Bernie Sanders claims this book to be a memoir; a diary-like retelling of two years' worth of traveling across the country, covering thirty two states, and stumping up support for both himself, and other progressive candidates, in the run-up to the General Election of 2016. Sanders won an impressive thirteen million votes running on the platforms of Medicare for all, a higher minimum wage, free public universities and blocking foreign intervention in American issues, and he also publicized his general contempt for rich people.
The book is largely bi-partisan in that Sanders turns out to be an equal opportunity critic, finding fault with both Democrats and Republicans alike. Democrats, he espouses, lack courage and backbone. They are too easily cowed and largely ineffective. Republicans, on the other hand, are compromised by their donors, whose money comes with strings attached. This, he explains, is why he has forged a career in politics running as an Independent.
Sanders goes on to describe the reception he receives in each of the thirty two states, obsessing quite a bit about the size of the crowds that had gathered to listen to him speak. His counting of supporters is one of the constant motifs throughout the book, and often gets more attention from Sanders than what he actually said, or did, at each rally. He also has a tendency to quote each speech he made at length, so much so that in places the book is less a memoir about a certain time in his life, and more a textbook about democratic socialism, the platform from which he espouses his manifesto.
A large section of the book is devoted to Sanders' dislike of the media, which he is at great pains to stress is entirely different from President Trump's dislike and disdain. Sanders dislikes what he calls "corporate media"; he does not believe that journalists inherently dislike politicians, and therefore publish what they know to be lies about them (he is not a believer in "fake news") but rather, that they are owned as individual journalists by the media conglomerate that owns the outlet they are writing or reporting for. This means that only the interests of the media company owners are served, rather than the interests of Americans in general. As the book continues, though, Sanders reveals that his biggest complaint about the news media is that they do not cover his campaign in the way he would like them to. He is particularly offended when a candidate he supports is projected to lose a senate race, taking it personally, and when the outlet turns out to be wrong, baiting them in the book with the words, "No doubt the New York Times was disappointed."
The book ends with Sanders' hedging around the subject of running for President again in 2020; he states that "The year 2020 remains a long way off", but he does give his supporters, and in many ways, his amused detractors, reason to believe that another Sanders campaign for the White House is a possibility.
