The Debt Limit and 2024

Hello, I hope you had a great weekend!  It definitely feels like Summer is about to begin. 
 
The news has been dominated by the return of Trump to cable news and the debt ceiling negotiations.  The debt limit has all the makings of an obvious impending crisis that takes everyone by surprise.  You think it will get hammered out like last time, only it might not.  One person I spoke to in DC said, “Those who have confidence that the debt limit increase will work itself out aren’t seeing what I’m seeing.”  He puts the odds of a hard default at 25%. 

This week on the podcast I interview Dave Weigel, veteran political reporter for Semafor who I met while he was at the Washington Post.  “The White House think that people will blame the Republicans if there’s a crash.  But Republicans figure they will blame the President.”  And Trump just called for a default if Dems don’t cave. It would be very hard for McCarthy and the Republicans to capitulate to a clean debt ceiling increase, so the question is what gets included in a compromise.
 
One reason why the possibility of default is higher is that both sides can hand wave a little bit on when the drop dead date is.  Janet Yellen said the US could start defaulting as soon as June 1, but both sides and the press believe that the Treasury could shift some money around and continue to pay bills after that – other orgs forecast that the US might make it to July or August.  It’s that kind of fuzziness that could lead to going past the deadline and cause markets to shudder.  I’m glad that both sides seem to be taking the June 1 deadline seriously; the next two weeks will be enormous to avoid a completely unnecessary crisis that is born of the fact that the two parties are so polarized and unable to perform even basic tasks. 
 
Dave and I also discuss the 2024 presidential field at length.  We have both heard that there’s still some doubt as to whether Joe Biden actually stands next November; he may back out before the convention in August and the DNC could put together a ticket.  But according to Dave, “There is no way they bypass Kamala.  She would be at the top of the ticket, perhaps with a male governor to balance her out.”  I am incredulous that the Dems would have confidence that Kamala would win the general given her shaky polling and performance in the Democratic primary and as Veep.  I’ve heard concerns from a number of plugged-in people.  Still, Dave’s take makes sense particularly given the current DNC leadership.  He thinks there is still time to turn around public perception of Kamala (which I, personally, disagree with).  Barring this kind of turn, it’s Joe Biden, as the DNC isn’t even bothering to hold debates. 
 
For the Republicans, we both think it’s Trump in the pole position.  The CNN Townhall almost certainly helped him stay above his rivals.  There are another 4 or 5 Republican candidates who are set to announce, which will make consolidation more difficult.  The biggest threat to him remains Ron DeSantis, whose campaign will be announced imminently.  Will DeSantis the candidate perform much better than DeSantis the candidate-in-waiting?  When I asked Dave, he was already projecting Trump into the general.  Not a great sign for those who want another GOP candidate to emerge.  There’s not much time, as the first GOP debates are in August. 
 
A healthy political system wouldn’t give us a rematch between Biden and Trump, who will be a combined 160 years old in 2024.  But a healthy political system wouldn’t have us facing a possible debt default either.  Avoiding a self-imposed crisis is the best we can hope for nowadays, and even that hope might not last forever. 
 
For my interview with Dave Weigel, click here.  To build a better politics, check out Forward Party here.  

The Arrival of AI

Hello, I hope that you had a good weekend!  I spent it in Seattle where I spoke at a festival and had a public Forward Party event, which was a lot of fun. 

The Forward Party got its first mayor in Newberry, Florida, where the sitting mayor, Jordan Marlowe decided to join Forward.  “I have a party now that that is judging my leadership based on the ability to get things done and to compromise and work with other people.”  It’s what a lot of people want. 

Last week, a public tech company, Chegg, reported disappointing results.  The CEO said that students that use their services had started using ChatGPT.  The stock crashed by 50% in response, losing about $1 billion in value overnight. 

The same week IBM announced that it would use AI to replace jobs that are readily automatable, estimating that 7,800 new hires wouldn’t be. 
 
Dropbox just cut 500 jobs, 16% of staff, and cited AI as a reason why. 
 
These are public occurrences; there are many similar things happening behind the scenes that aren’t announced.  AI is changing the way that we work and learn.  The Chegg phenomenon is telling; already thousands of students around the country have turned to AI to inform them about various subjects instead of textbooks and online study tools.  People are adopting these new tools quickly.  The same will happen in other fields.  

