The President's Seismic Impact on Culture and Faith in America
- By: Stephen E. Strang
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The election of Donald J. Trump sent shockwaves around the world. Shock troops were deployed along with the predictable rent-a-mob who stormed the streets of our nation’s cities. Within hours a movement was born. Stephen E. Strang explores and analyzes Trump’s effect on American culture from a Christian perspective, drawing upon interviews with many of the key players and offering insightful commentary on what the long-term prospects of the ongoing war of worldviews may portend.
-
-
Great Story
- By Pat Ashlee on 03-14-19
-
The Political Brain
- The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation
- By: Drew Westen
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins. In this landmark book, scientist and psychologist Drew Westen shows how electorates vote not with their heads but with their hearts, and how the marketplace that matters most is the marketplace of emotion - filled with values, images, analogies, moral sentiments, and moving oratory.
-
-
Really Bad
- By D. Martin on 07-01-12
By: Drew Westen
-
Take It Back
- Our Party, Our Country, Our Future
- By: James Carville, Paul Begala
- Narrated by: Paul Begala
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The problem with Democrats, Carville and Begala argue, is not ideological. It's anatomical. They lack a backbone. Take It Back is a spinal transplant for Democrats and an audacious battle plan for victory.
-
-
Take it Back
- By drwjbrown on 01-30-06
By: James Carville, and others
-
Frank
- A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage
- By: Barney Frank
- Narrated by: Barney Frank
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How did a disheveled, intellectually combative gay Jew with a thick New Jersey-Massachusetts accent become one of the most effective politicians of his time? In this candid and witty political memoir, Barney Frank relates his journey from the outskirts of New York City to Boston's City Hall and the Massachusetts legislature, and then to the US Congress, where he played a vital role in the struggle for personal freedom and economic fairness over four decades.
-
-
WOW
- By Gino on 03-23-15
By: Barney Frank
-
The Conservatarian Manifesto
- Libertarians, Conservatives, and the Fight for the Right's Future
- By: Charles C. W. Cooke
- Narrated by: Charles C. W. Cooke
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There is an underserved movement budding among young conservatives in which fiscal responsibility and controlled government spending remain crucial tenets, but issues like gay marriage and drug control are approached with a libertarian bent. The ideas of this growing wave need a public, nuanced voice. The implications for the Republican Party if this philosophy is more widely adopted may not only spur major change within the party but could also revitalize its chances of claiming more power in our government.
-
-
Great resource for a better understanding of Conservatives
- By Luis on 12-03-18
What listeners say about Being Right Is Not Enough
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
- Elton
- 06-16-07
When does it Start
I agree. The Democrats do need to start to define who they are and what they stand for. Blaming the media for their ineptitude to put out their message is a non-starter. The author tries to lay out a foundation for the Democrats, but I just kept thinking to myself, I couldn't go for that. The book is very well intentioned and focused. It's circumspect, critical, honest and penetrating. Ultimately, i hope the Dems take the advice. It will improve the next General election.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful