Digest of r/ezraklein

I wanted to provide a space for discussion about the public reception of the recent assassination of Brian Thompson. This isn't meant as a discussion of the assassination itself so much as the public response to it. I can't recall a time where a murder was so celebrated in US discourse.

to mods that might remove this post - I pose this question to this sub specifically because I think there is a cultural force behind this assassination and it's reception on both sides of the political spectrum that we do not see expressed often. I think this sub will take the question seriously and it's one of the only places on the internet that will.

What are your thoughts on the public discourse at this time? Is there a heightened appetite for class or political violence now and is it a break from the past decades?

Ezra’s podcast is amazing. I listen to it on my walks to campus and at the gym. Every conversation just hits and there isn’t that antagonization that I feel is so readily available in our media landscape. Ezra is confrontational but in a more curious way that the guest always expects and doesn’t make a big deal out of.

The few misses, I feel, rarely have to do with Ezra but the guests inability to capitalize on Ezra’s line of questioning and ideas. But even still, when the guest is a bore or not that intelligent he still makes it work which is insane.

There is also the avoidance of purity testing which I hope he can keep; I feel like, as his audience grows, the real danger will be him conforming to his audience, which will probably break the show. That he is willing to sit down with Vivek and Rahm is meaningful and substantively important; I want to know how other people (who I believe are, admittedly, evil or indifferent. Which is why I’m not running a podcast, I could never separate my emotions) think in good faith— especially when they have immense political power.

It also doesn’t hurt that he seems to ask every question I have plus some random quirky idea that I never thought of as a response. Intelligent, interesting and compelling— at least as compelling as a New York liberal could be.

I don’t know, I love Ezra. The NYT better not fuck this up.

Ezra if you read this please do more podcasts on Gen Z. Gen Z liberals exist and they can tell you a lot about why Gen Z is shifting so aggressively to populism and extremism. I feel like everyone on is too old and millennial coded and are quick to jump on a lot of the nuance that exists in how we approach politics. Or how we understand someone like Adin Ross or Joe Rogan. Theres this lens that’s been applied in all analysis that makes every Gen Z guy into some college frat bro or incel— it’s weird.

Naming the episode of the EKS with Rahm Emanuel "It's the Corruption, Stupid" and letting him portray himself as some sort of anti-corruption champion is absurd. Here are a few scandals from his mayoral tenure:

Quid pro quo — Tribune analysis found 60% of Emanuel's top 103 campaign donors received city contracts, zoning changes, business permits, pension work, board appointments, regulatory help, or some other tangible benefit.

Emanuel’s emails — The mayor’s fight to keep secret government-related emails he transmitted over his personal accounts cost taxpayers $1.18 million. The mayor eventually agreed to release city-related emails from his personal accounts as part of the settlement of a lawsuit from the Better Government Association. As a result of another lawsuit from the Tribune, Emanuel was declared in violation of the state’s open records laws. Emanuel's emails revealed many lobbying violations.

Barbara Byrd-Bennett — Byrd-Bennett, Emanuel’s second CPS CEO, pleaded guilty in October 2015 to steering more than $23 million in no-bid contracts to the SUPES Academy education consulting firm where she once worked in exchange for kickbacks, other perks and a promise of a lucrative job once her time as CEO was over. Byrd-Bennett is serving time at a federal prison camp.

Forrest Claypool — Claypool, Emanuel’s third CPS CEO, resigned in December 2017 after the district’s inspector general accused him of orchestrating “a full-blown cover-up” during an internal ethics probe involving the top CPS attorney. The mayor defended him, but Claypool resigned after it was clear he had lost the school board’s support.

Amer Ahmad — Ahmad, Emanuel’s first city comptroller, is serving a 15-year federal prison sentence for crimes he committed in his previous job as Ohio’s deputy state treasurer. Ahmad fled the country after pleading guilty to bribery and conspiracy charges in December 2013. He was arrested in Pakistan in April 2014 after being caught with a forged Mexican passport and a falsified birth certificate.