One of the foremost authorities on the impact of AI is Martin Ford, whom I interview on the podcast this week.  His bestselling book Rise of the Robots influenced me a great deal.  Martin writes, “As artificial intelligence continues to advance, it has the potential to upend both the job market and the overall economy to a degree that is likely unprecedented.”  Martin compares AI to electricity in its transformative impact.  “All of this points to increasing inequality and potentially dehumanizing conditions for a growing fraction of our workforce.” 
 
I talked to a civil rights leader last week who was discouraged.  “Things are changing so fast and people can’t keep up.  It’s worse in the communities like mine that people often ignore anyway.” 
 
Our being behind the curve in terms of our government’s ability to understand and adapt to new technologies is quickly going from inconvenient to disastrous.  I ran for President in part to speed us up.    
 
For my interview with Martin click here.  To help speed up our political system with Forward click here – our first mayor is just the beginning.  

The Land of Opportunity

May is AAPI Heritage month!  It’s a time to gather and learn about the role that Asian Americans have played in our nation’s history, and also reflect on the present and future.  

I was in Utah campaigning last Fall, and met with a group of Chinese Americans I was rallying for Evan McMullin who was running for US Senate.  It turns out that many of the Chinese Americans in Utah descended from railroad workers in the nineteenth century that literally built the tracks that connected one end of this country to the other.  

My family arrived much more recently, in the 1960s as students from Taiwan at UC Berkeley.  My parents moved East, and I was born in Schenectady, New York in 1975.  I showed my children my childhood home this summer to give them a sense of how I grew up - I don’t think it registered, but maybe it will when they’re older.  

As the first generation born in this country, I was raised with a deep love of America but also experienced a struggle to belong or fit in.  I spent much of my childhood trying to prove my toughness because that seemed necessary to avoid being bullied or picked on.  I’d skipped a grade so I was generally smaller than my peers until high school.  

AAPI Heritage Month encompasses a very wide range of experiences.  We are an extraordinarily diverse community - more than any other in some quantitative respects.  Yet I do think there are some common threads that most of us can relate to.  

Many of our families came here for better opportunities.  My parents came to the US to create a path for my brother and me.  It worked.  I’ve had the kind of life and career they could only have dreamt of when they arrived here 60 years ago as students.  Beyond their dreams actually - they were not excited about my presidential run when I told them of my plans in 2017.  Their reaction was one of deep concern.  

Months later, when I was coming off of one of the presidential debates, I was told that my father attended a watch party in Taiwan.  He told the gathered crowd, “That is my son!” and the crowd cheered for him and bought him drinks the rest of the night.  When I heard that story, it pumped me up.  We had come a long way.  

It reminded me a bit of meeting an Asian American family in New Hampshire that worked at a restaurant.  They brought their son to take a picture with me.  They said to me, “Thank you.  We didn’t know we were allowed to run for President.”  

Asian Americans are as American as anyone else, yet we have somehow internalized that certain things are not for us.  That’s what I’d like to change.  Change not just for our sakes, but for the country’s.  

The US is more polarized than ever, and so much of American life has devolved into an ideological struggle. Hatred is on the rise between different groups, and Asians are not exempt. Most Americans don’t want this, but they don’t see a way out.  In my view, this land that our families came to for a better life, that has given so many of us so much, now needs us.  It needs our spirit of service and love of country in a way that it perhaps has never needed it before.  It needs our leadership to create a new set of examples.  

AAPI Heritage Month is about reckoning with our history and contributions in this country, so that we can both appreciate our past but also shape the nation’s future.  Let that be the message: nothing is beyond us.  We are Americans - we build in countless ways to strengthen the fabric of the U.S.  This is our country, our children’s country, and we will act and lead in a way that will leave it to the next generation still the land of opportunity that our families came so far to find.  

Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump ‘24

Joe declared his re-election bid last week.  It was, like many things of late, both inevitable and yet somehow surprising when it happened. 

It had been expected that Joe would run for months.  He has a low-ish approval rating – 43% or so – and will be 82 at the end of 2024.  A majority of Democrats in polls say they didn’t want him to run again.  Yet here he is, announcing in a video that felt a bit rushed. 

(It was rushed by the way – there’s a technicality that you have to announce within 15 days of spending $5,000 or more, so as soon as they brought the cameras they were under the gun to announce).   

His challengers in the Democratic Primary so far are Marianne Williamson and Robert Kennedy Jr.  The DNC has yet to schedule any primary debates, and I expect them not to do so in the name of ‘party unity;’ the media will play along with nary a peep.  If a candidate runs but no one covers the race, how can they contend or compete? 
 
