Maybe I should just change the name of this blog to “Harvard Sucks”. After spending 9,000+ words last week whaling away, largely on Harvard Law Professor David Kennedy but also on Harvard Law Professor Samuel Moyn, I’m back on the attack, this time beating up on former Harvard President Larry Summers, now “only” Charles W….
Search Results for: Liberalism
A World of Struggle at Harvard Law
(Author’s Note: The following is a sprawling takedown of David Kennedy’s A World of Struggle, a book that clearly got my goat.) Pankaj Mishra is the author of several fascinating books, including From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia and his new one Age of Anger, which I am struggling to get…
Ross Douthat, Lee Drutman, and Karen Handel explain it all for you
Scatter much? The Democrats sure don’t, if you can read the fine print of this graph, appearing in a report, Political Divisions in 2016 and Beyond, prepared by the folks at “Voterstudygroup” and written by Lee Drutman, linked to by the not always to be ridiculed and scorned by me Ross Douthat. As Ross points…
Yo, Paleoliberals! You can’t go home again! (not really)
David Ignatius reports that Charles Peters, long-time editor of the Washington Monthly and, not incidentally, one-time mentor/editor to David, has the solution to the Democrats’ electoral woes, presented in his new book We Do Our Part. In writing the book, Charlie gets in line behind paleolibs Thomas “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” Frank and Michael…
Why Did Hillary “Lose”?
The most important, and the ugliest, thing to happen in 2016 was the decision of 46 percent of the American electorate to vote for the worst major party presidential candidate in American history. The second most important was the decision of 48 percent to vote for Hillary Clinton. So why did Hillary “lose”? It is…
Rich Bitch Betsy DeVos just can’t stop stepping on her own vagina
Hey, Literature R Us is nothing if not gender appropriate. In case you hadn’t heard, new Sec of Ed Betsy DeVos just couldn’t help making a White House meeting with the presidents of HistorIcally Black Colleges and Universities all about her by “explaining” that these institutions, created in response to southern racism, were all about…
Bernie Sanders, the White Folks’ Candidate
Issac Bailey has a more than terrific post up at Politico, pointing out what I (very briefly) noted, that the whiter the state, the better Bernie Sanders did. Actually, Bernie did a terrific job uniting both white working-class voters, by promising to basically end imports, as well as white college kids, by promising to cancel…
Yay, Hillary! (I’ll explain)
Yay, Hillary! Okay, that is not something I say easily or often, but our gal’s five to zero sweep of the March 15 primaries over not so smokin’ Bernie Sanders, including a 2 to 1 beatdown in Florida, was welcome news indeed. Bernie’s big mouth had infused enough new blood in the beast known as…
Hillary Clinton, campaigning like its 1984
Sorry if I scared you, kids, but I’m talking Walter Mondale here, not George Orwell. It’s a sad commentary on contemporary liberalism that going “left” in 2015 consists of embracing the Democratic platform of 1984, the year in which the Democratic presidential ticket won precisely one state, the worst drubbing in Democratic history. Hillary’s domestic…
Reply to Rauch, Part III
I seem to be making a (small) cottage industry replying here and here to Jonathan Rauch’s arguments in his freebie book Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy, which casts a longing backwards look at the good old days on Capitol Hill, when House Speaker Sam Rayburn’s words…