Book Review: The Last Election by Andrew Yang and Stephen Marche

I don’t follow American politics too closely; it’s depressing (especially now), and it feels helpless knowing I’m up in Canada and can only watch in horror. Maybe because I’m disengaged from the nitty gritty of it, I found myself picking up the political thriller The Last Election by Andrew Yang and Stephen Marche which I found an entertaining page turner. I was also intrigued by the co-writers; Yang is a politician from the U.S.A. while Marche is a very literary writer who is well-known in the Canlit community – a very curious mix! Because one is such a strong writer, and the other has first hand knowledge about the machine of U.S. politics, they came together to write an excellent book. I write this just days after the shooting at a Trump rally which Marche then penned this thoughtful article about, which is scarily reminiscent of what this work of fiction describes, but also makes clear that Marche is not just a great writer, but a close observer of the politics down south too.

Plot Summary

It’s the 2024 presidential election, and a third party candidate has come forward to run; Sherman Cooper, a billionaire and head of the Maverick Party, a centrist party that’s looking to unite the left and the right. The story is told from the perspective of two different people; Mikey Ricci, the campaign manager of the Maverick Party, and Martha Kass, a New York Times journalist who receives a tip that there is a serious plot forming by current people in power to seize control of the country and impose martial law during the upcoming election chaos. The book counts down to the election with a new very real scenario surfacing; this third party may gain enough support to split the voters into a tie, thus triggering election processes that haven’t been used in centuries. And as Martha sniffs out the operatives that are trying to stage a coup, violence begins to escalate across the country, seen mostly at political rallies. At one point, supporters of different sides are no longer visible or easy to identify; everyone is wearing riot gear, and physical clashes become inevitable. When Martha raises the story with her editors, she’s told to bury it as the NY Times is changing their mandate. While all this political turmoil swirls around her, Martha also grapples with infertility issues, her and her husband slipping slowly into a depression wielding from their obsession with becoming pregnant. Will the Maverick Party save American democracy as it promises, or will the country spiral into a civil war? Spoiler alert: the book doesn’t end on a happy note, for anyone.

My Thoughts

This book is meant to entertain us. For many, it would cause more anxiety than its worth, but it does take a deep dive into the work involved with propping up a political candidate and swaying voters, which I found really fascinating. And even though it varies between two characters with very different voices, their motivations are somewhat similar in that they both believe in democracy, and ‘doing the right thing’. They want to be happy and they wish America was different; less violent and less angry. Martha’s personal issues seem a bit random in light of all these major issues swirling around in the story, but I appreciated the authors’ attempts at showing personal and emotional challenges that still take up room in people’s lives, even when political chaos is the norm. Life goes on, despite these scary circumstances.

There is a jaded sort of realism that both main characters also share, evident in their voices. There are only subtle differences between their worldviews, which one could take as lazy writing, or an effort to demonstrate connections, so I’ll give the writers the benefit of the doubt and say they did this on purpose. Martha’s cynicism develops as she manages the tip line at the NY times, the same old conspiracy theorists rearing their head over and over again. Mikey’s quick summaries of the democratic candidates at the beginning of the book made me chuckle, because I could picture each person perfectly in my mind:

“The Democratic roster includes a highly successful Black woman with shallow support; a boyish Midwesterner; a brilliant antitrust lawyer who looks like a schoolteacher who graded you hard for your own good; a vaguely hippie-ish woman like your liberated aunt who brings up auras and innovative sexual positions at Thanksgiving; and the billionaire governor of Colorado who looks like the guy responsible for deciding the location of the Walmart that wrecks your town.”

-p.24 of The Last Election by Andrew Yang and Stephen Marche, ARC edition

There’s many quips like this throughout the novel, but the most thought-provoking are those that describe the state of democracy today:

“But they don’t vote for what they want. They don’t think about what they want when they vote now. The American people vote against what they don’t want.”

-p. 131

The above quote made alot of sense to me, even though up here in Canada, we have more than two political parties to choose from. But when I see the two candidates the U.S. currently has to choose from, I would be voting for what I don’t want too!