Ezra Klein

And there's also not going to be any final victory over it, right? You're just in this fight for the foreseeable future until something you cannot predict changes in some way you cannot currently predict and maybe not in a way that you would like.

And there's also not going to be any final victory over it, right? You're just in this fight for the foreseeable future until something you cannot predict changes in some way you cannot currently predict and maybe not in a way that you would like.

But they're both also fundamentally anti-institutional candidates.

But they're both also fundamentally anti-institutional candidates.

I mean, very different in the way they're anti-institutional candidates.

I mean, very different in the way they're anti-institutional candidates.

But I think we now understand this as a much more fundamental cleavage than people were looking at it as then.

But I think we now understand this as a much more fundamental cleavage than people were looking at it as then.

Yeah, it's not the most stirring, inspirational example to end your book on.

Yeah, it's not the most stirring, inspirational example to end your book on.

Let me ask you about liberalism itself. I would say over the past decade in particular, liberalism has felt very exhausted and very insecure. And its great victories are taken for granted.

Let me ask you about liberalism itself. I would say over the past decade in particular, liberalism has felt very exhausted and very insecure. And its great victories are taken for granted.

I mean, now we're, I think, realizing again that it's actually quite remarkable for people to have rights, for there to be due process, for there to be courts where things can be checked, and for those courts to be listened to by the political system, despite the fact that they don't force that judgment at the point of a gun. And

I mean, now we're, I think, realizing again that it's actually quite remarkable for people to have rights, for there to be due process, for there to be courts where things can be checked, and for those courts to be listened to by the political system, despite the fact that they don't force that judgment at the point of a gun. And

You know, liberalism was, I think, sort of beset by critics on the left who felt it never achieved enough, right? You know, Barack Obama did not make our society post-racial, did not solve inequality, did not solve climate change. What is doing all this work made you think about liberalism itself and what a renewed version of politics around that tradition might look like?

You know, liberalism was, I think, sort of beset by critics on the left who felt it never achieved enough, right? You know, Barack Obama did not make our society post-racial, did not solve inequality, did not solve climate change. What is doing all this work made you think about liberalism itself and what a renewed version of politics around that tradition might look like?

I hear people make this move a lot. Liberalism has had its failures. It has not gotten us to utopia, though it's had quite profound successes. Yeah. So we need something that is better at confronting power. And then I will say the question I'll ask you, but I'm pretty sure I know the answer to it.

I hear people make this move a lot. Liberalism has had its failures. It has not gotten us to utopia, though it's had quite profound successes. Yeah. So we need something that is better at confronting power. And then I will say the question I'll ask you, but I'm pretty sure I know the answer to it.

Can you point me, in all the states we have, the history and the different countries, of a place where this alternative politics has emerged and has been better at containing right-wing liberalism, has been better at pushing forward the engines of human progress? I'd sort of like to see the small example of it working before I say, well, that's where our politics should go.

Can you point me, in all the states we have, the history and the different countries, of a place where this alternative politics has emerged and has been better at containing right-wing liberalism, has been better at pushing forward the engines of human progress? I'd sort of like to see the small example of it working before I say, well, that's where our politics should go.