The Red and the Blue
The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism
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Narrated by:
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Steve Kornacki
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Ron Butler
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By:
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Steve Kornacki
About this listen
From MSNBC correspondent Steve Kornacki, a lively and sweeping history of the 1990s - one that brings critical new understanding to our current political landscape.
In The Red and the Blue, cable news star and acclaimed journalist Steve Kornacki follows the twin paths of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, two larger-than-life politicians who exploited the weakened structure of their respective parties to attain the highest offices. For Clinton, that meant contorting himself around the various factions of the Democratic party to win the presidency. Gingrich employed a scorched-earth strategy to upend the permanent Republican minority in the House, making him speaker.
The Clinton/Gingrich battles were bare-knuckled brawls that brought about massive policy shifts and high-stakes showdowns - their collisions had far-reaching political consequences. But the ’90s were not just about them. Kornacki writes about Mario Cuomo’s stubborn presence around Clinton’s 1992 campaign; Hillary Clinton’s star turn during the 1998 midterms, seeding the idea for her own candidacy; Ross Perot’s wild run in 1992 that inspired him to launch the Reform Party, giving Donald Trump his first taste of electoral politics in 1999; and many others.
With novelistic prose and a clear sense of history, Steve Kornacki masterfully weaves together the various elements of this rambunctious and hugely impactful era in American history, whose effects set the stage for our current political landscape.
©2018 Steve Kornacki (P)2018 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Required listening for the 2018 midterms Our current brand of political polarization is not new, and though at times it might seem we are more divided than ever, political correspondent Steve Kornacki (NBC and MSNBC) holds nothing back about how the 1990s have come to define our nation’s party politics in 2018. Centered around two ambitious Southern political players from both sides of the aisle—former President Bill Clinton and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich—The Red and the Blue has a classic narrative nonfiction style that makes it a must-listen for anyone from hardcore political junkies to anyone who is simply interested in garnering some solid political talking points to bring up at their next dinner party. Put this at the top of your wish list as we race toward the midterms; there are few better primers for the debates to come in 2018. —Kyle S., Audible Editor
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They were the political odd couple - the two most powerful men in the country, a pair who "couldn't be more different or more the same." For six years, Matthews was on the inside, watching the evolving relationship between President Reagan and Speaker of the House O’Neill. Drawing not only on his own remarkable knowledge but on extensive interviews with those closest to his subjects, Matthews brings this unlikely friendship to life in his unique voice.
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I didn't want it to end
- By Jim on 10-06-13
By: Chris Matthews
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The Promise
- President Obama, Year One
- By: Jonathan Alter
- Narrated by: Jonathan Alter
- Length: 20 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Barack Obama’s inauguration as president on January 20, 2009, inspired the world. But the great promise of “Change We Can Believe In” was immediately tested by the threat of another Great Depression, a worsening war in Afghanistan, and an entrenched and deeply partisan system of business as usual in Washington. Despite all the coverage, the backstory of Obama’s historic first year in office has until now remained a mystery.
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Tiresome
- By Matthew on 05-21-10
By: Jonathan Alter
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The Making of the President 2016
- How Donald Trump Orchestrated a Revolution
- By: Roger Stone
- Narrated by: BJ Pottsworth
- Length: 14 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the early hours of November 9, 2016, one of the most contentious, polarizing, and vicious presidential races came to an abrupt and unexpected end when heavily favored presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton called Donald J. Trump to concede, shocking a nation that had, only hours before, given little credence to his chances. Donald Trump pulled the greatest upset in American political history despite a torrent of invective and dismissal of the mainstream media.
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behind the scenes
- By Rocker on 04-06-17
By: Roger Stone
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The Road to Camelot
- Inside JFK's Five-Year Campaign
- By: Thomas Oliphant, Curtis Wilkie
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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A behind-the-scenes, revelatory account of John F. Kennedy's wily campaign for the White House, beginning with his bold failed attempt to win the vice presidential nomination in 1956. A young and undistinguished junior plots his way to the presidency and changes the way we nominate and elect presidents. John F. Kennedy and his young warriors invented modern presidential politics.
