"A twenty-first-century manifesto for the left—how we can draw upon popular fantasies to create an alternative politics through imagination and spectacle."

BuzzFlash found "Dream" one of those indispensible "overview" books that progressives who are interested in strategies to achieve political power and goals must read.

In a nutshell, "Dream" argues that we avoid popular culture, fantasy and dreams at our peril. Liberals tend to believe that reason and persuasive argument will carry the day. But, the Republicans have been appealing to emotion and cultural archetypes, all along packaging themselves as the "common American."

Furthermore, the Republicans embrace their energized base, while the DLC types try to keep their energized base -- us -- at arm's length. This is because, the DLC believes in some mythical "rational, moderate" appeal to a centrist America that doesn't exist, as the Republicans seduce a lot of the working class white vote through the exploitation of cultural symbolism.

Television, in particular, conveys symbolism more effectively than public policy debates, and the Republicans understand this in a profound way.

From the Introduction to "Dreams":

The problem comes down to reality. Progressives believe in it, Bush’s people believe in creating it. The ideological inheritors of the May ’68 protest slogan “Take your desires for reality” are now counseling its reversal: take reality for your desires. Conservatives are the ones proclaiming “I have a dream.”

From a profile of Duncombe in the Village Voice:

"The idea, which Duncombe dubs "dreampolitik," is that progressives, armed with strategies derived from sources as vast as advertisements, celebrity-gossip magazines, and the casinos on the Las Vegas strip, would then be able to enact a politics that enthralls a broader sweep of Americans. The left needs to start appealing to people's hunger for hope and attraction to fantasy life. What's more, Duncombe said, they have to let go of the belief—"naive at best, arrogant at worst"—that intellectual arguments should be enough to win people over, and that spectacle, as the Bush administration employs it, is something to which they shouldn't have to resort, a tawdry means to an end. "It's a pathos of the left," he said. "We're worried about selling out, but no one's buying." Besides, the point isn't that liberals move towards conservatism; it's that they become savvier and, ironically, more realistic about what it takes to win."