he wasn't announced candidate. so i walked onto the floor of the c mobbed and as he left a television commentator there said to him, who do you think's going to win? he said, t 'nored to be here with two of the most vital and insightful public intellectuals america, whom i read all the time. anne applebaum is a pulitzer prize winning historian, writer fo senior fellow at the johns hopkins of advanced international studies. her latest book is, quote, the twilight of democracy the seductive lure of by the way. when i recall a lot of the book titles that we've heard about during this festival, i'm tempted to think there's more

than a little pessimism here about the future. ezra klein min is a columnist for the new york times, where he also hosts thea klein podcast at a young age. he has a storied career in journalism and as a is new york times best seller is entitled why we're polarized. another optimistic take on where we are in america. let me start wit'll start with you, ezra. we? how did we get here? and has the polarization ever been this serious and this dangerous in modern me nice easy question for 830 in the well, thank you all for me. one of the tricky things about talking about polarization is you have to always ask polarized over what? it's a word we it mean many different things. so are we more what compared to ten years ago, compared to 12? say we're less polarized economics. if you go back to the period where paul ryan and his budt

are dominating the discussion and, you know, you have barack obama and your to have the rise of sanders economics is splitting the parties dramatic, right?medicare. the other party wanted to expand universal health insurance. that's eased a lot. we're less polarized on economics, on on a bunch of different things possibility of compromise, of unusual bipartisan coalitions has actually gone up. on the other hand, we have fallen down. what i like to think of as maslow's hierarchy political needs, we're much polarized over whether we should have elections or whether ore american political system be followed. so we've become, i think polarized at the level of system more even than the level of policy we used to more or less agree on the s but there were very deep divisions about the policy. now the system is what is under attack. republicans have become a much more antiracist party, not j system, but much more. i meanf what we get called the mainstream media. i mean, but they areuch more intensely skeptical of that of universities. they've turnedn see ron desantis going

going to war with disney. that'sot the kind of thing you saw from the republican party 15 or 20 years ago. the democratic party's become even more of a pro system party. it has become sort of more establishment orient did more frankly connected to business. it used to be. ands, i think we are much more polarized. we are more polarized polarized in every respect. in some ways, it's a less policy oriented debate right now, more of a debate over what kind of country and what kind of system we're going to be in. yeah, i would i would say though, that the reason why kind of polarization feels more dangerous and also feels different to a lot of people probably this room is that it's it's it's it's aboutething much more existential know an argument be. i mean people feel very strongly about it some people think it's know the most important issue in america you know it's crucial to their businesses, but it's not about their identity or the definition of who they are and who the nations arguments over nature

of democracy and you know who won the election 2020 and is you know, is there an elaborate conspiracy theory about it? these are really existent questions that reach to the the heart of what it means to be american. and that's why kinds of arguments are so much harder to solve. mean when you have a when you disagree about taxes, you can get everybody in am and you can have an argument about taxes. maybe it's a bitter argument, but people probably other at the end of it. if you is and you get everybody in a room and argue about that you could have people killing each other and that' that insight even comes from, yo a of years ago i wrote something where i went and spoke to people had worked in post-conflict you know after civil wars. and i also in particular i talk to somebo ireland, you know when they were when they finished the sort of formal northern irish peace process then there was an attempt to get communities to reconcile in northern ireland, where there

had been a lot of violence. you know, people literally lived different sides of walls. you know, how do you bring people like that together? tried to do is they tried to bring people together again to talk and what kind of bridges should we know, youth community centerthat street? and who should be in charge of building it? and again, those can be controversial things. you know, nobody wants the bridge going by their house or they want the road to be somewhere else and they can be angry at it. but they're unlikely to murder ea other. whereas if you have people arguing over is this state, you know protestant or is the state catholic, you know or it british or is it will kill each other. and so the reason why is that is that from policy differences, you know, differences about, you know, money and maybe money, maybe property maybe. social issues. we've moved onto these existential differences. and tha yeah, that's very interesting because if you think back to the

