I’m such a political geek. I went to the Greek islands and Athens and took along Naftali Bendavid’s new book: The Thumpin’: How Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Ended the Republican Revolution. It was published two days before we left for Greece and I picked it up and took it along. It was fun for the plane rides to and forth.

The book chronicles Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL 05)’s term as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC, “D Triple C” or simply “D Trip”) during the 2006 election cycle. With rare inside access, Bendavid gives us insight into how this much-hated and much-loved politician helped win back a majority for Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. With great quotes and some “fly on the wall” scenes, the book is a quick read that moves from Rahm’s appointment in early 2005 until a few days after the November 2006 elections.

This book is a fun read, especially for insiders who played a role in this election cycle. Unfortunately, Bendavid glosses over a lot of detail about specific races and the tactics that Rahm used to select, or in many cases, un-select a Democratic challenger. While he spends a little time talking about the infamous Illinois 6th primary race between longtime Democrat Christine Cegelis and newcomer, but Iraq War veteran, Tammy Duckworth, he doesn’t cover other races such as Jerry McNerney (CA-11), Les Roberts (NY-24) and Eric Massa (NY-29). Granted, this book was an overview, but such a discussion would have gone a long way to balance out these historic elections.

Finally, I wanted to see an analysis of the implications of Emanuel’s strategy of picking sometimes very conservative Democrats in traditionally Republican enclaves. What does this say for the future of the Democratic Party in places like North Carolina’s 11th and Indiana’s 8th? Rahm picked conservative Democrats Heath Shuler and Brad Ellsworth to win these seats, and it’s hard to see either of these newly elected Congressman as Democrats. What about the 2008 election too? For that cycle, which we’re already in, Chris Van Hollen (D-MD 08) will be running the DCCC. In 2006, he was one of Rahm’s closest lieutenants. We shall see.