Matt Bai & 2008 Elections

Matt Bai’s The Argument is the most significant book to date on the upcoming 2008 elections—not because it has anything to say about the horse race for the Democratic nomination, but because it offers an account of the people who constitute what Howard Dean calls “the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party.” Bai writes regularly on politics for the New York Times Magazine, where some of this material originally appeared. He has been sharply critical of George W. Bush and the Republican Party, and sufficiently sympathetic with the sentiments of the Deaniacs to win their confidence; further, his connections to the Times (and his own ingenuity) made him privy to their private meetings and offhand remarks. Bai has a novelist’s eye for the details of the two-way flow between politics and personality, and his extraordinary book is an exposé of sorts, revealing the emotional underpinnings of the new wave of liberal activism that’s reshaping the Democratic Party