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Mark Lilla joins senior editor Mark Bauerlein to discuss identitarianism in America and his book ”The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics.”
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Contrary to what your guest thinks, Obama was far less prepared to be President than Trump. He’d never done anything. In the Illinois legislature, he did nothing. Emil Jones threw him a few bones in 2003 to make his legislative record look less unimpressive. HRC had a decades long record of mendacity and imcompetence (Benghazi being the most prominent example). Some of us are living with ObamaCare’s destruction of the individual market.
I don’t have an interest in this book. From what I know as a mid Michigander, it wasn’t Fox News that put Trump in office, nor was it the lack of Hillary’s visits. Those excited about Trump started and stayed that way. Shortly after he announced he attended a rally in Birch Run or Bridgeport that was attended enthusiastically. I drove around seeing Trump signs all over. I didn’t vote for him, but as far as his not being prepared, he’d done a lot better job than those that supposedly were. It may be the job cannot be prepared for in the stepping stone version imagined, but in the ability to actually adapt and act.
Trump ran a large organization. Obama hung around with Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright. Which one was better prepared to be President.
I’m with you, Ralphie. I have no interest in buying this guy’s book to find out more about his fairly typical Democrat elite obliviousness. On the night before the 2016 election, I heard the brilliant (and smoking hot) Monica Crowley predict on the John Batchelor Show that Trump would carry Michigan. She pointed to his rallies, his connection with the electorate, and the yard signs. She didn’t mention Fox News as I recall.
What a steaming pile of uselessness this podcast was. Let’s take one of Mark Lilla’s analogies: I’ve needed a new muffler for 24 years. Every four years I take it to the shop that advertises I KNOW HOW TO FIX MUFFLERS BETTER THAN ANYONE, and every time I end up still needing a new muffler. One or two of the muffler shops put (or pretended to put) a bandaid on my muffler, which immediately fell off, and I still needed a new muffler. On top of that, each muffler shop charged me ten times what it would have cost me to do it myself, yet I was by law prohibited from doing it myself. And no, I’m not going to go back to the heart surgeon who has demonstrated time and again that he doesn’t know a heart from a hole in the ground.
Much better to take Richard‘s advice, and find somebody who has proven that he’s competent at one thing, or at least can identify the problem.