This is a somewhat flawed but mostly well-written and interesting bit of reportage about how Joe Biden managed to navigate the turbulent currents of a wild Democratic Party primary season and batten down the hatches during the general election to prevail as the Democratic nominee and defeat Donald Trump to become President of the United States. This is a mostly "inside baseball" report. That is, a lot of time is spent on describing the political machinations and the processes from inside the various campaigns, and those sections are often quite fascinating, though we learn a lot more about, for example, the rivalries and personal conflicts within the Biden, Sanders and Trump campaigns than we do about the candidates themselves. Nevertheless, it's interesting to learn that sort of history, the undercurrents of the election season that were mostly not on view to the general public. According to this narrative, Biden believed that his name recognition, the body of work he'd turned in over his decades-long political career, his association with Barak Obama via his two terms of Obama's vice president would serve to make his case to the country that he was experienced enough, well meaning enough and calm enough to serve as the antidote to Donald Trump and get him elected president. What America wanted, went Biden's theory, as a compassionate, non-controversial figure. Especially during the primary season, the attraction would be to nominate someone capable of projecting the kind of calm needed to defeat Trump. Also, and very importantly, Biden was help in high regard by many in the African American community and was thought of as the candidate who could attract high vote totals from people of color in general. In other words, he was at the same time the Anti-Trump and the Anti-Sanders. This book is, basically, the narrative of how this theory in the event played out successfully, though, as the title tells us, not without huge dollops of good luck at just the right times. Some examples of that luck:

* As the primary season opened, Biden, who had entered the race relatively late in the going, knew he was going to have serious troubles in the first two primary states, Iowa and New Hampshire, because they were mostly white states and would be leaning toward more progressive candidates. The goal was to somehow make just enough of a showing to remain viable until the South Carolina primary, when Biden's natural constituency would come into play. Biden, in fact, got buried in Iowa in a showing so disastrous that it might have torpedoed his campaign right away, except for the fact that the App that state primary officials were using didn't work, and the vote results were delayed so long that by the time they finally came out they were yesterday's news.

* During the debates prior to the New Hampshire primary, Amy Klobuchar did some of Biden's work for him by skewering Pete Buttigieg, who was more or less presenting himself as a younger, more energetic version of Biden, so effectively that he never really recovered. Klobuchar wasn't trying to help Biden. Her goal was to take out Buttigieg, who was polling higher than her, but she'd helped clear a path for Biden's subsequent rise, nevertheless.

* During the primary debate, just as Michael Bloomberg was beginning to gather strength as a Biden replacement with lots of his own money to spend and a better chance to beat Trump than Biden represented, Elizabeth Warren came to the rescue with a withering attack on Bloomberg for which he had no response and which more or less ended his candidacy on the spot. Again, Warren was trying to help Biden. She just despised Bloomberg and his belief that he could swoop in and buy the nomination. But, again, clearing the field of Bloomberg at that point served Biden enormously.

* Everybody in the in the Democratic field, with the exception of Warren, feared a Sanders candidacy above all else, thinking that Trump and his campaign strategists would wipe the floor with him. So, as Biden did indeed win in South Carolina, and then cleaned up in several states on Super Tuesday, many of Biden's moderate Democratic rivals made haste to drop out of the race and endorse Biden.

Well, there are other "luck" factors described, but those are some of the key moments from the primary campaign. Again, the story here is almost exclusively one of campaign offices, strategies and personalities. We spend precious little time with the candidates as the campaign. (The infamous incident in which Biden, objecting to comment made by a voter at a New Hampshire town hall meeting, called that person a "lying dogfaced pony soldier" is related as a throwaway example of Biden's inadequate skills as an in-person campaigner.) And the authors either never tried to (or tried and failed to) interview and of the candidates themselves. It clearly never occurred to them to talk to voters to find out why people made the voting decisions they did. Also, the authors' mostly effective breezy style sometimes spills over into glibness, as when we're told, "By nature, {Biden} came to decisions at a pace that only a badly wounded slug would envy." Finally, the authors interject made up thought bubbles, presented in italics to set them apart, as they conjecture about what the candidates or their aides and strategists were thinking at any given time. These are almost uniformly annoying, and I learned to skip over them as I read.

Overall, I'm happy to have read this contemporary history. I will say that the book's first half, about the primary season, was more interesting for me than the second half about the Biden/Trump general election. But as an insight into how presidential electoral politics work, especially in an election that played out within very particular circumstances--the desperation of Democrats to unseat Trump and, of course, the onset and fury of the Covid 19 pandemic--this book serves a very useful purpose. For me, its strengths overcome its flaws, sort of like Joe Biden, come to think of it. (For the record, I was a Warren supporter, myself.) And Lucky's 413-page length notwithstanding, it was a fairly quick read for me. ( )