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Absolutely excellent
- By T-Ward on 08-22-20
By: Thomas Oliphant, and others
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Pivotal Tuesdays
- Four Elections That Shaped the Twentieth Century
- By: Margaret O'Mara
- Narrated by: James Killavey
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Pivotal Tuesdays looks back at four pivotal presidential elections of the past 100 years to show how they shaped the 20th century. During the rowdy, four-way race in 1912 between Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Eugene Debs, and Woodrow Wilson, the candidates grappled with the tremendous changes of industrial capitalism and how best to respond to them. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt's promises to give Americans a "New Deal" to combat the Great Depression helped him beat the beleaguered incumbent, Herbert Hoover.
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Important book...especially this year.
- By Jim on 07-31-16
By: Margaret O'Mara
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Camelot's End
- Kennedy vs. Carter and the Fight That Broke the Democratic Party
- By: Jon Ward
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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The Carter presidency was on life support. The Democrats, desperate to keep power and yearning to resurrect former glory, turned to Ted Kennedy. Camelot's End details the incredible drama of Kennedy's challenge - what led to it, how it unfolded, and its lasting effects - with cinematic sweep. It is a story about what happened to the Democratic Party when the country's long string of successes, luck, and global dominance following World War II ran its course, and how, on a quest to recapture the magic of JFK, Democrats plunged themselves into an intra-party civil war.
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Does character count in political office?
- By marwalk on 07-29-19
By: Jon Ward
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The Greatest Comeback
- How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create the New Majority
- By: Patrick J. Buchanan
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
After suffering stinging defeats in the 1960 presidential election against John F. Kennedy, and in the 1962 California gubernatorial election, Nixon's career was declared dead by Washington press and politicians alike. Yet on January 20, 1969, just six years after he had said his political life was over, Nixon would stand taking the oath of office as 37th President of the United States. How did Richard Nixon resurrect a ruined career and reunite a shattered and fractured Republican Party to capture the White House?
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The comeback kid
- By Jean on 07-23-14
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Nixon's White House Wars
- The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever
- By: Patrick J. Buchanan
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 17 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From Vietnam to the Southern Strategy, from the opening of China to the scandal of Watergate, Pat Buchanan - speechwriter and senior adviser to President Nixon - tells the untold story of Nixon's embattled White House, from its historic wins to it devastating defeats. In his inaugural address, Nixon held out a hand in friendship to Republicans and Democrats alike. But by the fall of 1969, massive demonstrations in Washington and around the country had been mounted to break his presidency.
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Interesting
- By Jean on 06-15-17
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Wingnuts
- How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America
- By: John P. Avlon, Tina Brown - foreword
- Narrated by: John P. Avlon, Tina Brown (foreword)
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Whats a wingnut? A wingnut is someone on the far-right or far-left wing of the political spectrum professional partisans, unhinged activists, and paranoid conspiracy theorists. Barack Obama campaigned as an antidote to the politics of polarization, promising to transcend the old divides of left and right, black and white, red states and blue. But in the first year of his presidency, he is presiding over an eruption of hate and hyper-partisanship that threatens to mock the promise upon which he was elected.
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Disturbingly disappointing
- By Steven on 02-20-10
By: John P. Avlon, and others
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Why the Right Went Wrong
- Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond
- By: E. J. Dionne Jr.
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 20 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Why the Right Went Wrong offers a historical view of the right since the 1960s. Its core contention is that American conservatism and the Republican Party took a wrong turn when they adopted Barry Goldwater's worldview during and after the 1964 campaign. Since 1968, no conservative administration could live up to the rhetoric rooted in the Goldwater movement that began to reshape American politics 50 years ago.
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Outstanding, refreshing, inspiring
- By James Adams on 03-19-16
By: E. J. Dionne Jr.
