The 2020 presidential campaign was a defining moment for America. As Donald Trump and his nativist populism cowed the Republican Party into submission, many Democrats-haunted by Hillary Clinton's shocking loss in 2016, which led to a four-year-long identity crisis-were convinced he would be unbeatable. Their party and the country, it seemed, might never recover. How, then, did Democrats manage to win the presidency? How did they keep themselves united through an internal struggle between newly empowered progressives and establishment forces-playing out against a pandemic, an economic crisis, and a new racial reckoning? Dovere traces this process from the early days in the wilderness of the post-Obama era, though the jockeying of potential candidates, to the backroom battles and exhausting campaigns, to the unlikely triumph of the man few expected to win, and through the inauguration and insurrection at the Capitol.