... offers insightful details of campaign rallies and 2020 primary debates and documents the drama and excitement of the Sanders campaign’s increasing success ... thoughtful and comprehensive account of the Sanders 2020 campaign and an authoritative description of the candidate’s personality. Readers who want to know more about Sanders or are interested in political campaign narratives will enjoy this book.
Rabin-Havt delivers an admirable portrait of his candidate, but of more interest to students of applied politics are the numerous episodes in which he explores the art of political calculus: how Sanders decided, for instance, to attack Pete Buttigieg among the field of candidates in the Iowa caucuses as 'the candidate of the wealthy elite,' along with the horse trading involved in Sanders’ 'Medicare for All' plan ... Among the better campaign confessionals and just the thing for presidential-politics wonks.
... breezy, colorful, and often insightful, but also evasive in blaming Sanders’s defeat on the Democratic Party establishment’s animus toward him without considering whether his left-wing politics were acceptable to most voters. Still, the portrait of Sanders as a crusty but caring man, passionately committed to principles and the interests of working-class people, vividly shows why he is one of America’s most influential politicians.
