(reported and written with Jack Hitt) Day 1:  The Campaign of Magical Thinking JACK HITT: The key to understanding the New Hampshire primary: lawn signs. We realized this eight years ago, when we were driving around the Granite State, stealing them. Kevin and I have been arguing political strategy ever since the Democrats decided that Walter Mondale was just the right guy to take on Ronald Reagan. And every election since, we’ve gotten together to study—and sometimes even travel to see—comparable levels of stupid. The lawn sign thing started like any souvenir collection, but our vandalism had standards. We never stole Read More

(reported and written with Jack Hitt) Day 2:  Hate Trump?  Just Wait Until 2020. KEVIN BAKER: Everybody has his own golden age. For Republicans, it’s usually some vague period before 1965, or maybe the Reagan era. For Democrats, increasingly, it’s the Bill Clinton years. And for Karl Rove, it’s when Bill McKinley was president and you could still get a free pickled egg with your five-cent beer.You have to go all the way back to the Vietnam War, though, to find a moment when people all across the political spectrum raged so fiercely against “the establishment” as they do now. And Read More

(reported and written with Jack Hitt) Day 3:  The Epidemic and the Election Primary day in New Hampshire turned crisp and clear in the morning, bringing out the crowds and the enthusiasts and the crazies. In the lobby of our hotel, we encountered a pair of young journalism students from Ohio thrilled to be involved in their first election, and a 72-year-old woman with bright red toenails showing through her sandals who told us how handsome Donald Trump is. “Just look at that great smile,” she cooed. After running into a mob of infectiously youthful Sanders supporters in Concord, we Read More

(reported and written with Jack Hitt) Day 4:  Is South Carolina Really the Nastiest Primary? KEVIN BAKER: Sick and exhausted from our sojourn in New Hampshire and the death-defying drive that followed, we pried Jack’s frozen fingers from the steering wheel and hopped the Silver Meteor for Charleston, South Carolina. Ah, Amtrak! America’s rolling showcase for technological regression. We sped along at a pace just over half as fast as a passenger train in 1930. We had our dinner not in Carolina, but parked in Washington’s Union Station, where the engine was switched from electric to diesel. They had to cut Read More

(reported and written with Jack Hitt) Day 5:  Trump Was Wonderful.  Fabulous.  The Best of the Bunch.   JACK HITT: The word on the street for days was that the South Carolina debate would be the Rumble in the Jungle that Republicans have long been waiting for. Either Trump and Cruz would knife each other, or one member of the establishment trio—Rubio, Bush, Kasich—would try to kill off the other two and emerge to take on Trump after he’d finished eating Cruz alive. The sense that a bloodletting was coming was only heightened by the news of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, Read More

(reported and written with Jack Hitt) Day 6:  Doom With a View JACK HITT: “You are not going to believe this,” Jimmy Carroll said, hustling us down the beach on the Isle of Palms, right outside Charleston. “You have to see it.” We arrived at the south end of the island, near the redcoat-swallowing breach inlet we wrote about yesterday, and found a battered gazebo slumped on the beach. “This used to be 100 feet back in the dunes,” Carroll said. “You can go on Google Maps and hit time lapse. Go back only four or five years and you can Read More

(reported and written with Jack Hitt) Day 7:  What Democrats Need Is a Defensive President   JACK HITT: With both parties chronically incapable of settling on a nominee, we prepare to leave South Carolina—opting for the luxury of a JetBlue coach seat instead of one more spin cycle in an Amtrak insomnia suite. After the debate brawl on Saturday, in which no one—including the audience—managed to corral the bellowing Trump, the Republican campaign has imploded into whispers of a brokered convention, a third party candidate or a split party. Meanwhile, the Democratic candidates are blowing up in Nevada—where Hillary was previously Read More