This is cross-posted from the TPM Book Club about The Uprising this week. Come join in.

INDIANAPOLIS AIRPORT - Sitting in the airport waiting for a flight to D.C., I got this email from a friend in progressive politics:

I'm reading The Uprising now and I'm wondering how you think [the new Health Care for America Now (HCAN) coalition] is going to work? Is this another AAEI? Or something better that will build real grassroots support? I like the idea of targeting Blue Dogs and putting organizers on the ground.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

I've said it before, but now I have occasion to say it again: Thanks to everyone for your support for THE UPRISING. The New York Times just announced that the book made its Political Bestseller List for the entire month of June. This is in addition to THE UPRISING making its non-fiction bestseller list a few weeks ago.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

LAFAYETTE, IN - Jim Webb has gotten a lot of attention lately in the veep speculation game - the one that has substituted for real political reporting over the last month. Most stories focus in on his military and government career, but what I've always found so intriguing about Webb is the thing that makes him such a unique political animal: namely, that he comes from the world of writing, rather than from professional politics.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

Rejecting the fake centrism of Washington and the true centrism outside the Beltway, Barack Obama yesterday tacked back to the progressive middle on trade, slamming John McCain for pushing a corporate-written trade deal with the murderous Colombian regime.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

ST. LOUIS - The St. Louis archway, which I visited yesterday, may bill itself as the gateway to the West, but the real gateway this election to the West for Democrats could be through oil and gas politics.

Just wanted to share the terrific - and unexpected - news, which was today reported at Editor & Publisher magazine. 5280 Magazine today announced that I have been named best columnist in its annual award issue. 5280, which is based in Denver, is one of the largest and most well-respected regional magazines in the country - and the flagship general-interest magazine in the Rocky Mountain West. I won its readers' choice award - the one given to the weekly columnist who gets the most votes from readers for his/her work. You can find the official site for my nationally syndicated weekly column here.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising through your local independent bookstore.

"You, Aaron, are what it's all about. You're real. Your room is real. Your friends are real. Real, man, real. You know? Real. You're more important than all the silly machinery." - Russell Hammond in the movie Almost Famous

LAFAYETTE, IN - Having been on tour for more than a month and now having my first day off, I've gained a bit of perspective that I don't think I had before this whirlwind began. This post is probably going to be a bit rambly, and more than a bit personal - so if you don’t like that kind of thing, don't fill up the comments section with overwrought complaints, just stop reading right now.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising through your local independent bookstore.

LAFAYETTE, IN - I chatted with the Washington Post on Friday about Barack Obama's recent moves to the right. You can read what I told them in the Post's big story from yesterday. It juxtaposes nicely with an important post from Chris Bowers at OpenLeft, in which he urges us to judge Obama on his actions - and not come up with wild theories to explain them away. I can't agree more.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising through your local independent bookstore.

NASHVILLE, TN - We tend to complain a lot about not having progressive voices in the media, and yet we watch how the conservative movement rams their voices into the media through books and publications. When conservative authors sell lots of books or conservative magazines build a big circulation, the rest of the media comes calling. It's a pretty simple formula, and that's why one of the things I tell audiences at my events is that by buying a progressive book or by subscribing to a progressive magazine, you are engaging in an act of movement building. This concept is at the heart of my new newspaper column today.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

LOUISVILLE, KY - I spent yesterday in Ohio's three biggest cities - Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. With the Buckeye State among the hardest hit by lobbyist-written trade policies, it wasn't surprising that NAFTA was at the center of discussion at events for THE UPRISING in Ohio.

Over the last few years, polls show the public has moved to something of a consensus position on trade: full-on opposition to NAFTA-style pacts.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

CLEVELAND - I write tonight from Cleveland, Ohio, but the big news from the populist uprising is from Albany, New York, where Republican Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno tonight announced he is retiring. This opens up about as big an opportunity as there is for the progressive uprising to wield its power - arguably as big an opportunity as the presidential election.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

CHICAGO - Per the last few posts, I debated my latest newspaper column on McCain and NAFTA on Fox Business. Watch it here:

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

CHICAGO - Earlier this week, I wrote a short dispatch about Barack Obama dancing around the issue of trade - an issue at the heart of the populist uprising on both the right and left. Now today, my syndicated newspaper column explores the issue more thoroughly, showing precisely the opportunity the GOP's inevitable racism and nationalism with a populist line on trade.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

NEW YORK - I'm in New York City for tonight's annual gala for the Progressive States Network. In researching my newspaper column that comes out later this week, I caught two stories on the wire that suggest Barack Obama thinks its possible to both represent the populist uprising that I describe in my book, while also undermining that uprising.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

MINNEAPOLIS - During this whirlwind book tour, I've had trouble keeping up with the minute-to-minute trajectory of television's political debate. However, I didn't know that it is now considered out of bounds to talk about John McCain's support for staying in Iraq for 100 years. Watch this clip of me debating GOP hack Terry Holt on Fox News late last week to see what I'm talking about.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

SEATTLE - This week on my national book tour, I had the opportunity to debate conservative leader Grover Norquist on KUOW - Seattle's NPR affiliate.  The topic of the debate was my new book, THE UPRISING, and specifically the rise of populism in American politics. You can listen to the debate here - it begins about half way into the interview.

This is an ongoing blog series from the national book tour of The Uprising. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

DENVER - One of the things I've been finding when talking to groups is a palpable anger at our current trade and globalization policies - an anger from both progressives and conservatives that I meet. And yet, we continue to get this kind of nonsense from Serious Thinkers in major newspapers.

This is an ongoing blog series from the national book tour of The Uprising. Order it at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

SEATTLE - As the vice-presidential speculation intensifies, we cannot lose sight of just how intense the populist uprising is in our country today - and how it is, fundamentally, a backlash to conservative economic policies and liberal capitulation. This is what the cover of my new book, THE UPRISING, metaphorically depicts - and what the cover of this recent edition of The Economist portrays, as well. This is why my new newspaper column this week says that Barack Obama should not pick Hillary Clinton for vice president - but an anti-Clinton.