This could change if a major establishment figure – e.g. Governor Newsom – decided to run against Joe in the primary.  But that’s not going to happen.  Instead, these major contenders will prepare campaigns-in-waiting on the chance that Joe Biden decides not to run sometime this year or next.  There’s some thinking that Joe is announcing in part because he refuses to be a lame duck that everyone ignores or tramples on, but he could still have second thoughts or a medical issue before Election Day.  The Democratic convention in 2024 is August 19th – 22nd in Chicago.  It’s conceivable that the DNC could run some abbreviated process leading up to that Convention if Joe were to decide to back out early next year. 
 
On the other side, Trump is gathering a sense of dominance with the deflation of the Ron DeSantis bubble.  He has started musing about skipping the Republican primary debates, the first of which is scheduled for this August in Milwaukee, as he has built a 20 pt. lead in polling over DeSantis with Nikki Haley and Mike Pence stuck in the low single digits.  Tim Scott should announce soon – he strikes me as the candidate with the highest upside to rival Trump.  Chris Christie will enter in May as a critic and foil.  There will be others. 
 
But the energy and base remain with Trump.  He has dominated headlines recently with the grand jury indictment in New York galvanizing Republicans in his defense.  Like him or not, he’s a star and the Republican machinery is having trouble manufacturing a new one.  There isn’t unlimited time to do so. 
 
The Biden vs. Trump rematch that no one wants is becoming more and more likely, even inevitable.  The two major leading candidates having a combined age of 160 in 2024 is a clear sign of how sclerotic and dysfunctional our political system has become.  How in a country of 330 million are these to be our two choices? 
 
Tens of millions of Americans are wondering the same thing. The way to change it is through changing the two-party system and our current election mechanics.  I talked to a public figure – whom I think would make a fine President – and he said, “I’d run if our political system allowed me to do so without breaking things.” 
 
Want better choices?  Let’s change the system.  It’s the only way. 
 
To see how to change the system, join Forward today.  

Scott Santens and UBI

Hello, I hope you had a great weekend!  I spent it in SF and LA campaigning for our new Forward affiliate in California, the Common Sense Party. 
 
Back in 2015, I first learned about Universal Basic Income when I read “Rise of the Robots” by Martin Ford, “The Second Machine Age” by Eryk Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee and “Raising the Floor” by Andy Stern.  Each of these books was concerned that automation was going to displace various jobs and that we would need a new way to keep people functional and distribute buying power. 

When I set out to learn more, I met Scott Santens, whom I interview on the podcast this week.  Scott is Mr. Universal Basic Income – so much so that he crowdsourced a basic income for himself back in 2013 and has been championing it ever since. No one has compiled more data on UBI than Scott, who also moderates the UBI reddit community.  It was Scott who came up with the line, “It’s not left or right, it’s forward” back in 2017 in reference to UBI. 
 
Now, in Scott’s view, UBI is taking center stage again because of AI.  “People weren’t really focused on the automation argument until this past November, when ChatGPT-3 came online. Now, all sorts of new people are saying we should look at it,” Scott says. “People see that AI is actually here and may impact them and their job.” 
 
I ran for President on Universal Basic Income in 2020.  At the time, it seemed far out, though it became increasingly mainstream once COVID hit.  I got hundreds of calls about the possibility of relief checks that Spring as we entered lockdown.  That Spring I started a non-profit - Humanity Forward - that lobbied for relief checks to put money into people’s hands.  Scott is an advisor to Humanity Forward, which continues to do work I’m incredibly proud of. 
 
One thing Scott and I discuss is the confusion around inflation; people often say, “Oh the stimulus checks caused inflation.”  I have to point out to them, “Well, the government issued $5 trillion in stimulus, which is about $16,000 per person.  Do you remember the checks being that big?  Most people got around $2,000.  The vast majority of the money went into the financial system, state and local governments, corporate balance sheets and other programs.” 
 
Perhaps the most effective thing the government did during COVID was pass the enhanced child tax credit, which brought 2 million children out of poverty, improved their nutrition and ability to learn, and was lauded by 130 economists as the most effective anti-poverty policy in generations.  It ended in 2022, dashing those children and families back into deprivation.  Humanity Forward continues to make the case for reviving the enhanced child tax credit to this day. 
 
By the end of 2020, I concluded that our political system right now is less and less oriented toward intelligent policy because it is getting bogged down in polarization and ideology.  I started Forward to try and realign the incentives for our elected representatives to do the right thing.  It’s been a heady 18 months or so, as we merged with 2 other organizations and hired a new CEO; we are having our first national summit in June with leaders from all over the country. 
 