obama administration and take your example of taxes, you know the deep disagreement about what to do and mitch mcconnell and obama, biden was negotiating the deal actually came to a place in the middle where for a certain group of people, the tax cuts were extended. for other groups of people, they weren't. there was extra unemployment compensation for folks who were out of work. those aren't existential questions. they may be very important. peopexistential. i think the fact the what you're citing raises a whole host of questions. i'm going to start with with this to what extent does race and then the alienate asian of so many americans in face of vast cultural and demographic change and the loss of civic systemic polarized nation that you're talking take this in a couple of pieces. i'm not a believer that the loss of civic education is a big player. i think that's something people always want to hear, that if we just had better civic education

classes, we could prevent this from don't buy it. when i think of what i in why polarized which comes out in does in every other way. right. that book does talk a lot about racial polarization talked a lot about the polarization driven by hiigration numbers, talked a lot about the polarization driven by changing religion. and i thk something that is crucial inextricably fromn, each of these measures we've seen society changing a rapid rate ri on to become a majority minority country. people argue about what that means. but the fact that we will not have the kind of stable white americans we have for the entirety of american history has destabilized american politics right? i think it is for the better, but it is nevertheless destabilizing. i think people underestimate how big of a player religion is here. there is no donald trump. there is no trump without his unbelievably intense support among evangelical and the fact of the matter is that if look at the lines for

when we're country racially, which gets a lot of attention it's very similar for religion. when do protestants no longer protestant? christians no longer have a majority in this couyou know, it happens around 2040. the democratic party is itself now the most popular religious answer in it is no organized religion. de become a i don't want to call it a secular coalition and because manyut it is nevertheless a non-religious coalition way it used to be. but to the question were asking a second ago, one of the big surprises of the past four years been slight, but nevertheless real drop what we would call racia polarization. the reason joe biden wins in donald trump does between 2016nd even more from black and hispanic voters. what happened is he alienated itselfzbds of voters. and they went to joe biden. so weirdly, the 2020 election sees a slight slide, butnevertheless meaningful drop in racial polarization. ng educational?

and i don't i think educational polarization is tricky because it's not just education. it's tracking some referent of what we would call, in my opinion class, some referent of what means to be on the inside of american life and not life, some referent of what it means to be on the inside of america and momentum on the inside of prosperity on the outside of it. p begins winning. the republican party begins winning. larger white people. that's been happening for a long time and i think is driven by race or was for quite some time, but also back black americans, also hispanic americans and the democratic party is winningnumbers it has never seen before. the reason ho it does in 2022 is it wins college educated americans. i do think one of the pieces of polarization that often gets missed is this al. democrats win, voters making less than $100,000 even. something whatever is getting picked up around education that has begun to flip

that the democratic party that used to win was always called the party of the working class. right. that that won non-college doesn't win them anymore the republican party does and that helps explain in i think a lot of how our politics look the fact the democratic party as a piece i published today in the times talks about is sort of simultaneously are some factions of it want great change, but it's also a party arguing r stability, arguing that actually america's kind of already great. we don't want to change it too much. we don't want to burn too much down and. there are thinpublican party is doing. it has adopted the dynamic of dynamic donald trump that is sending cultural signals to t understand how to send or even really how to anymore. so i think that this dimension of class polarization, the ins and outs, rural city, this has become very, very, very im and we've lost language for talking about it. but it is a kind of polarization growing fastest in ou elections is it's actually a question for you. i mean, is it also what we're

