An award-winning political journalist for The Atlantic tells the inside story of how the embattled Democratic Party, seeking a direction for its future during the Trump years, successfully regained the White House. The 2020 presidential campaign was a defining moment for America. As Donald Trump and his nativist populism cowed the Republican Party into submission, many Democrats—haunted by Hillary Clinton’s shocking loss in 2016 and the resulting four-year-long identity crisis—were convinced that he would be unbeatable. Their party and the country, it seemed, might never recover. How, then, did Democrats manage to win the presidency, especially after the longest primary race with the biggest field ever? How did they keep themselves united through an internal struggle between newly empowered progressives and establishment forces—playing out against a pandemic, an economic crisis, and a new racial reckoning? Edward-Isaac Dovere’s Battle for the Soul is the searing, fly-on-the-wall account of the Democrats’ journey through recalibration and rebirth. Dovere traces this process: from the early days in the wilderness of the post-Obama era to the jockeying of potential candidates; from the backroom battles and exhausting campaigns to the unlikely triumph of the man few expected to win; and on through the inauguration and the insurrection at the Capitol. Dovere draws on years of on-the-ground reporting and contemporaneous conversations with the key players—whether with Pete Buttigieg in his hotel suite in Des Moines an hour before he won the Iowa caucuses or with Joe Biden in his first-ever interview in the Oval Office—as well as with aides, advisors, and voters. Offering unparalleled access and an insider’s command of the campaign, Battle for the Soul takes a compelling look at the policies, politics, and people, as well as the often absurd process of running for president. This fresh and timely story brings you on the trail, into the private rooms, and along to eavesdrop on critical conversations. You will never see campaigns or this turning point in our history the same way again.

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“[A] tour de force. Building upon her argument in Beyond Ideology, she adds an important wrinkle into the current divide between the parties in Congress.” —Perspectives on Politics As Democrats and Republicans continue to vie for political advantage, Congress remains paralyzed by partisan conflict. That the last two decades have seen some of the least productive Congresses in recent history is usually explained by the growing ideological gulf between the parties, but this explanation misses another fundamental factor influencing the dynamic. In contrast to politics through most of the twentieth century, the contemporary Democratic and Republican parties compete for control of Congress at relative parity, and this has dramatically changed the parties’ incentives and strategies in ways that have driven the contentious partisanship characteristic of contemporary American politics. With Insecure Majorities, Frances E. Lee offers a controversial new perspective on the rise of congressional party conflict, showing how the shift in competitive circumstances has had a profound impact on how Democrats and Republicans interact. Beginning in the 1980s, most elections since have offered the prospect of a change of party control. Lee shows, through an impressive range of interviews and analysis, how competition for control of the government drives members of both parties to participate in actions that promote their own party’s image and undercut that of the opposition, including the perpetual hunt for issues that can score political points by putting the opposing party on the wrong side of public opinion. More often than not, this strategy stands in the way of productive bipartisan cooperation—and it is also unlikely to change as long as control of the government remains within reach for both parties.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER It was never supposed to be this close. And of course she was supposed to win. How Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump is the riveting story of a sure thing gone off the rails. For every Comey revelation or hindsight acknowledgment about the electorate, no explanation of defeat can begin with anything other than the core problem of Hillary's campaign--the candidate herself. Through deep access to insiders from the top to the bottom of the campaign, political writers Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes have reconstructed the key decisions and unseized opportunities, the well-intentioned misfires and the hidden thorns that turned a winnable contest into a devastating loss. Drawing on the authors' deep knowledge of Hillary from their previous book, the acclaimed biography HRC, Shattered offers an object lesson in how Hillary herself made victory an uphill battle, how her difficulty articulating a vision irreparably hobbled her impact with voters, and how the campaign failed to internalize the lessons of populist fury from the hard-fought primary against Bernie Sanders. Moving blow-by-blow from the campaign's difficult birth through the bewildering terror of election night, Shattered tells an unforgettable story with urgent lessons both political and personal, filled with revelations that will change the way readers understand just what happened to America on November 8, 2016.

A gripping in-depth look at the presidential election that stunned the world Donald Trump's election victory resulted in one of the most unexpected presidencies in history. Identity Crisis provides the definitive account of the campaign that seemed to break all the political rules—but in fact didn't. Featuring a new afterword by the authors that discusses the 2018 midterms and today's emerging political trends, this compelling book describes how Trump's victory was foreshadowed by changes in the Democratic and Republican coalitions that were driven by people's racial and ethnic identities, and how the Trump campaign exacerbated these divisions by hammering away on race, immigration, and religion. The result was an epic battle not just for the White House but about what America should be.

The American electoral system is clearly failing more horrifically in the 2016 presidential election than ever before. In It's Time to Fight Dirty, David Faris expands on his popular series for 'The Week' to offer party leaders and supporters concrete strategies for lasting political reform - and in doing so lays the groundwork for a more progressive future. With equal parts playful irreverence and persuasive reasoning, It's Time to Fight Dirty is essential reading as we head toward the 2018 midterms... and beyond.

A leading activist-scholar on what’s next in the Sanders revolution Bernie Sanders shocked the political establishment by winning 13 million votes and a majority of young voters in the 2016 Democratic primary. Since that upset, repeated polls have judged this democratic socialist to be the most popular politician in the United States. What lessons can be drawn from his surprising insurgent campaign? Longtime author and activist Heather Gautney was a Policy Fellow in Sanders’s Washington, DC, office and a volunteer researcher and organizer on his presidential campaign. In reviewing what enabled Sanders to reach out to an unprecedented number with a socialist message—and what stalled his progress—she draws lessons on the prospects and perils of building a progressive movement in the United States. Gautney’s poignant account of the role that race and class played in this election cycle, her anatomy of the conflicting dynamics of movement and electoral ambitions, and her clear-eyed analysis of the Democratic position following Trump’s victory will serve as a useful starting point for many readers newly aware of the limitations of the Democratic Party and the immensity of the challenges ahead.