Member Reviews

A great dive into campaign strategies and a broken system. This book offered a new perspective on the political system and parties.

Was this review helpful?

You see so much about the party online and in the media. This did a good job talking through where we are. Fairly quick read for me too which was appreciated.

Was this review helpful?

Politics has become important to just about everyone today. In this vein, the authors have provided a how-to plan for the Democrats to win more elections. Though the party stands for just about everything the American people believe in, compared, they contend, to the Republicans, the party just does not win enough. The authors think this is because, unlike the Republicans, they have not mastered how to establish and perpetuate a brand they can stand behind. The book is filled with solid examples of what Democratic candidates have done and what they should have done as part of their branding. Though the book focuses on the Democratic Party, there is a lot of information provided about the Republican Party’s branding and how well it worked. Before reading this book, I was not sure what branding was or how important it is. However, the book did provide enough information to better understand it and how it can be applied. Still, after reading the book, I am still not sure I would be good at developing branding, though I could probably better recognize good branding. I agree branding is important. However, in their writing, I personally thought they were a bit hard on the Democrats. I guess they needed that to bring out their point(s). I received this from NetGalley to read and review.

Was this review helpful?

Thank you to Netgalley and to the publisher for an advanced copy of Branding Democrats in exchange for a review. As a former campaign staffer (and someone who cares deeply about the future and success of the Democratic party) I found this to be an interesting read. The authors made a lot of good points about how the Democratic party should market themselves as a party and how candidates should behave in order to win elections. I found the sections where the authors tweaked "buzz words" for the party to makes them more marketable to be very smart. While the book is short I did find some places where another edit could have been used and some of the chapters seemed to be a little all over the place and repetitive. This book should be marketed as a read for campaign staffers but I am not sure that the book will appeal to a broader public.

Was this review helpful?

As someone who's worked in Democratic politics, I really enjoyed reading what Ken and Daryl had to say. I certainly agree with a lot of their analysis and theories as to why Democrats perform so poorly despite having extremely popular policies. I definitely think this is a good book for anyone involved in politics to read, from members of Congress to hardworking volunteers. I would like to say that I would have loved to see some analysis of what policies Democrats could pursue that would better ingratiate the party with voters, however, the book is explicitly about how Democrats can better brand themselves. Overall, I enjoyed reading this book!

Was this review helpful?

I'm hugely involved in local Democratic politics, and this book is exactly what we need to do. I honestly couldn't have written it better myself, right down to the explanation of the difference between marketing and branding. Someone please get these guys in front of the DNC and every state party organization.

Was this review helpful?

"Branding Democrats" is a book that is published when a father and son team believes that Joe Biden's problem is messenging and not policy. These two darn fools are totally blind to the facts and the truth. Do not buy this dopey book!

Was this review helpful?

I am not a massive reader of non-fiction books and it would generally take a book about politics to get me interested in non-fiction. As a left leaning political supporter who can't understand why the Republicans do so well in America this was a great way of finding out why the Democrats do politics so badly despite being on the side of the 99%.

A short but very interesting read which everyone interested in politics should read.

Thanks to Netgalley and Amplify Publishing Group, RealClear Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review

Was this review helpful?