seeing a revolt against meritocracy or the idea of it, you know, you know, a lot of things in america up until pretty recently were decided not really by meritocracy but by in there was a kind of, you know protestant elite on the east coast and kids went to andover and yale and you know, everybody ki oaccepted that. and, you know, if you're from the midwest, you didn't really think about andover and yale and also you didn't really care about andover at yale. you know, you had yourigan or you had your own, you know, farming community and was really i mean there's almost a way in which the expansion of an i loud i'm not saying this is necessarily true. you know, the the the the university is opening up to more people, allowing people from over the country to apply, which is obviously a good thing. also created the feeling changed little b elite or who are the leaders in the and it made theml like, you know, it wasn't of course inheritance still matters matters, but there's also a sense that people have that we deserve to be here, you know

not just because daddy owned you know, a but because i worked hard and i did really well in my sats. and therefore, i deserve to be whatever it is that i am. anddidn't get into that streamight. they couldn't compete or they didn't have good assets and they didn't get in. and i don't think this explains everything, but there is a there's a way in which the the nature the sort of so-called ruling class or what is perceived to be the ruling class chain edged, it became much more pleasedh and certain that it deserved something. and alson/ the resentment it grew, youpeople 100 years ago really resentful of ivy league universities. but think so. i mean i you know, i don't i don't remember the the sort of hatred and dislike of them being so focused and being so much a part of the news every day. and i went to one and i don't remember worrying about whether stuff i did. there are things that were happening. there were to show up the next day on the cover of newspapers,

but now they do. i have a a and he said, you know, the special thing about an ivy league university, is that ay it's in the new york times anddynamic began to play inside american. close to what you're saying. it's it's question. i mean, the hard thing here and this really is what my book is about is that there is so ps happening simultaneously that unwinding and so here's like another cut it that i think the rule the what gets called the ruling class i thought is so funny the atlantic had a piece where and works and where my wife works there was like the ruling class is giving up on marriage. i'm like the atlantic is a ruling class but but whatever the ruling class had it lost power i actually think in a lot of these things what ed is a stability of a power structure broke. and when that breaks, it's very destabilizing. i'm not saying it's better when it did, but this of politics is you know, much better thantrumpist politics is populist, right? politics. it's very old. it is very old. it shows up again and again and again and again through history.

it shows up in all kinds of different countries, going to say it's international, it's not. it's international. the thing was that the structure in american politics was capable of suppressing this dimension of politics a very long time. so a political scientist sometimes you this chartbased on big surveys but it basically shows that if you look at where voters are there are always this huge number of voters clustered in socially conservative, economically liberal, the socially conservative, economically quadrant. right. not exactly liberal, but basically wants a social w them. right. government hands off my medicare. but don't give it to the undesirables, but also does not want things changing in the culture too much. but that sort of politics was not. well-represented and when it tried to emerge, it would be squashed dowrimaries. ross perot running as an independent. and this was a time when parties and bob would know this history much better than than i would. there was a tiad a lot more power at their conventions parties, a

lot more power to structure primary. they had a lot more power to structure. who came up. they controlled more of the money. they and that power the ruling class somehow becomes most visible when it becomes weakest because when it becomes weakest, it can't actually stop challenges in the way it could before. so that to me is one d a lot of the cracks in the system become more legible. and then you begin talking a lot class. but the political parties are not more powerful thanh less powerful. they have much less capill republican party would have stopped donald trump. he never would have got into where he got to. but he could only get to where he did because that power structure was breaking down. i'm not that it was becoming more entrenched. the 'll say quickly is that one dimension of the sort of analysis trs about media and culture. and age with cable going up through the int profusion of niche culture, thismeant is that people got much better at the cultures, more different from each other.