Laquan McDonald — In November 2015, a Cook County judge ordered the mayor to release the graphic video footage that showed then-Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times in the middle of a Southwest Side street as the black teen walked away holding a small folding knife. On the same day Emanuel made the video public, then-State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez charged Van Dyke with murder, and in the days that followed it was revealed that several officers’ accounts of the shooting in police reports varied dramatically from the video.

Those reports and the delay in the murder charge combined with the fact that Emanuel’s administration and aldermen agreed to pay a $5 million settlement to the McDonald family before a lawsuit was even filed led to accusations of a City Hall cover-up, calls for Emanuel’s resignation and weeks of street protests. Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder and is serving a nearly seven-year sentence.

Edit: added Laquan McDonald and quid pro quo

Hi all - I have no idea how this post will land in this subreddit, but my question is in good faith.

I’m fairly new to Ezra Klein. He’s been on my radar for maybe 8 years, but until recently my impression of him was that he was just another journalist who uncritically adopted/promoted the dominant narratives of the Left. I was never impressed by Vox during his tenure there.

But I’ve enjoyed his recent podcasts and writings, and I’m wondering if my impression of him had been mistaken or whether he has pivoted in his views - or at least his punditry.

Back in the summer he was early (for a leftist journalist) to question Joe Biden’s fitness for the Democratic nomination. And now he appears to believe the Democrats have become an insular party of activists/intellectuals who lost touch with the electorate (a diagnosis with which I agree).

But it still feels pretty recent when he was promoting the kind of ideas that he now seems to recognize have been detrimental to the Democratic Party (e.g., participating in the excesses in racialist reporting after George Floyd, boosting Ibram Kendi, spending a considerable amount of time criticizing Sam Harris for interviewing Charles Murray).

So my question is: has Ezra Klein changed? Or has my impression of him always been incomplete (or wrong)? If the former, has he ever publicly reckoned with the ways he contributed to that insular and intellectually restrictive climate on the Left that he now appears to reject?

I appreciate any perspectives from those of you who have followed his writings and career more closely than I have.

Apologies for the somewhat off topic post but the most recent episode of Know Your Enemy, I felt, added a new and much-needed perspective to the post election coverage and discussion regarding Democrat missteps and strategy going forward (despite the fact that the hosts explicitly say at the start of the episode that they don't want it to be a discussion on Dem strategy). In it, the hosts interview Luke Mayville of Reclaim Idaho. His group was largely responsible for championing the expansion of Medicaid via ballot referendum in Idaho in 2018 and worked this cycle on a ballot initiative to implement ranked-choice voting which, unfortunately, failed. Here is the link to the episode.

As someone who grew up and still lives in rural Idaho, I found Mayville's points incredibly refreshing. Especially after being subsumed with takes from traditional media outlets that seem to have no grasp on what rural, working-class voters actually believe. I felt like this was one of the best discussions I've heard recently that actually tries to grapple with the disconnect between the popularity of progressive policy and the lack of popularity of Democrats.

I am about to go on winter break and plan on catching up on some reading. Despite being a long-time listener, I haven't read his book, so I plan to start by reading Why We're Polarized. Where should I go from there?

The Nicholas Bagley episode ("How Liberals---Yes, Liberals---Are Hobbling Government") is one of my favorites. Here, Bagley provides his analysis of why DOGE is pointed at the wrong target, why recent Supreme Court cases are unlikely to help DOGE, and what radical reform is needed.

My primary basis here is that the word YIMBYism is linguistically inadequate to describe the whole of the ideological shift that we are seeing. Though more expanded definitions of YIMBYism may cover this, the word is fundamentally tied to housing and urbanism. It could also be that the (linguistically) informal nature of YIMBYism limits its potential.

The greater meaning, or what I feel is the greater meaning, encompasses some familiar points:

1. A results-based focus in policy/leadership, particularly in regards infrastructure development, and low-carbon/carbon neutral/negative infrastructure.

2. An ethical but ruthlessly goal-oriented approach to overhaul, deregulation, and procedural simplification across government.

3. An over-arching and somewhat ideologically neutral goal of benefiting the many over the few, and an M.O. of devaluing elite preferences and interests in favor of greater societal needs.