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American Carnage
- On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump
- By: Tim Alberta
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 26 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The 2016 election was a watershed for the United States. But, as Tim Alberta explains in American Carnage, to understand Trump’s victory is to view him not as the creator of this era of polarization and bruising partisanship, but rather as its most manifest consequence. American Carnage is the story of a president’s rise based on a country’s evolution and a party’s collapse. As George W. Bush left office with record-low approval ratings and Barack Obama led a Democratic takeover of Washington, Republicans faced a moment of reckoning.
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masterpiece
- By ZZ on 07-26-19
By: Tim Alberta
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Fault Lines
- A History of the United States Since 1974
- By: Kevin M. Kruse, Julian E. Zelizer
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
If you were asked when America became polarized, your answer would likely depend on your age: You might say during Barack Obama’s presidency, or with the post-9/11 war on terror, or the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, or the “Reagan Revolution” and the the rise of the New Right. How did the US become so divided? Fault Lines offers a richly told, wide-angle history view toward an answer.
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Good overview of the past 45 years
- By Adam Shields on 02-26-19
By: Kevin M. Kruse, and others
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Game of Thorns
- The Inside Story of Hillary Clinton's Failed Campaign and Donald Trump's Winning Strategy
- By: Doug Wead
- Narrated by: Doug Wead
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Here is the first insider account of the precipitous fall of Hillary Clinton. How the scandals of a lifetime finally reached critical mass. How, in the last few days of the campaign, some on her staff saw the ghostly shroud of defeat creeping over them but were helpless to act, frozen by the self-denial of the group.
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President Donald Trump stopped that Clinton Machine
- By Paulette on 03-05-17
By: Doug Wead
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White rural voters hold the greatest electoral sway of any demographic group in the United States, yet rural communities suffer from poor healthcare access, failing infrastructure, and severe manufacturing and farming job losses. Rural voters believe our nation has betrayed them, and to some degree, they’re right. In White Rural Rage, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman explore why rural Whites have failed to reap the benefits from their outsize political power and why, as a result, they are the most likely group to abandon democratic norms and traditions.
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New Cold Wars—the latest from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of The Perfect Weapon David E. Sanger—is a fast-paced account of America’s plunge into simultaneous confrontations with two very different adversaries. For years, the United States was confident that the newly democratic Russia and increasingly wealthy China could be lured into a Western-led order that promised prosperity and relative peace—so long as they agreed to Washington’s terms. By the time America emerged from the age of terrorism, it was clear that this had been a fantasy.
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Gives many insights into our new Cold Wars
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What listeners say about The Red and the Blue
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- William
- 12-27-20
How Politics Became a Sport
America was very divided about whether to enter World War II, so much that President Roosevelt didn’t dare act on his own impulse to even give too much direct support to Britain during her direst hours. However, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Germany quickly after that declared war on the US, everything changed. Even after the war ended, the rivalry between the USSR and then the communist east Europe and China kept America focused and relatively united. Certainly there were major differences, but at the same time, there was a commitment to dialogue and compromise that lasted until the 90’s. Even during the impeachment of President Nixon, while there were some diehard Republicans who swore to support him to the end, he resigned because it was clear that a significant number in his party were going to vote to convict him.
How did we get from there to where we are now, where American has become so divided between “Red” and “Blue” and the word “compromise” applied to a politician becomes a political death sentence? The division has become tribal, reminding one more of sports rivalries than what politics used to be. The party is for whatever is best for the party, even if that harms the country or drives the wedge between the sides even deeper. Now that we don’t have such a clear cold war enemy, the enemy is the other party.
Steve Kornacki points to the 1990s rivalry between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich as the point where the wedge really starts driving the two sides apart. He does point back to some earlier events including the Nixon impeachment, the failure of the Carter presidency, and George H. W. Bush’s backtracking on his “read my lips” pledge. And, he doesn’t put all the blame on Clinton and Gingrich. Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, Jesse Jackson, and Hillary Clinton also have supporting roles.
