How Democrats Won in the White-Hot Heart of the Republican Right

How Democrats Won in the White-Hot Heart of the Republican Right

Gustavo Arellano on Orange County, L.A. Kauffman on protest, and Andrew Delbanco on the history of fugitive slaves.

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Orange County, California, was the political starting point for Nixon, for the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign, and for Reagan—as Republican as any place in America. But starting in January, not a single Republican will represent Orange County in the House. It’s solid blue. Gustavo Arellano will explain how it happened—he’s a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and wrote the legendary column “Ask a Mexican.”

Also: Mass demonstrations in America, from the 1963 March on Washington to the 2017 Women’s March. What protests do when they work, and why: L.A. Kauffman explains. Her new book is How to Read a Protest: The Art of Organizing and Resistance.

Plus: Cities providing sanctuary for people the federal government is trying to arrest and return to the oppression they had escaped— today’s battles over Trump’s attacks on undocumented immigrants have some striking parallels with the battles over fugitive slaves in the decade before the Civil War. Andrew Delbanco comments—his new book is The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul, from the Revolution to the Civil War.

 

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