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You might have thought that, faced with a novel anti-political picture of the nation, liberals would have countered with an imaginative, hopeful vision of what we share as Americans and what we might accomplish together. Instead, they lost themselves in the thickets of identity politics and developed a resentful, disuniting rhetoric of difference to match it. You might have thought that, faced with Republican's steady acquisition of institutional power, they would have poured their energies into helping the Democratic Party win elections at every level of government and in every region of the country, reaching out especially to working-class Americans who used to vote for it. Instead, they became enthralled with social movements operating outside those institutions and developed disdain for the demos living between the coasts. You might have thought that, faced with the dogma of radical economic individualism that Reaganism normalized, liberals would have used their positions in our educational institutions to teach young people that they share a destiny with all their fellow citizens and have duties toward them. Instead, they trained students to be spelunkers of their personal identities and left them incurious about the world outside of their heads. You might have thought a lot of reasonable things. And you would have been wrong.
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