so one thing i do thinwe get that that began to happen in this period is that there be there opened up larger gaps between like the different cultural subgroups in america. and they began to notice that about each other. they felt they could see each othere they were all on the internet. they were all on cable, but they began feel like they knew each other less. this is a period when you will see like new york times maps about like this part of the country watches duck dynasty but this part watches the sopranos as a culture became the fact that we are more distant from each other, became more salient. and then the opportunity, a politician or a set of politicians toecome hyper appealing to a part of the culture the other side didn't the of the party structures toted the sort of politics we have here. you it's interesting because i think there's some false consciousness here that that marks people as people know herbert marcuse as people as people sort themselves out long said

and i said this in anot moynihan that old adage that not own facts. and one of the interesting things that's emerging in the the exit polls or entry polls in the case of iowa is, that the issue of immigration and illegal immigration seems be more that are farthest from the borde. be fed by social media. i mean there isn't a huge into new hampshire, but that's not that's not unique states. the political leader in europe who made the who put immigration at the center of his campaign who ran on it, you know, time and again, who posters and advertising campaigns around his country warning of the dangers of illegal immigration was viktor orban, the prime minister of hungary. hungary has no immigration. i mean, maybe a actually in the nineties they had a few from bosnia because of the bosnian

war, some of whom were muslims and they all integrate it in settled perfectly fine. like there's no historic history w problems with immigration in hungary. you know nevertheless he was able to make that to put it at the center of politics. by contrast greece, where actually they do have a real immigration problem that people take boatsbya and they land the boats on islands. and then someone has to do something with them. i mean, they have to be fed and housed. and a program has be set up for them and they have to be processed. and, you know, and it's, you know, even with the best of will, it's it costs money. it's a problem. you know, it's a it's something that, you know, local inhabitants have to have to cope with. and yet greece has not had a wave of massive, anti-immigration sentiment. tracked was to do with tracking coverage of, immigration in italy. i was working with another group and one of the things we found the the level of concern and anger immigration in the press had nothing to do with how many immigrants were coming

into the countryso, you know, so immigration is clearly you know, i don't want to say that it's not really about immigration, but it's clearly also about other things. you kn about you know, we were talking about this last night. i mean, it's about anxiety about growing diversity, about, know, feelings of loss, of control. you know, in a global economy, you don't the same control over your life that. you you used to or you think you, you know, the image of someone, you know, uncontrolled masses over your border. you clearly creates somexiety. so so immigration is a is a profound and central issue not only because it's the one the right has chosen to run on in so many put also because clearly, you know, it's not necessarily related to reality. you know, ezra, you've written this is a quote, the american political system, whichncludes everyone from voters to journalists and the president is full of rational actors making rational decisions, given the incentives we are a collection of, functional parts whose efforts

combine into a dysfunction or whole. is there any way fix this? the set new one. i'm to move on to see not just e problems but is there any way to fix this to set new and better incentives. the one the intention of that read of th book is to get people to see politics as a ion of individuals and in particular to not believe the endless lie. we tell that this or that president this or that senator will fix it. if you want things to be different, you need to change rules. i think one of the analogies i offer is know, on one level, like the people who play football in the nfl are friends with each. they know each other. they maybe play with each other on the team before and theney run at each other wearing armor as hard as they can, a way that they know causes brain injury. and if somebody like raises his hand is like i think we should not tacklereplaced with somebody does tackle if you dole in the head and cause brain injury you have to change the

rules. ere's a lot we c do. i think we could literally just gerimaries. you could certainly structure political primaries dramatically differently. and i think that you should. how well you could. you could, for one thing, open them up. right? political primaries could be open. voting on both sides. they cou choice voting. right. but they also political primaries are veryange because to a first approximation, nobody votes in. right. the number of, the percentage of iowa republicans who voted in the iowa caucus not exactly a primary. if i'm not misremembering, this was 7%. yeah, 7%. so 7% of republicans in iowa which small. i'm from california. you're all in california. 7% of repus iowa everybody will end up havingright. who wins in iowa is the first and most important question for who wins republican primary ad in new hampshire, you're talking