4. Stretching the definition some, but an interest in helping those in need more through the lens of fairness and rewarding hard/miserable/thankless work. (Or something to a similar effect)

I'm not a Latin/Koine Greek dictionary, but translations for "Fast", "Efficient", or "Effective" come to mind.

Edit: Supply Side Progressivism, perhaps synonymous with abundance progressivism, seems to fit the bill

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply-side_progressivism#:~:text=In%20United%20States%20public%20policy,them%20more%20abundant%20and%20affordable.

description: “Matthew Yglesias, a very influential journalist and proprietor of the Slow Boring substack, has emerged as a divisive figure within the Democratic party. To admirers, he’s a compelling advocate of popularism, the view the Democratic party needing to moderate its message to win over undecided voters. To critics, he’s a glib attention seeker who has achieved prominence by coming up with clever ways to justify the status quo.  For this episode of the podcast, I talked to David Klion, frequent guest of the show and Nation contributor, about Yglesias, the centrist view of the 2024 election, the role of progressives and leftists in the Democratic party coalition, and the class formation of technocratic pundits, among other connected matters.”

I thought I’d share a bit of a different view on Yglesias and the aftermath of the election. Even if you don’t agree with everything said on it, Jeet and his show from the nation are fantastic. It’s meaningfully further left than the EK show though, so be forewarned. But it’s not without nuance.

I’m interested to know folk’s thoughts on how change is brought about in society. Is substantial political change and reform done through an incrementalist approach or through radical means, often violence? When I take a cursory look at American history, it seems to me that so much of the reform that benefits more Americans has happened because of extraordinary violence and radical action.

The U.S. was founded on Revolution. Enslaved people found freedom through violence. Most of the labor rights we have are the result of incredible violence in the late 19th and early 20th century. The fight to end Jim Crow took decades and featured many acts of violence. To me it seems that when there is a desire to change people’s material conditions, that mostly happens when there is a build up of anger and violence.

I’ve heard some discussion regarding the United Health CEO’s murder that violence won’t solve the systemic problems we have in healthcare, or violence is never the answer. But violent means, to me at least, are present through our history as a means to change people’s lives. Not to mention governments use violence all the time, but that’s another topic and it’s considered sanctioned violence.

Is violence a tool to affect change? And consider that violence has frequently been used throughout American history with some major successes (founding of nation, ending slavery and Jim Crow, labor movement). When someone says it doesn’t work, I mean clearly it has worked at times, right? And, of course, you could apply this view to places around the world, not just in the U.S.

(Note to mods, this isn’t related directly to Ezra Klein but I think the discussion is adjacent considering so much of his show centers on how to achieve policy aims)

I've always thought he would make a great guest on the show. His filmmaking has to me, always tried to explain the times we find ourselves in with an effort that parallels Ezra's- the times being life under this current iteration of capitalism (which is more directly broached by Adam Curtis' work than Ezra's but is still true for both imo). Can't Get You Out of My Head and Traumazone are my favourite of his films. Music, text and footage- all used together to collapse the historical distance between now and the past. I wonder what Ezra thinks of his work. I think they have a similar approach to discussing the now, and have the same urge to reframe the conversation about power and history.

Related to Ezra's recent discussions on administrative state reform, especially with Jennifer Pahlka:

https://www.maximumnewyork.com/p/street-cleaning-george-waring

NYC has had repeated successful administrative reforms throughout its history. This is how the city fixed its trash problem (the first time).

In reference to today’s episode “What’s wrong with Donald Trump” where he mentioned he has held back on doing a drum and bass episode.

Stop this foolishness. Listen to the voices inside. We demand the set now.

I think the world of Ezra, and I think his take on Trump this week is perhaps the most interesting I’ve yet heard. Trump being “disinhibited” as the defining truth both of him as a person and of his political appeal makes profound sense, and like many of Ezra’s takes I would think it stands a good chance of being adopted as an understood truth.

Ezra says that “until now” we really haven’t had “good language” to describe Trump, and suggests therefore that perhaps this “disinhibited” frame can be that language. Regrettably though, Ezra skates over the real question, which is: what this disinhibition reveals about Trump.

