Pursuing the Progressive Case?: Observing Obama in Real Time

What lessons for a Barack Obama second term can be taken from the politics of his first term? How progressive, if at all, will the second term be? In Pursuing the Progressive Case? author David Coates presents a collection of commentaries pondering the strengths and weaknesses of the president's first term, offering clear answers to those questions, and pointing the way forward for those who wish to see a twenty-first century equivalent of FDR's New Deal. The essays, initially posted on Coates's blog, provide a detailed commentary on the key political developments of the last four years, covering topics such as financial reform, health care, stimulus and deficits, poverty and unemployment, the foreclosure crisis, immigration, welfare, and troop distribution. Informed by research and scholarship, Pursuing the Progressive Case? builds on Coates's earlier works Answering Back and Making the Progressive Case. It offers new and vital arguments for engaging in progressive politics.