about 47 people and three dogs. and like that ends up deciding who we vote for. so primarie quality putting this incredible leverage point on a very small fraction of the parties who then choose people are out of step often times, not but oftentimes with the population. 's one reason i sort of miss one convention has had a real role because they had a much broader set of interests and dynamics coming in. it's one reason i often prefer parliamentary systems where parties are making more of the decision. so tha leverage. the filibuster is a space of leverage, right. i, i won't go into this. i will bore you guys forever with this. i do. but the filibuster makes mise less likely in the senate, not more likely. if you know, you you know, if you can kill a bill that is often better for you than compromising on a bill. i't kill bills compromising might be better for you than ineffectually voting. no, over and over and over again. there are a lot of things you could do to alter the struct politics that might help. now, it wouldn't together,

something that i think is a s work is so important for is these dynamics international they recur across political systems with different rules and structures but how your political system works does more with that. so the issue is you can actually do a lot with structure. the problem is politics is very closely divided. you get any leverage on structure. the way things usually work is you actually need much than a majority to change structural rules in american politics change the constitution, change the rules of very difficult to attain. so on the one hand, i can give you my laundry list of, things you could do, and on the other hand, in a world where you had the power to do them, they wouldn't be as necessary. do you know what i mean? yes. that if we had the functional political system, we could getw, the electoral college is word i'm stupid. theand now tends to serve the precise oppo serve of getting like the electoral college is meant be the thing where a bunch of elites would get and say, are you kidding me? donald trump as president?

absolutely not. instead, it's the reason he wins.that because the electoral college benefits one of the two parties. so youlw haviscursive problem like you solve, you have a problem of structure. and because you have a problem of structure, you can't a structural problem. i said, then throw question tod about regret in the declining power conventions, national political conventions, and itoccurs me that that happened because of another period of polarization in recent history and that was over the vietnam war. and you had a democratic convention how gary hart destroyed american. yeah. and i was a young person hoping to do a two young man hoping to destroy american politics. well no. hoping to destroy a convention system that couldfrustrate the will of aof democrats. and the result of that was that you had a commission and the imately followed this. you had a commission that

candidates the party bosses are not going to pickand i agree with you without that, you wouldn't have had donald trump. but i also think that without that change you wouldn't have had barack obama. so there are two sides of the coin. the other thing you said that's very intriguing is that this is not just a problem in america that aproblems. so what i want to address, too, and because she she's written so persistently and so elegantly about democrats and republicans, along with president biden, have negotiated a deal. it's a rather odd deal. the ties aid to ukraine with making the border more secure. they're about to announce it of the speaker of the house says. this is a nonstarter for republic can't they take yes for an answer on border security? andthe prospects for progress on hot button issues? and does it suggest that somehow or other america in this

polarized era is becoming more isolationist, that we're going back to the thirties, you know so one of the one of the, i think, problems the democrat party has, not just the democratic party, actually because it's a broader coalition, but people who believe democracy is under america, which includes republicans and independents as well. very hard for them to express to people what it is they're afraid of. i mean, if you tell americans, oh you know, it's going to be nazi germany, really i mean, nobody believes you. you know it's clearly no. you know, but but there are already, i think in beginning be manifestations of what a, you know, what what real political dysfunctionality in the united states would look like. and actually, this bill is one of them. so you know what? if we get to a point where the united states is unable to take important decisions you know, where in emergency, in a military emergency or in a political emergency, we aren't able to come together as a

nation, you know, and and make a decision. you know what if the the inte us of a minority, actually of people who don't care about democracy, who prefer dictators, werent vision of the united states, are able to block the majority and th the of that or what you'rese of you who don't know last summer there was meant to be a spending bill that would have aid to ukraine andmajority in both houses of congress in favor of passingt, i be talking about this and and actually up unti moment, i didn't think there was going to be any trouble with spending for ukraine. i mean, why should there be? it was supported by the white house, by congress by the 's overwhelming only in the public interest overwhelmingly in the public. and then the what happened was is kevin mccarthy under pressure from his far right in his caucus his party dropped it off the bill and did a sort of private they agreed they would pass it later. is it separately what happened? we we know or of you who bother