If we take Ezra at face value, does he think (now that we have the language) that we should see NYT headlines proclaiming “Trump’s Inhibition Grows While Campaigning in Pennsylvania?” Who cares? Inhibition is not a national issue so far as I can tell.

The important issue with Trump has nothing to do with inhibition. As is made more clear every day, most recently by John Kelly, Trump is a wannabe autocrat. NYT’s sane-washing of Trump while pillorying Biden’s age is not a function of the absence of language. It’s an absence of courage and the victory of economic incentive.  And Ezra, a keen media observer, has to know it.

Trump’s lack of inhibition which causes him to daily shout his autocratic inclinations actually makes the failure of the paper more pronounced than it’s ever been. We HAVE and have had the language to describe Trump, but both NYT and Ezra himself refuse to use it.

I thought Ezra's podcast "What's wrong with Donald Trump" is one of the best things he has ever written. He does such a good job at making the case for the uniqueness of Donald Trump and then ends with a brilliant analysis of why a second Trump term would be so dangerous.

But I think he finally answered (for me) a question I have been thinking about and talking to friends and family about for a long time. That question is:

Is Donald Trump uniquely bad and irreplaceable?

I have settled on the answer to my question, and it is "YES". And I feel even more assured of that question after listening to Ezra's podcast. I'm more convinced than ever that when Trump is TRULY gone and out of the picture and out of the news, whether that's because he is dead or in jail, that all of us will be much better off.

There are some other interesting questions to think about once he is gone.

• Is there a smarter more capable version of Trump waiting in the wings? I think "NO".
• Will the MAGA movement die completely? I think "probably not". I'm not sure, but I do think it will shrink and fade away into irrelevance over the years.
• Will the Republican party return to it's role as a traditional "conservative" party of Reagan? I doubt it. I think that there are some things that have changed that can never be undone. For example, their relationship with "truth, facts and science." Even when Trump is gone I think the Truth horse is forever out of the Facts and Science barn. Trump taught them that they can utter complete and total fabrications with complete and utter impunity and receive political benefit from doing so, and I don;t think they will ever go back to being even fact-adjacent.

But I do think things will be so much better for the country and the world when Trump is out of the picture. So what do y'all think?

Is Donald Trump uniquely bad and irreplaceable?

So after Klein’s recent Trump piece, a lot of resistance Twitter ppl got mad at Ezra for whitewashing/“sanewashing” Trump (that’s not what the piece did, but alas). Now they’re saying he’s MAGA and dumb and anti-woman and a bunch of other terrible things. Melissa Murray said it was MAGA fluff piece, as did like Charlotte Clymer and others.

Why do these ppl have such poor reading comprehension skills? Isn’t Murray a law professor? Jfc…

There's been a lot of talk about how young men are moving right, and while I feel that this is a little overblown, this does pass the vibes test. I do agree that a lot of apolitical young men have moved into the Republican party.

He made an offhand comment about how the left should not ignore unfairness that people feel as a political force, in his podcast with Emily Jashinsky but I think that this gets to the core of why many young men are moving right. They feel that the left does not respect them and treats them unfairly in favour of women. Would really love to see an Ezra podcast on this.

What is the consensus in here on how this is going to go down? Seems like quiet resignation to a second Trump term has been spreading in many liberal circles the past week or so. To what extent is this just doomerism remains to be seen, but there appears to be really strong GOP turnout in key battleground states. Thoughts?

I’ve been seeing the left use the term “sanewashing” more and more to describe the sin of normalizing Trump. I noticed it a lot in response to Ezra’s “What’s Wrong With Trump” podcast episode. The fear being that Ezra’s sophisticated explanation of Trump’s core flaw being ‘disinhibition’ is giving reasonable and sane cover for Trump's behavior and for those who would vote for it.

