Ali Vitali - Electable: Why America Hasnt Put a Woman in the White House . . . Yet

I wrote myself a note a few months into this process: Its impossible for you to get this wrong. And I really hope I didnt. But if I got it right, its because of all the people who helped mewith this book and along the way. In fact, sitting down to thank all these people seems so overwhelming that it does feel possible to, at least, get this part wrong. But here it goes...

Thank you to Carrie Thornton and the team at Dey Street for having the vision to take my reporting and make it into something bigger, broader, and all-encompassing. I couldnt have done this without Albert Lee, Pilar Queen, Adam Liebner, and the United Talent team. And Mary Marge Locker, who kept me on the straight and narrow factually (and, sometimes, emotionally) speaking.

TV and reporting are team sports and NBC News has recruited the best of the best. To our amazing crews and producersin the field, at the shows, across all our platforms, 24/7Im so grateful for your tireless work, passion, and friendship.

Thanks to Noah Oppenheim for the continued opportunities to keep telling storieson the campaign trail, at the White House, on Capitol Hill, and soon on the campaign trail again. To Janelle Rodriguez for always keeping her door open to me and helping me find my voice as a reporter and correspondent. To Rashida Jones for a vision that prioritizes the kind of work we do in the field, following the story wherever it may take us.

To Betsy Korona for always finding a way to greenlight us to get thereand for asking me all those years ago what I wanted to be when I grew up. If youd never mentioned the word embed to me back in 2014, Im pretty sure Id be a lawyer right now. But because you did that, Doug Adams hired me. He saw something in me before I found it in myself when he asked me to be an embedand then to cover Trumpback in 2015.

I wouldnt have been on that path, or been able to stay on it, without Chuck Todd, who saw and kept seeing my Vitality, and Dafna Linzer, who encouraged my interest in what it means to be powerful and female in this town.

Thank you to my fellow Road Warriors of 2020 and 2016. And to the NBC Capitol Hill team, who make the long hours fun and inspire me with their dedication every day. Thanks to my first NBC home in the 30 Rock mothership, to Ken Strickland and the Washington Bureau who adopted me as one of their own, and to the women whom I look up to here every dayled by the iconic Andrea Mitchell, who is as gracious as she is hardworking (which is to say, unquantifiably so).

Sue Kroll, Olivia Santini, and Erika Angulo, you poured your decades of knowledge into me, and I am forever grateful that I got to come of age on the air and as a reporter with you as my guides. Ben Mayer, thanks for teaching me, well, how to correspondent and being a real friend while doing it.

To Katy Tur, you wrote a whole book about the years me, you, and Anthony Terrell spent together following Trump and sometimes even I still dont believe it. To my Trump Embed crew whom I will always consider my family: thanks for being the best company in the Doghouse. Im still mad about the wallet, though.

Im so grateful to the candidates, staffers, and sources who were so generous with their time and insightseven (especially) in moments that were raw or painfulso that others may learn and build upon them.

Deepest thanks to my friends. How did I ever get so lucky? Alex Lemley, Meghann Ambrose, Haley Talbot, Emily Gold, Deepa Shivaram, Kailani Koenig, Jackie Alemany, Stephanie Quintero, Elizabeth K. Harnik, Kristen Holmes, Noah Gray, Ben Perry, Molly Kadish, Shelby Coon, Shaq Brewster, Lauren Peikoff... for seeing these pages in their rawest forms and encouraging me to keep going, keep working, keep making it better, while plying me with an endless supply of Teds Bulletin pop tarts and oat milk lattes. I love you all and feel so blessed to call you friends.

Molly Roecker, what can I say that I havent already? Thanks will never be enough for what you gave to me.

My family, I love you so much. Pange, you showed me what a feminist waseven when I denied that I was oneby the way you lived and worked every day. In these pages, the vaginal minority finally wins. Lyss, thank you for being the best little sister I could ask for and growing into an even better friend. Someday, Ill prove to you Im cool. Dad, Im so proud of the allyship youve always shown and the ways youve lifted women up. Thanks for your unyielding support and for putting up with, well... all this.

ALI VITALI is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for NBC News. She covered the 2016 and 2020 presidential contests from primary to inaugurationon the ground and with the candidatesas well as the 2018 and 2022 midterms, from across the country and in the nations capital.

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M y shift was over, but I wasnt ready to go home. I was wide awake, pacing Americas Most Famous Parking Lot, despite not having slept more than a few hours a night the last few weeks. Caffeine and adrenaline make one helluva cocktail.

But how could I sleep now? This was the moment Id worked toward for the last five yearsfrom covering the first weeks of America under Donald Trumps influence as a candidate in 2015 to now, in November 2020, covering the first moments after a majority of Americans decided they wanted someone different. For me, the 2020 election was a continuation of 2016. These last five years were one long chain of political controversies and eroded norms, a film reel of democracy stretched to its breaking point set to the bizarre soundtrack of a Trump rally: Nessun Dorma and You Cant Always Get What You Want playing out our countrys collective foundational principles as they foundered under Donald Trump.

On Saturdayfour days after the polls had closedAmericans were learning the news about who had won the presidential election. Many spent the afternoon dancing, waving Biden-Harris signs, salty tears soaking into the cloth of their masks. Exultant Biden-backers were spontaneously gathering everywhere youd expect them to be. New York City. Los Angeles. Washington, D.C. Chicago. Philadelphia. Atlanta... Wilmington, Delaware. Far from a place that most Americans could easily point to on a map, it had become the center of the political universe in the latter months of 2020, thanks to the pandemic that kept Joe Biden close to home. As soon as the networks called the race, a crowd began gathering here too, outside The Parking Lot, in anticipation of the victory rally that Bidens campaign had been planning, then holding off on, then re-planning all week.

The Biden team had set up a media row outside the Chase Convention Center here in Wilmington. A massive flag had been hoisted on a crane above the area, waving to the Secret Service stationed at checkpoints around the cement and greeting the steady stream of sleepless reporters who rolled in with the changing tides of their shifts. Our changing of the MSNBC guard came daily, just before 3 a.m. My producer, Molly Roecker, and I shuffled from our hotel across the street and into the lot to relieve our colleague Mike Memoli from his post in front of the camera. Mike and I had been splitting twelve-hour shifts on MSNBC, NBC News NOW, and any other NBC-family platform that we were asked to join to give the latest on Bidens waiting game.