Spanking the Donkey is a campaign-trail diary that operates from the opposite viewpoint. In following the race for the Democratic nomination in 2004, Matt Taibbi travels in and out of two different worlds - the contrived world of the election process, and the real United States, where life is not the antiseptic exercise in faint patriotic optimism the media describes it as being. By living in halfway houses and slums as he covers the day-to-day electoral grind, and by following the "man on the street" back to his actual house, Taibbi paints a Dorian Grey-esque portrait of two Americas: the one that poses as the national self-image, and the never seen warts-and-all reality.