CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash joins the Chuck ToddCast to discuss The Elections That Changed the World, out September 22nd, which she wrote with David Fisher. The fifteen elections she chose stretch from Julius Caesar — who ran partly because he was deeply indebted and didn't want to be prosecuted — to Nelson Mandela, and "election" is defined loosely enough to include Pope John XXIII's selection and Martin Luther King's informal elevation to lead the Montgomery bus boycott. The through-line is money: wealth shaped nearly every one of them, from the Magna Carta to Caesar effectively buying votes. Bash's larger point is that you rarely know in the moment how consequential a vote will be — Germany in 1932 was a revolution disguised as an election. Plus her five favorite 2026 races, why Michigan is fascinating, and what it's like covering a second-term Trump White House. 

Timeline:

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00:00 Dana Bash joins The Chuck ToddCast

01:00 Why write "The Elections That Changed the World"?

05:45 Caesar, Hitler, and the cautionary tales

08:00 Wealth as the through-line from the Magna Carta forward

16:30 Sun Yat-Sen and the bridge between imperial China and Mao

22:30 Pope John XXIII and modernizing the Catholic Church

26:30 Kasturba Gandhi, Golda Meir, and women leading democracies

33:45 Mandela's election and the limits of judging history in real time

45:00 2026 races to watch: Michigan, Lawler, Iowa, Texas

59:30 Covering a second-term Trump White House