In January 2015, Yahoo News political reporter John Ward flew down to Atlanta to interview

former President Jimmy Carter about one of the most painful moments in his political career.

It had taken place on an evening that should have been one of Carter's greatest triumphs.

The night he formally accepted the Democratic Party's nomination to run for a second term

as president.

But on the stage at Madison Square Garden, Ted Kennedy, who had challenged Carter in a

grueling primary battle, humiliated him.

Kennedy was drinking that night.

Carter told Ward, everybody knew it.

On the stage when we were looking for harmony, I reached out to shake his hand.

He refused to shake hands with me.

In fact, Carter was misremembering events slightly.

Kennedy had shaken his hand that night a couple of times.

But over the course of a few awkward minutes, Kennedy did refuse to class hands with Carter

and raise their arms together.

The traditional show of unity that the delegates in the garden, as well as the national TV

audience, was looking for.

It was an enduring symbol of the rift within the Democratic Party, between its progressive

and centrist wings, that had played out in harden during the epic clash between Carter

and Kennedy.

It is a story brilliantly documented in Ward's new book, Camelot's End, Kennedy vs.

Carter, and the fight that broke the Democratic Party.

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