Navigating Political Identity and Polarization

On the eve of Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic sit down to discuss the state of the Right and the Left in American politics. The conversation picks up where the last podcast episode left off, in a discussion about Damir’s apparent rejuvenation in the wake of Trump’s victory. Given that he didn’t vote for Trump — in fact, he didn’t vote for anybody — why is Damir smiling?

Shadi suggests that “Democrats needed this defeat to learn important lessons.” Damir is not so sure that they will learn them. But one of the reasons he is giddy is that they will get their comeuppance for the political “villainy” of Russiagate, the Biden health coverup and other misguided Democratic gambits. Shadi, in turn, notes that many of his center-left acquaintances seem surprisingly at peace with the new government, and ready to entertain new ideas. “Very rarely did I hear despair,” he reports.

Both Shadi and Damir go deeper by asking about the status quo of the Left and the Right. Damir thinks that Trump has “cleared the field” of the conservative movement’s Reaganite past, and that the Right is now ready to debate issues in a more realistic way. Shadi laments that the Left has become boring by being too certain that they are correct about everything: they are the party of “facts, data and progress,” and think that they have “resolved all the big ideological debates.”

In our bonus content for paid subscribers, Damir discusses what he means by “tragic liberalism,” Shadi explains why he thinks atheism is over, and our hosts discuss the best and worst things that could happen during the second Trump presidency.

Required Reading and Listening:

* Damir, “We’ll Have to Rethink Everything” (WoC).

* Shadi, “Trump’s ‘madman theory’ worked in Gaza when all else failed” (Washington Post).

* Christine, “Zuck is the Zeitgeist” (WoC).

* Santiago questions Damir about his newfound conservatism (WoC).

* Tara Isabella Burton, “Believe for Your Own Sake, Not for ‘the West’” (WoC).

* Ezra Klein and Nate Silver on “peak Trump” (X).

* Elon Musk is an ‘Evil Person,’ Steve Bannon Says” (New York Times).

* “Corporate America embraces a new era of conservatism under Donald Trump” (Financial Times).

* “How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge” (Wall Street Journal).

* David Brooks, “Why People Are Fleeing Blue Cities for Red States” (New York Times).

* Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream (Amazon).

This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.

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