I was listening to the Slate podcast "I Have to Ask" hosted by Isaac Chotiner. His guest was Mark Lilla and the discussion was centered on Lilla's argument that the Democratic Party's reliance on identity politics was not helping the Party as much as retarding its growth and ideological vigor. I think that Lilla's point is one that should be taken seriously by the Party. It is an argument that seems to me to go a couple of layers deeper. Unfortunately, Chotiner has strong views on the subject. Below is my letter to Chotiner outlining my grievances concerning the way he hosted the interview. It gets the point across as to why I was disappointed in Isaac's performance.
Dear Isaac,
I listen to I Have to Ask (IHA) regularly. I was really disappointed with your interview of Mark Lilla though. As a long time listener and someone invested in the show and your work, I have to ask for some explanation. I can't think of a previous example where you brought so much of your personal ideological dogma to an interview. Your combative and argumentative approach towards this guest made it difficult to get a complete sense of what Professor Lilla's position was with regards to the role of identity politics in the Democratic party. Given the precarious situation and internal debate we Democrats are having, you performed a disservice in this instance.
By way of example, your myopic focus on the race question and your using it as a foil to express your disbelief that Professor Lilla would not accept your premise that race was the fundamental issue reflected more on your limited capacity to listen and hear an argument out. As a result, you undermined the importance of Professor Lilla's argument, which went a couple layers deeper into the onion.
I do not think this is a matter of opinion either. I'll admit to relying on anecdotal evidence here, but to me it is at a minimum compelling anecdotal evidence: I do not know a single Trump supporter (and I battle a lot of them on a regular basis on the battlefield of Facebook) that went for Trump because of his racist inclinations. People that I have known for years, who have never expressed a racist sentiment, went for this clown and knowingly chose to ignore or rationalize that part of Trump's message in favor of the economic populist message; which trumped every other issue under consideration, even whether he was fit to be president. Remember that a significant number of those that voted for him admitted that was unqualified, but his economic message was that important.
To be sure, a large portion of that electorate also honed in on the racism and scapegoating, and some of my friends have become unnervingly accommodating of the racist elements of Trump's messaging. I attribute this to their having adopted a siege mentality. As that racist bigoted message has become more central, however, even those people deserve to be painted with the same racist brush because continued support for Trump at this point is an endorsement of his racist rhetoric, race baiting, and marginalizing minority communities. But the only reason Trump got a toe in the door was because of the economic populist message. Bernie Sanders' success supports this observation.
I believe that your focus on race is justified to a certain extent and that there are racial problems. I do not agree that those racial problems, however, had much to do Trump winning Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, which in the previous two elections went for Barack Obama (may the lord one day bless us our descendants with his reincarnated soul to once again lead this country toward its highest minded hopes and aspirations, AMEN). When >90% of all economic growth in the past 20-30 years goes to the top 1-5% you get the economic anxiety that makes reasonable people susceptible to scapegoating and demagoguery. Your combativeness obscured that point, which I agree with Professor Lilla is the most important point. It is a deeper layer of the onion.
Racism is an issue no-doubt. Maybe racism as a national issue is on par with the economic genocide being meted out on 95-99% of the population. The war against American, however, does not discriminate. Racism, no doubt, also is an important element as to the economic message, but as Democrats learned in the '92 election: it's the economy stupid. We Democrats, however, failed to keep that at the forefront of our minds. Specifically, how the fruits of our economy are shared among all sectors of the population. Instead we Democrats adopted the short hand measures of macro economic indicators as the benchmarks of our success on managing the economy. In an ironic twist, we ignored the necessary follow through of that message and in a sort of group oversight left the question of how those stellar economic gains were distributed to "trickle down economics." If anything, we at least have highlighted that there isn't much trickle in trickled down.
Regardless, you did a disservice to your audience here. What were you thinking going into that interview? Have you considered that your approach was counter productive? I will continue to listen to IHA and don't judge your body of work solely on my disappointment here. But if the personal biases you put on display in this episode become the norm, this guy is out of here.
All the best,
Matt A.