During the same period, Scott moved to DC, where Humanity Forward is based, to continue to make the case for UBI.  “It’s entering the endgame, and I want to be here when it’s signed into law.” Scott says.  “It may take a while or it may happen sooner than we think.  I think a window will re-open soon.” 
 
I asked Scott about his level of optimism or pessimism.  “At this point, we’re a bit too late.  I used to think we could get UBI in place before AI came and started taking jobs.  Now, AI is here, and we need UBI as fast as possible.” 
 
To help Scott and Humanity Forward make the case against poverty, click here.  To help Forward fix our political system so that it cares about people click here – the events in California this weekend were phenomenal. 

Leaders Within

Hello, I hope that you had a great weekend!  The NBA Playoffs have always meant that Spring is here to me. 
 
I’ve now run a few different organizations, ranging from a private company to a non-profit to a political entity.  Each has required different qualities and attributes.  I’ve gotten better at some things and probably worse at others, but I’ve seen or been a part of hundreds of success stories.   

This week on the podcast I interview Keith Ferrazzi, one of the pre-eminent thinkers and authorities on helping both individuals and organizations succeed.  You might know Keith as the author of the #1 bestselling books “Never Eat Alone” or “Who’s Got Your Back?”  By day, he runs a firm helping teams organize and run better according to research, experience and principles of co-elevation. 
 
Keith and I were connected by a mutual friend, which is fitting given that Keith first hit the public scene by pushing people to get out there.  “It’s not about networking, it’s about true authentic relationships,” Keith says.  “Relationships power your success . . . building your network isn’t about getting things out of other people.  It’s about investing in people and deepening authentic relationships.”  Having now spent time with Keith, he has a phenomenal depth to him where he actually cares about people and producing positive change in the world. He wants to help.    
 
Keith experienced success early. “When you have momentum in life, grab it. Having a podium is not something you should look askance to.  It’s a gift and a blessing.  That can include even having that small podium within your company.  I know young people who are loved in their company, but because they want to do something else they shun that success.  Having success under your belt can always be pivoted into other success.  But running away from momentum into something else that you’re interested in can be a real missed opportunity.” 
 
Keith’s work has migrated over time to be very team-focused.  “We’ve overindexed in leadership and underindexed in teamship,” is how Keith puts it.  It’s less about individuals and more about networks. 
 
“Leading without authority is the key.  When we work in networks, not just our direct reports, is how we create disproportionate change in the world.  If you’re in marketing, it’s not just what your marketing does it’s also about your relationship with the sales organization and the product organization.  You need to partner with your head of sales and head of product to drive revenue and become a chief growth officer as opposed to just thinking about the brand.” 
 
Right now, Keith is focused on helping organizations navigate remote and hybrid work cultures.  “We’ve been looking at this since 2010 and no one cared.  But then 2020 happened.  We spent $5 million researching and published 30 to 40 studies.  One aspect of work culture is connectedness and bonding . . . we’ve been measuring these qualities for 20 years.  In the pre-pandemic world connectedness was measured at 2.8 from a zero to 5 as determined by answers to questions like, ‘I deeply care about all members of my team and they all care about me.’  During the pandemic, you’d imagine this bonding score went down and it did, to 2.3.  One CEO started engineering practices that would accelerate the connections in his team while they’re remote.  What if every week you have a check-in discussion, not just in 1s and 2s, but the whole group?  Then the score goes up.  We’ve identified 5 practices that if a team adopts them, bonding goes up to 4.4, better than it was pre-pandemic.”  Keith challenges organizations to adapt and evolve.  “We’re a bit lazy in thinking the only way to breed collaboration, innovation and relationships is old ways of working.” 
 
Keith wants to make people and organizations who are doing great things work better themselves.  It’s a beautiful mission.  It reminds me of what I’d like to see Forward do in terms of unleashing our potential to solve problems and innovate.  Can we get people there?  We can if we grow and get better each day – and if we operate in networks. 
 
For my interview with Keith, click here.  For Keith’s books and teachings, click here.  To check out Forward click here – we have events in your area upcoming, including SF and LA this weekend! 

Forward on the Road

 Hello, I hope that you are having a great week. 
 