But, it was “Slick Willie” Bill Clinton who had an even more advanced Teflon coating than President Reagan and steamroller Newt Gingrich who really stole the show. For Gingrich, winning became the only thing and he was willing to use tactics that party elders had previously considered anathema. For Clinton, his ability to adapt and to morph his party into more of a centrist party, as well as his skill at talking himself out of any corner that he or others had painted himself into allowed him to win the presidency twice, even with multiple scandals always biting at his heels.
And, there was Ross Perot’s Reform Party that also threw a wrench into the system at this critical time. Interestingly after Perot failed at running himself, Donald Trump toyed with the idea of running under the Reform Party ticket in 2000 but eventually backed out. In a New York Times article Trump writes, “The Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. [David] Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. [Lenora] Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep.”
Then there was the close 2000 election that had the entire presidency hanging on a few precincts in Florida that was also hobbled by a flawed balloting system and where we learned what “hanging chads” were. Ironically, it is also the first time where red was applied to Republicans and blue to Democrats by all the major news organizations. Prior to that, there had been no color consistency.
And, not only the color scheme has stuck with us down to today. Politics has become more of a sport, more of a contest. In sports and contests, the object is not what is best for both sides. It is to win. Unity, mutual benefit, the greater good--these are no longer a part of the discussion. It’s simply winning. In sports, that is a good thing. In politics, it is not.
This is not a scholarly treatise and it doesn’t spend much time on other factors (the collapse of the USSR and the eastern bloc, the internet, etc.) that also have led us to where we are now. His focus is on how Clinton and Gingrich both undertook different political revolutions and how these have changed America and grown further into the monstrous problems we face today. And to that end, Kornacki has done very well indeed.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Eric A Hostetter
- 02-08-19
Outstanding!
I loved it! An even-handed and balanced look back at our modern political history and how we got to this train wreck we have today.
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- mtporkert
- 11-08-18
A must read!! Fantastic
I loved this book. It is extremely well written and kept me fascinated from the first second to the last. The details and insight offered provide such a vivid picture of the times and provides a background to our current political culture. I highly recommend it!!
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- Anonymous User
- 11-21-18
Political History done well
the author does a fine job portraying events that are relevant to the case at hand, while also showing a complete picture of the political landscape of the 90's. I learned a lot about a time I grew up in.
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- Larry Davis
- 05-21-20
I enjoyed it.
I lived through the time period covered but had forgotten or didn't know the back story on many of these events. Very relative to what’s going on now. I highly recommend this book
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- M. T. in S.C.
- 12-07-18
interesting argument
good read
narrator's efforts to do accents become annoying
Book is interesting, well argued, worth a listen if interested in topic
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3 people found this helpful
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- Jenn O
- 11-28-18
clarifies memories
I remember a lot of the events in this book, but the close examination of then helps to see where the political climate of today originated. There is much to ponder.
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- Peter Kelly
- 01-15-20
Fascinating stuff that informs our current climate
Democrats and Republicans have not always despised each other. There was a time when there was more universal collaboration and cross-party compromise. The checks and balances our system was based on worked more effectively because it was branch vs. branch, not merely party vs. party. Though there are certainly several fraught political times in our country's history, the past 25 -30 years have brought about a very unhealthy climate. This book chronicles in great detail the birth and development of modern political tribalism going back to Newt Gingrich's House Republicans versus Bill Clinton and the Democrats.
The Red and The Blue is an unbiased account of the political 90s and calls out the issues in each party. Required reading if you want to know how we got to this mess we are in today. I found this audiobook fascinating and I hope you give it a listen.
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- Jason Spiehler
- 11-07-18
Great Read
An intensely detailed analysis of recent political history that sheds light on why America is.
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-30-22
Took me for ever, and was well worth it
Listed to this bad boy over the course of a month. Loved it. As a political junky this thing was water in the desert. Very balanced, insightful, and wonderful.
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