Reasons to Vote for Democrats

Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide is a satirical book by Michael J. Knowles. It consist of 266 pages, with the majority of it being blank. It became the number one best-selling book on Amazon.com.[1][2]

Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide
AuthorMichael J. Knowles
CountryUnited States
GenreSatire
PublisherCreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Publication date
February 8, 2017
Pages266
ISBN978-1-5430-2497-5

Summary and background

The book was divided to 10 "chapters:" Economics, Foreign Policy, Civil Rights, Education, Homeland Security, Energy, Jobs, Crime, Immigration, and Values and Principles, all of which are blank. The end of the book is a bibliography Knowles allegedly got the "information" from. Knowles in the book called it the "most exhaustively researched and coherently argued Democrat[ic] Party apologia to date."

Knowles said via Fox News that the idea of making it blank is when he has been "observing the Democratic Party for at least 10 years now, and when I observed their record and reasons to vote for them — on reasons of economics or foreign policy or homeland security or civil rights and so on — I realized it was probably best to just leave all the pages blank."[3] Knowles said in the book that to be able to be qualified for distribution, "Lefty lawyers require that we state the book is mostly blank and contains precisely 1,235 words."

Reception and imitation

The book ranked number 85 in Amazon as of April 2017 as quoted by the Los Angeles Times,[4] and became a bestseller on March.[5]

Critic Roger Kimball wrote a long review in The Weekly Standard, asserting that "Knowles has matched matter and message with rare economy" and that "it is for the substance of his analysis that Knowles's study will be remembered." [6] In the book, Ben Shapiro, founder of The Daily Wire where Knowles' show, The Michael Knowles Show, is a part of, called it "Thorough," and Michelle Malkin called it "A real page-turner!" The Guardian called it "a product worthy of Reggie Perrin’s Grot shop – the store opened to sell tat in David Nobbs’s magnificent satire of modern life."[7] On April 17, 2017, US President Donald Trump mentioned the book on Twitter, calling it "a great book for your reading enjoyment."[5] In a different side, HuffPost's[8] Eric Schmeltzer said that Trump is "using his position to help sell a prank/joke book that's full of blank pages."[9] John Wagner of The Washington Post said that it is "a book that suggests Democrats have no ideas."[10] Another WaPo writer, Philip Bump, said that Trump promoting the book is a dirty political tactic.[11] The newspaper also claimed that Trump has faced criticism for "crossing ethical lines by using the White House to promote commercial products."[12]

The Daily Wire's Amanda Prestigiacomo noted that someone have made an imitation-motivated book titled Reasons to Vote for Republicans: A Captivating Interpretation. It called the work "a dramatic failure," with only one star on Amazon. One reviewer called it "Just a sad, soulless response to the Democrat spoof book by Knowles. More proof that the left has truly run out of ideas."[13] Before Reasons to Vote for Democrats was published, Why Trump Deserves Trust, Respect and Admiration, also blank, was published and sold on Amazon.[14]

References
  1. "Amazon bestseller 'Reasons to Vote for Democrats' is a book of empty pages". The Hill. March 9, 2017.
  2. "Reasons to vote for Democrats tops Amazon bestseller list". BBC. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  3. Sommer, Will (2017-03-09). "Amazon bestseller 'Reasons to Vote for Democrats' is a book of empty pages". TheHill. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  4. "Donald Trump plugs a book called 'Reasons to Vote for Democrats' on Twitter. But there's a catch". Los Angeles Times. 2017-04-17. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  5. Tani, Maxwell (April 17, 2017). "Trump trolls Democrats, promoting a book with 260 blank pages called 'Reasons to Vote for Democrats'". Business Insider. Retrieved April 17, 2017.
  6. Kimball, Roger (16 April 2017). "Shooting Blanks". The Weekly Standard. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
  7. Kean, Danuta (2017-04-18). "Empty satire: the regrettable rise of blank-paged books in the Trump era". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  8. "Eric Schmeltzer | HuffPost". www.huffpost.com. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  9. Eric Schmeltzer [@JustSchmeltzer] (2017-04-17). ".@OfficeGovEthics - He's using his position to help sell a prank/joke book that's full of blank pages" (Tweet). Retrieved 2020-11-10 – via Twitter.
  10. Wagner, John (April 17, 2017). "Trump plugs 'Reasons to Vote for Democrats' book filled with blank pages". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 17, 2017.
  11. Bump, Philip. "Analysis | President Trump's paper-stack politicking makes another appearance". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  12. Wagner, John. "Trump plugs 'Reasons to Vote for Democrats' book filled with blank pages". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  13. "Democrats Respond To Bestseller Blank Book 'Reasons To Vote Democrats' With Their Own Version. It Fails Dramatically". The Daily Wire. 2017-03-10. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  14. Larkin, Alexandra; Lewis, Sophie. "Amazon bestseller: 266 blank pages on why to vote Democrat". CNN. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
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