"THE NEGLECTED VOTER: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma" Book Description: In the 1960s, the Republican Party began what would be four decades of dominance in presidential politics. David Paul Kuhn offers the first look at the voters who left Democrats and built the Republican Party. In revealing, lucid prose, Kuhn takes us inside the making of American presidents in the past half century, the social upheaval of our times, and into the early days of the 2008 presidential race. Kuhn shows how those who shifted the balance of power in Washington were not only poor and middle class whites, but overwhelmingly men. The White Male Gap, as Kuhn terms it, comes to explain not only why these workingmen “left the party they had once built,” but why they came to believe Democrats stand for everyone but white men. He tells the story of the effect of terms like “angry white male,” explaining that these men did not want to be viewed as victims but “were no longer comfortable being portrayed as the reason everyone else was a victim.” Kuhn tells of the effect on men as factory jobs are lost, as pensions wither, as families’ breakdown, as popular culture mocks regular guys as “dumb down dads,” while the same men are told they should feel powerful due to “white male privilege.” In telling the story of how those deemed powerful came to feel powerless, he weaves the reader through the political battles of our time. Kuhn reminds the political left that midterm victories (1986, 2006) do not always equal sustainable success, while demonstrating that white men were the pivotal swing bloc in the recent midterm elections. Grounded in practical politics, The Neglected Voter presciently reconfigures the American political landscape. Equipped with unprecedented research data, reporting, and exclusive interviews with such figures as Jimmy Carter, Norman Mailer, Mark Warner, and Pat Robertson, Kuhn examines the role of gender and racial identity in presidential politics through the social changes that have defined modern America.