Books about Nominating from Amazon.com

The sprawling nominating process is the critical first step every four years in the election of the president It is where the field of contenders is narrowed from a plethora of aspirants to the two finalists that carry the banners of the Democratic and Republican parties into the fall campaign. In a democracy such as ours, the voters should be major players in this process. Yet while 100 million or more Americans regularly participate in the election of the president, rarely does more than a third that number vote in the presidential primaries and caucuses that nominate the candidates. And only a small percentage of these voters have a truly meaningful voice - the fortunate few in Iowa, New Hampshire and a handful of other early voting states that for all practical purposes decide for the rest of the nation who the nominees will be. The thrust of this book is to discuss how we as a nation got to this point, how the nominating process currently works, how that compares to other countries, and how our process might be changed to give a more meaningful voice to a much larger number of voters. Visit our website for sample chapters!.
Price: $6.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A century ago, national political parties' nominating conventions for U.S. presidential candidates were wide-open brawls, filled with front-stage conflicts and back-room deals. Today, they are precisely planned and carefully scripted events, whose outcomes are largely preordained. Rewiring Politics is the first in-depth exploration of the profound changes in the nominating process to focus on the role of the media. Fourteen luminaries of media and politics examine how conventions have been transformed over time by the technology of "coverage." As the contributors demonstrate, the story of the evolution of the nominating process cannot be told without the concomitant story of the revolution in mass media. The impact of the media on political conventions is a topic that has received surprisingly little scholarly attention. Yet few aspects of the American political process have been so altered in such a short period of time. The first live television broadcasts from a national convention were transmitted on June 21, 1948, during the Republican convention in Philadelphia. Since then, radio, television, cable networks, and the Internet have transfigured both the presentation and the content of the nominating process. Because the party's nominee is a foregone conclusion, candidates use conventions—and convention coverage—as a form of advertising. They are mega-media events designed to electrify the party faithful and to woo undecided voters by dazzling them. This development, the contributors show, is profoundly intertwined with the industrialization, fragmentation, and competition of mass media. Throughout the volume, they balance theory with empirics, resulting in enlightening analyses along with detailed accounts. Without a doubt, conventions still matter. Though their role has changed over the past decades, they remain events essential to the political process. Rewiring Politics helps readers assess the evolution of conventions in contemporary politics, the forces driving developments, and the implications for parties, politics, and society. AUTHOR BIO: Costas Panagopoulos is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University. He is also a visiting assistant professor of political science and the director of the graduate program in elections and campaign management at Fordham University. He previously served as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow (2004-2005) in the office of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY)..
Price: $34.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Probably no feature of the American political system has been subject to more sustained criticism over the last twenty-five years than the process by which we choose our presidents In Choosing Our Choices, Robert E. DiClerico and James W. Davis debate the question: should we retain the present, primary centered direct democracy method in selecting presidential candidates or should we return to a representative decision-making process to nominate our candidates? This timely and thought-provoking text offers the reader a concise yet comprehensive analysis of the presidential nominating system, arguments for and against the current system, and supplemental documents and essays for further reading. Visit our website for sample chapters!.
Price: $14.35 [Notify me when price goes down.]