It's the Middle Class, Stupid!

It’s the Middle Class, Stupid! confirms what we have all suspected: Washington and Wall Street have really screwed things up for the average American. Work has been devalued. Education costs are out of sight. Effort and ambition have never been so scantily rewarded. Political guru James Carville and pollster extraordinaire Stan Greenberg argue that our political parties must admit their failures and the electorate must reclaim its voice, because taking on the wealthy and the privileged is not class warfare—it is a matter of survival. Told in the alternating voices of these two top political strategists, It’s the Middle Class, Stupid! provides eye-opening and provocative arguments on where our government—including the White House—has gone wrong, and what voters can do about it.

Controversial and outspoken, authoritative and shrewd, It’s the Middle Class, Stupid! is destined to make waves during the 2012 presidential campaign, and will set the agenda for legislative battles and political dust-ups during the next administration.

James Carville is an American political consultant, commentator, educator, actor, attorney, media personality, and prominent liberal pundit. He gained national attention for his work as the lead strategist of the successful 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton. Carville was a cohost of CNN's Crossfire until its final broadcast in June 2005. Since then, he has appeared on CNN's news program The Situation Room, and since 2009, he has hosted a weekly XM Radio program, 60/20 Sports, with Luke Russert, son of the late Tim Russert, who hosted NBC's Meet the Press. Carville, who is married to Republican political consultant Mary Matalin, has taught political science at Tulane University since 2009.

Stan Greenberg is a leading Democratic pollster and political strategist who has advised the campaigns of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry, and hundreds of other candidates and organizations in the United States and around the world. A political scientist who received his B.A. from Miami University and his Ph.D. from Harvard, Greenberg spent a decade teaching at Yale before becoming a political consultant. His 1985 study of Reagan Democrats in Macomb County, Michigan, became a classic of progressive political strategy, and is the basis for his continuing argument that Democrats must actively work to present themselves as populists advocating the expansion of opportunity for the middle class. Greenberg is married to Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, who represents Connecticut's Third Congressional District.