The Long Slog

Stump Connolly, chief political correspondent of The Week Behind, is at it again following along the 2008 presidential campaign trail with an irreverent eye toward what makes the politicians tick. Here are first hand accounts along the primary trail, plus the story behind the story of Hillary’s tears, Obama’s rallies, “live bloggers,” the air war vs. the ground game, and the silently-brokered deal that ultimately gave Obama the nomination. Watch Stump make his way through the Democratic and Republican conventions and join him for Obama’s triumphant Election Night rally in Chicago “The candidates run and we run alongside, trying to make sense of what they do and say,” he writes. “We talk to whoever comes across our radar. We read each other voraciously to see what the others have that we do not. We guess. We conjecture on what will happen. And we pontificate on why it didn’t.”

“I don’t think anyone had more fun covering the campaign than Stump, or reading him than me. You laugh and learn at the same time.”
–– Bill Kurtis


“Stump is a modern day Poor Richard, a witness of uncommon good sense to the nonsense of our presidential elections . . . an American original.”
–– Tom Geoghegan, author of Which Side Are You On


“We travel the campaign trail with as clear-eyed and sharp-eared a reporter as there is in the land.”
­–– Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune


"The Long Slog is very much intriguing reading for political buffs.”
–– Midwest Review