Last Friday I spoke at the University of Pennsylvania.  I also met with Forward leaders and volunteers in Philadelphia – it was an inspiring group.  “We need more choices in our leaders” was a common sentiment.  They were gearing up for their first ever statewide convention in Gettysburg in May. They were also choosing delegates to attend the first Forward national convention that runs from June 22nd – 25th in Denver. 

We met at a tavern in Philadelphia.  One of the organizers quipped, “The taverns of Philadelphia have been very important to American democracy.” 
 
There are groups like this getting together in states around the country, from Colorado to South Carolina to Oregon to everywhere in-between.  Forward now has over 40,000 volunteers. The public calendar for Forward has almost 50 events – from signature gatherings to strategy sessions to rallies for Ranked Choice Voting – in April alone.  I will be speaking in San Francisco and Los Angeles next weekend to catalyze support for our registration efforts in California.  I’m also speaking in Seattle and Raleigh in May with more events on the way. 
 
At every event, I’m blown away by the nature and energy of the people who are there, eager to take us toward a better, brighter future. 
 
It’s exciting seeing the movement grow – more and more Americans realize that our current political system is not designed to advance meaningful solutions or even to allow most of us a choice in our elected representatives.  
 
At a national level, a Biden vs. Trump rematch in 2024 seems increasingly likely, even as a majority of Americans aren’t happy with either of those options.  As these pieces fall into place, the desire for a new approach will only grow. 
 
I am pumped to be touring the country leading up to the convention in June, which should be an epic gathering.  A literal rockstar just said that he would be joining us in Denver.  It will be genuinely historic. 
 
If you’ve been interested in Forward, now is the time to get involved.  Find your state chapter here.  Make a donation here – every bit counts.  Pick up some swag, which serves a couple goals at the same time. 
 
And please do come see me and the gang on the road!  It’ll be great to see you.  

On Work

Hello, I hope that you had a great weekend.  I went down to Philadelphia and met with some awesome Forward leaders and volunteers there as well as a large group of students at UPenn.

This week on the podcast I interview one of my favorite journalists, economics reporter for the Atlantic Derek Thompson.  Derek recently came out with a book of essays, “On Work: Money, Meaning, Identity” which is incredibly timely given the arrival of generally useful Artificial Intelligence. 

Derek writes, “[T]echnology could exert a slow but continual downward pressure on the value and availability of work – that is, on wages and on the share of prime-age workers with full-time jobs.  Eventually, by degrees, that could create a new normal, where the expectation that work will be a central feature of adult life dissipates for a significant portion of society . . . Technology creates some jobs too, but the creative half of creative destruction is easily overstated.  Nine out of 10 workers today are in occupations that existed 100 years ago, and just 5 percent of the jobs generated between 1993 and 2013 came from “high tech” sectors . . . our newest industries tend to be the most labor-efficient: they don’t require nearly as many people to produce the same value.” 
 
I personally think that AI will be extraordinarily disruptive in particular to repetitive, rules-based white-collar work, which comprises about 20% of all jobs in the U.S. economy.  Think everything from call center workers to management consultants. 
 
Interestingly, Derek argues that our response these past years has been to expect more of work than ever.  He says, “We now expect community, purpose, fulfillment – many of the things we used to ask of our religion – from our work.” 
 
He calls this new religion ‘Workism.’  “Workism is three things.  First, it is the belief that, in a time when religion is in decline, more people, especially the elite, are turning to work to provide everything we have historically expected of organized religions.  Second, it is the irony then, in a time of declining trust in most institutions like politics and religion, we expect more than ever from the companies that employ us; and that, in an age of declining community attachments, the workplace, has, for many become the last community standing.  Third it is a mixed blessing.  The gospel of labor creates devoted workers and extraordinary achievements, giving purpose, building routine, and filling time.  But our devotion to work can also leave a wake of anguish, with many of its adherents feeling overextended, exhausted and empty.” 
 
It’s quite a proposition by Derek, yet it rings true.  Many people do want a sense that a career is a calling as much as a way to pay the bills. I think that our preoccupation / obsession with work threatens to blind us to large-scale secular changes because we moralize on an individual level instead of applying it to a community or industry.  Work disappearing?  It must be that you’re not looking hard enough on your quest for fulfillment.  Derek correctly points out that not that long ago, virtually no one thought of work in this way; it was more a means of survival. 
 
He also observes that losing a job often takes a massive psychological toll on individuals - akin to the death of a loved one - and that most don’t make positive use of idle time.  Time use studies show a lot of watching TV and surfing on the computer for jobless men in particular.
 
