Zinn's argument in Chapter 23, "The Clinton Presidency and the Crisis of Democracy," is that progressive movements in the United States starting in the 1990s and going forward would have to originate from the people, not from the two main political parties, the Democrats and Republicans. Zinn describes the Clinton administration as not representing the will of the people, as half of eligible voters did not go to the polls to re-elect Clinton in 1996. Zinn also describes the ways in which Clinton moved the Democratic party towards the political center and away from causes such as ending poverty, creating jobs, and improving education and towards causes such as increasing military spending.
While the political parties and the government did little to cure the nation's social ills in the 1990s, there was, according to Zinn, a movement among the people to do so. He writes that the mass movements of the 1960s still affected Americans, who continued to agitate for equal rights for women, gay people, and others. The movement for change remained in the hands of the people, not in the hands of the government.
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Chapter 23 is titled "The Coming Revolt of the Guards." Zinn's argument in this chapter is that the middle class—a group long supportive of what he terms the "one percent," which is hostile to the interests of poor working class people—will recognize that their real interests lie with these people. To understand this requires the middle classes to realize that they are "expendable" like "the guards at Attica" (622). Zinn detects signs of middle class disillusionment that he thinks could cause them to look outside the current political and class structure for solutions. "Capitalism," Zinn writes, "has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes" (624). Radical change is needed and, Zinn thinks, achievable. He sees local organization as the key to success and stresses the urgency of uniting the energy and resources of the middle classes with that of other activist groups. Zinn confesses at the beginning of the chapter that this is not a "prediction, but a hope" (618). But he thinks the structural conditions exist to make this kind of "revolution" possible.
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