to follow the saga of washington know is that kevin mccarthy immediately lost his replaced by mike johnson. mike johnson more clearly comes from this minority faction the party and they decided play politics with this money. so they said you know we don't this money and solve the problem. we want to bring these issues of the border. and so they had this idea that we can't pass ukraine aid unless we solve the border by which they didn't only mean giving funding for know border guards and processors. and so on, but also changing the rules for asylum and parole and so on. this is unbelievably difficult set of issues to solve, you , very hard to know if you change the rules of asylum, how you'oing to affect people and how that's going to change, you know. and anyway, they spent months arguing about it and what's happened now is that the senate is finally having been given this impossible task of creating a bill that encompasses these two radically different things you know aid ukraine and money for the changes to the border

law with additional some money for israel, too've now created this thing and now suddenly because trump is appears to be the candidate because he influences johnson ancallm on the phone. now suddenly johnson doesn't do pass it because that might solve the bor solve it and that would then give bid and that might be bad for the trump campaign. minority of republicans who don't really even want to govern anymore. so their interest is all this propaganda and and discussion and conversation about border some some of it real based on real stuff and some of it not turns out to be kind of fiction. i mean they don't actually to they want to talk about it they want to have as an issue. they want it to be thing they're going to run on, you know, next autumn know, and the opportunity to solve it, even if it's just to partially solve it, they're about to give away. and the consequences of this for

the us and for it's the perceptionrld are going to be extraordinary if we don't pass it. so it abandoned an ally for whom it international coalition. you know, biden that was giving aid to ukraine, you know, he he pulled it together almost miraculously, you know, after the invasion began, he personally went to kiev. r speeches in warsaw about the significance of ukraine. and suddenly it will appear the autocrats of the world, you knowwoin russia who'describing united states as degenerate and divided, unab you will be right in. and so we will we will fail. you know you could mean the conquest of ukraine. it could mean the replacement of the ukrainian government. and there are al consequences could follow if the ukrainians run out of ammunition. you know, the europeans will help and actually they've given more money to ukraine than we have, but theycapacity to produce weapons and

ammunition that know, are at a point where a al are you know political you know, who are really in their own interests rather than in the in of all americans, are blocking a bill and that's that's pretty f in the direction towards i don't want to seethat's the wrong word but certainly towards, you know, a kind of dysfiodon't think we've ever had before. well so we can't lve systproblems. we're polarized over those. policy problems. how much and democracy is introuble? how much trouble is it in how much peril does democracy today? and where would you see things ten years from bad. look we are in this election cycle dealing with a level of fundamental threat about what at what level the system can be

attacked. that is unlike anything i mean certainly in my lifetime think frankly i mean you could make some arguments about nixon but i don't actually think they're the same anymore. i would have thought this a couple of years ago. i wo analogy of worked. but think and think about what happenednixon. goldwater, john rhodes, all the republican go from the congress and say you've got to, you know, this you got to resign. and nixon says, well if push on to awill you? how will you vote? and goldwater said, i'll vote to convict you. and that's theto say that like in 2016 don coalition government with the republican party. in 2020, that republican has gone right. there's no paul rn speakership. there's a mike johnson speakership. 6 so the the very we've a very near-term question and the longer term question. right. what happens if the bridge builds over the tmp watjoe biden. wins 5347 and that's end of

that? i don't i mean, look, i was wrong about trump coming back in 2020, but coming back again 2024 seems i'm sorry, 2024. i was wrong about him coming back in 2024, but him coming back in 2028 after losing the popular vote twice in a row feels even less likely to be at some point. the party does want to win presidential elections again and you could see things reverting. i do think there's uniqueness to thearty, a clear kind of threat trump poses. even if you look at the othec: people who are running this. but we don't know because the thing that does worry me is trump thoroughly infected republican party behind him and the young one thing i'm a little days is what it looks like to be a young litics. what kinds of things are you reading? what kinds of the fact that you had all of these young campaign staffers, who did you get fired this year? us in. the meme videos they were making for ron desantis and people l that, that was worrying because i don't think they knew what

