I was able to connect live yesterday with the writer and civil-rights lawyer
for a conversation about Senate Democrats and their increasingly miserable navigation of the government-funding standoff.He wrote an interesting piece on Tuesday arguing Democrats should make a single, potent demand in exchange for their votes to pass new appropriations. Though we agree on merits, he makes the case for a somewhat different approach than the one I’ve been pressing. We discussed points of agreement and disagreement, and then parlayed that into an examination of why Democrats in Congress keep returning inexorably to doomed kitchen-table strategies. How their risk aversion, and lack of facility with basic math, conspire to create insanity—doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.
It was a good conversation, and I hope you enjoy it.
