After working on Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign, Jim is summoned by a female senator contemplating a future White House run, intrigued that he was the only person to warn the 2016 Democratic candidate of her inevitable defeat.
In an America convulsed by Trump’s victory, the contender wants to know what the consultant understood. His argument – powerfully stated and fascinatingly debated through Christopher Shinn’s play – is that the exponential future improvement in the US traditionally offered by both Republicans and Democrats is now widely viewed as baloney. Trump won, Jim thinks, because rather than offering the standard brag that every four years bring new morning in America, he honestly admitted that it is midnight: mourning times that need dark leadership. Any would-be leader, Jim proposes, must admit the limits of optimism.
