Predicting The Rise Of Conservative Politics

I was cleaning out some bookshelves the other day, making room for some recent books (like Zell Miller's book explaining why Democrats are no longer the majority party), and I came across three books that I have saved through the years. All of them have to do with the changing attitudes of the American people, and the marketing business and specifically advertising, lives or dies on how well it reads these attitudes. Each of these books also explained why American politics was moving from liberal to conservative.

The first book came out in 1975. It was by Kirkpatrick Sale and entitled "Power Shift: The Rise of the Southern Rim and Its Challenge to the Eastern Establishment." Sale's thesis was that political power was shifting from America's Northeast industrial belt to the Sunbelt. Radical thinking at that time. The second book came out in 1990 and was by Alvin Toffler. It was mostly about business trends, but one section was called "Powershift Politics". The third came out a year later. It was by Peter Brown and its title was "Minority Party: Why Democrats Face Defeat in 1992 and Beyond." Now, remember those red and blue maps we saw after the last election, and how dominant the red Republican states had become? All three of these future-predicting authors predicted that ... even as similar authors are now predicting that the conservative revolution has just begun.

This is Gordon Sawyer, from a window on historic Green Street.