I wrote in the War on Normal People, “Here’s the fundamental problem: we need work more than work needs us.” If work is our current faith, it’s not going to take excellent care of us in an era of new technologies of unprecedented power.  What will we do with the time that we have? 
 
For Derek’s new book, click here.  For my interview with Derek on topics like remote work and creativity, click here.  For the War on Normal People, click here.  To fuel a change in our politics so that it addresses modern issues like AI, check out Forward’s new website here; we are making a fundraising push so please consider donating today! 

What’s Our Problem?

Hello, hope you had a great weekend! 
 
Last week I signed an Open Letter to pause the deployment of new generative AI tools for 6 months and discussed the topic on CNBC.  Technology is speeding up in a way that will impact all of us and our government is way behind the curve. 

Then, the news came out that Donald Trump was indicted by a New York grand jury, the first ex-President to have criminal charges brought against him in our nation’s history. 
 
Why do our politics feel so backwards?  For a compelling perspective, I sat with Tim Urban, who runs the very popular blog Wait But Why and came out with a new e-book on the topic, “What’s Our Problem?  A self-help book for societies.” 
 
Tim proposes that our usual left-right politics misses an important dimension - whether we are using our higher mind or primitive mind.  He cites 4 levels of thinking: Scientist (seeking facts), Sports Fan (values the contest), Attorney (arguing a side), and Zealot (defeat the enemy).  The two higher levels are rational and constructive.  The lower two levels are more concerned with being proven right and arguing for their tribe than having any positive outcome. 

The problem in Tim’s view is that our politics have been overcome by the lower levels, where polarization has turned things into a good vs. evil struggle as opposed to the higher levels that are genuinely interested in policies and solutions.  “Polarizing people is a good way to win an election, and also a good way to wreck a country.”  Tim catalogs how low-rung politics have become more pronounced on both sides, where every day is an ideological battle instead of a conversation, and details how social media supercharges this dynamic. 
 
If this sounds familiar, the Forward Party is doing all we can to reward higher-rung politics via Ranked Choice Voting and other reforms while discouraging lower-rung extremism. 

What does Tim think is our way out?  Tim recommends that we stop saying things we don’t believe, start saying what we really think with people we know well, and eventually work ourselves up to saying what we really think in public.  These acts would help break up the enforced tribalism that degrades many of our conversations. 
 
There is MUCH more to Tim’s work, including a brief history of humanity and how each party has evolved over the past number of years.  I highly recommend it. 
 
Tim wrote the book because he’s deeply concerned that we are heading toward a precipice and are not equipped as a society to address modern challenges. “More technology means higher stakes” is how Tim put it.  He’s right.  Let’s help our country rise to the occasion and activate the higher levels of our politics before it’s too late. 
 
For my interview with Tim, click here.  For Tim’s book click here.  To check out how Forward is improving our politics in your state, click here. 
 
Forward is making a fundraising push – please consider donating today!  

The Last Election

 
Hello, I have some very exciting news: I co-wrote a political thriller, “The Last Election,” that will be published on September 12th! 

Last year, I interviewed the Atlantic columnist and author Stephen Marche on his non-fiction book, “The Next Civil War.”  It was a sobering conversation; I found that Stephen and I shared many of the same concerns about American democracy and society coming apart as institutions struggle. 
 
A few months later, Stephen and I were discussing ways to work together. How could we get out more of these ideas to the public?  We agreed that stories are the best and most powerful way for people to understand something.  We would tell a story that everyone would get and could access. 
 
Thus was born “The Last Election,” a novel starring Mikey Ricci, the campaign manager of an insurgent third-party presidential candidate and Martha Kass, a journalist who gets a hold of some material that could determine the future of American democracy. The story proceeds from the launch of the fledgling new campaign for fourteen months through Election Day and the swearing in of a new – or is it the old? – administration. 
 
I’ve written a few things, but I’m no novelist. Stephen, happily, has produced both fiction and non-fiction and had a bunch of research from “The Next Civil War,” that appears in “The Last Election.”  We also had my campaign manager Zach meet with Stephen to give him nitty-gritty details and stories from what it’s actually like on the trail.  I’m proud of the result and can’t wait to share it with you and the world. Hopefully it will both entertain and prepare you.   
 
If this sounds like something you’d enjoy, please do pre-order your copy of “The Last Election” and use the special discount code LASTELECTION for 30% off at the publisher’s website. Stephen and I will be pre-signing every copy that is pre-ordered here. 
 
Here working to make sure that the next election isn’t actually the last one,