that imagery was, but it was in the world they were inhabiting thinkers who have become more salient on the ke this online writer, bronze age pervert. like that's alook it up the atlantic has done a great profile of bronze age pervert because we are all demeaned now having to describelity that the what is the. i am not sure for a long time i thought trump was an isolated kind of threat. and as a politician in a way i think he is. but what he is has kind of ore broadly. and so i don't know i don't know if this is a kind of temporary threat that america navigates its way past or politics end up looking like. i mean, there is just a dimension. look, donald trump of the republicans cannot win without this generation ofr voters, that changes over. but i'm starting to see a lot of re going to have a more reactionary backlash among young malepopularity of people like tate and to some degree jordan peterson like that should make you wonder a little bit. and you're seeing some know i find

the both near-term and the slightly longer term very hard to rate in american politics right now. i don't think should be sanguine. i think that you should expect that democracy and a reasonable political system is somethingor and won again by election after election after. election. and sometimes you might one of those elections and you might have the last election. but yeah, it's i lot public participation than it has up until now. and one of the features of american democracy over the last 20 or 30 years was along with the the the parties also declined as real things. you know it wasn't just that they're you know, they were weren't, you know, once upon a time, you know, your local political party o teenagers, you know, picnics and so on. i as forms of socializing, real life political engagement. i mean, as a friend of mine has this thing aboutean parties, you know, the european

left, social democrats emerged out of the trade union m were that was a real thing. it was a place where had interests and they met saw each other. and the european center right emerged out of church organizations and church groups. the christian democrats. and that gone. and so now you have these kind of shells parties. and one of the effects of that is that politics become rather remote. and it's a kind a thing you think about every four years. and you know, it's something that professionals do. and ordinary people don't participate. and we may be coming to a moment when that's no good. you know, there will mean alongside your structural changes. i think having the democratic party sink about what having people involved means, how mass participation and energy. we just had an election campaign in poland was unexpectedly successful. easons it was was because the party ran a series of veryknow kind of big. and these had to physically to warsaw and, you know, pknow, and

that was part of what the the campaign and young people liked it and th organized, you know, chants and they participated. and the democtic party may also not again, i keep saying the democratic party, but i don't mean i mean the democracoalition might also have to think about we're going to get again. and how do we are we going to have marches parties? i don't know cookouts. you know i didn't think we'd arrive at cookouts. the answer that's what that's kind of what politics to also be is that, you k o. do you know, you could hand out leaflets, you could work on a on campaign or you could, you know, i don't know. there was there more public participation than there is now? we have very little time left. but assuming history is accuratelyyears from now, how will historians look back on this period? i think it depends happens. i mean, we are i would not have

expected the level of success from 2020 to 24. i wo expected that we would be so unable to turn the page at all. i think in some ways i do some of that. on biden himself has such a think he is capable of as a communicator now or the way he chooses to communicate. but they have not reorganized s around him and their conflicts he kind let trump create the energy of american politics. i know the bidenws cycle. right. they're not out there trying to dominate wha left has been on one level an effective political mcgovern republicanism is a very a mobile is democrats to vote democrats did not come out in 2022 because they love joe biden. they came out because. they fear donald trump. that is why they will come out in 2024. also, donald trump is the nominee. but the cost of that political strategy is that we're frozen, right? we're in the same political dynamic we were four years ago. there are some differences, but

not, frankly, all that many fewer than i would have thought it did not shift when barack obama, four years later the tion was about barack obama. right. whether people liked him and didn't like him. he was such a dominant figure in american politics in some degree in american life. donald trump made the about donald trump, joe biden, and it kept election about donald trump. you kn, i think if bernie sanders had won for better or for would have then become about socialism and other turn