Mark Evan Halperin (born January 11, 1965) is the senior political analyst for Time magazine, Time.com, and MSNBC and serves as a board member on the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College. He is the co-author (with John Heilemann) of Game Change.

Mark Halperin is the son of Morton Halperin and Ina Young. He has two brothers, David and Gary. He was born in Bethesda, Maryland, or Cambridge, Massachusetts, and raised in Bethesda, where he attended Walt Whitman High School. Halperin received his college degree from Harvard University in 1987.

In 1988 Halperin started out as a desk assistant for ABC News and a researcher for World News Tonight. He then worked in the investigative unit of World News Tonight and as a general assignment reporter in Washington. In 1992 he worked full time as an off-air producer covering Bill Clinton. In 1994 Halperin became a producer with ABC's special events unit in New York and later an editorial producer.

In 1997 he was named the political director for ABC News. As director, Halperin appeared frequently as a correspondent and political analyst for ABC News television and radio programs. He also founded and edited The Note, which appears daily on ABCNews.com. In October 2006, Halperin, along with John F. Harris, released their book, The Way to Win: Clinton, Bush, Rove, and How to Take the White House in 2008 (ISBN 1-4000-6447-3).

Glenn Edward Lee Beck (born February 10, 1964) is an American conservative radio host, vlogger, author, entrepreneur, political commentator and former television host. He hosts the Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show that airs throughout the United States on Premiere Radio Networks. He formerly hosted the Glenn Beck television program, which ran from January 2006 to October 2008 on HLN and from January 2009 to June 2011 on the Fox News Channel. Beck has authored six New York Times–bestselling books. Beck is the founder and CEO of Mercury Radio Arts, a multimedia production company through which he produces content for radio, television, publishing, the stage, and the Internet. It was announced on April 6, 2011, that Beck would "transition off of his daily program" on Fox News later in the year but would team with Fox to "produce a slate of projects for FOX News Channel and FOX News' digital properties". Beck's last daily show on the network was June 30, 2011. In 2012, The Hollywood Reporter named Beck on its Digital Power Fifty list.

Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. (born March 31, 1948) served as the 45th Vice President of the United States (1993–2001), under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President and won the popular vote in the 2000 U.S. presidential election.

Gore is currently an author and environmental activist. He has founded a number of non-profit organizations, including the Alliance for Climate Protection, and has received a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in climate change activism.

Gore was previously an elected official for 24 years, representing Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives (1977–85), and later in the U.S. Senate (1985–93), and finally becoming Vice President in 1993. In the 2000 presidential election, Gore won the popular vote by a margin of more than 500,000 votes. However, he ultimately lost the Electoral College to Republican George W. Bush when the U.S. Supreme Court settled the legal controversy over the Florida vote recount by ruling 5-4 in favor of Bush. It was the only time in history that the Supreme Court has determined the outcome of a presidential election.

John Arthur Heilemann (born January 23, 1966) is an American journalist for New York magazine, where he mainly covers US politics. He previously was a staff writer for The New Yorker, Wired, and The Economist. He is the coauthor of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller Game Change, about the 2008 presidential campaign, and the author of a previous book, Pride Before the Fall, about the Microsoft antitrust case. He was the host of a four-part documentary series for Discovery called Download: the True Story of the Internet, about the rise of the World Wide Web, which first aired in 2008. Heilemann is also an MSNBC political analyst.