It shouldn't be that hard to, like, develop a political program and an image that would actually be attractive to, like, 54% of the American voters.

I mean, it's just, it's like political malpractice that they won't do it.

And now the good fight with Yasha Monk.

A few days ago, I opened my email and got a sad piece of news,

which is that one of my favorite publications, The Liberal Patriot, is closing down.

The Liberal Patriot is in key ways different from Persuasion. At Persuasion, we think of ourselves as philosophically liberal standing up for values

like free speech, irrespective of a partisan valence, and we have a lot of essays about philosophy

and other kinds of issues.

The liberal patriot, in a way, was the loyal opposition within the Democratic Party.

It sought its missions explicitly as getting the Democratic Party to reform itself,

to appeal to a broader section of the electorate,

and it tended to focus on questions of public policy a little bit more narrowly.

But we are absolutely kindred publications trying to defend democratic values

and recognizing a lot of establishment institutions need to reform themselves in order to do that.

So I was very saddened to read that the liberal patriot got strong pressure from its donor

to stay within an ideological orthodoxy.

And despite being a small organization, struggled to expand its funding.

Well, to talk about what the Liberal Patriot accomplished and why it had to close down,

and more importantly, to talk about the state of the Democratic Party and why it is great danger to the party to think that it can simply

write the coattails of Donald Trump's unpopularity to actually recapture power and rid America

of the threat posed by populism.

I invited on Rui Dexera.

...