Firstly, I'm convinced the criticism from the left of Ezra is coming from people who didn't actually listen to the episode. You don't come out of that podcast feeling good about voting for Trump. I don't think Ezra sanewashed Trump with the disinhibited insight, but I think he did intentionally sanewash Trump voters. And I would argue that's a good thing, at least in the short term. It’s worth having a theory of mind for Trump voters that doesn’t see them as evil or stupid or insane. These are our neighbors, and in my case, my family. And I don’t get anywhere with them by starting with, “You’re crazy.”

This is why I’m nostalgic for 12 weeks ago when it felt like we were getting somewhere with the “Weird” rhetoric. Walz was very careful to only use ‘weird’ to describe Trump and certain MAGA Republicans as opposed to all Trump voters. It created a less defensive space for people to step back and see things a little differently. To break people out of a cult you need to build trust and maintain their connection to reality. It’s delicate business to do this without being patronizing. I give Ezra real credit for trying.

I know that Ezra has done a lot of writing and podcasting about the ways in which we receive information, particularly political news and opinions. And how information environments on social media can be biased toward extremism and silo-ing due to the algorithms that run these platforms.

But I don’t think that quite explains the sheer level of anxiety and neuroticism that so many liberals/Democrats are feeling right about now. Myself included! Is it simply because Hillary and Biden went into their respective elections with healthy polling leads whereas this one is (at least on paper) a dead heat? Is it an expression of exasperation that despite his tumultuous first term, Covid, J6, the numerous indictments, convictions, and civil judgments, the naked corruption, and the clear mental decline, Trump is STILL around? Or is it something else?

Up until the last week, I felt a lot more anxious about the 2020 election. The state of the world with Covid seemed so dire and the Trump admin’s mismanagement was so evident. Democrats were relying very heavily on mail ballots, and Biden was not running a traditional in-person campaign. And how could we rely on polling in that environment? The uncertainty seemed so much more tangible.

But in the last week - my personal feelings about the election literally swing upwards and downwards by the day. A Dem canvasser’s post about seeing more Harris/Walz signs in PA than ever? > We’ve got this! A tweet from John Ralston about Republican early voters in NV? > The country is lost. Does anyone else feel even more neurotic and unable to modulate their own thoughts about this election more than usual? What’s the cause?

Considering how lazer focused the Trump campaign is on anti-Trans talking points and that bizarre speech by Tucker Carlson about spanking, I think having another look at those issues would be good as they both show the ideological dynamics of Trump and the race is close.

Edit: I think Moria Donegan, has put it better than I have in this tweet, which is there is a link between anti-feminist attitudes and authoritarianism https://x.com/MoiraDonegan/status/1849460285276627075

Back in January Ezra said he's hanging out with gym bros and getting swoll. I need more talk about 1RM, less talk about the election.

I’d like to share the latest episode on what’s wrong with Trump all over my social media… but it doesn’t do much good if it’s paywalled.

How does this work? Are there exceptions?

As a long time listener to the podcast, I'm glad that in the past, I'd say, 3-4 months Ezra as kinda "woken up" to the "oh shit" moment we are in and genuinely seem paniced about the election. I have been paniced for damn near 4 years now and it seems it has taken a long time and Ezra has finally caught up to reality.

And he has been doing TONS of podcast about Democrats, which I am grateful for, but the content has been very sparse about Republicans. There has been a lot happening with Trump and the campaign trail that is extremely concerning with what ~50% of this country is about the vote for. There are obvious things like a federal abortion ban, a 50-60 year hard right conservative supreme court that will come from Trump winning in 3 weeks. However Trump is just out there saying things like he will deport 20 million immigrants, encact 500% tarrifs, use the military on his political adversaries, has obvious dimentia, and Vance saying he will not certifiy basically any democrat winning an element. I mean this is the big one. Trump/Vance are just saying it, unambigiously, they will end democracy if they are elected. A lot of elected republicans support ending democracy. They are saying it live in 4k what they are going to do. It's not hidden or a secret. They have written it down in P2025. Where is Ezra asking the fundamental question on why/how we got ino a state where ~50% of america is saying "yes" to this.

There is a much deeper sickness in this country that is really not being explored. Was hoping Ezra would be the one to do this.

Just curious. He recently shared a podcast featuring Robert Caro talking about the book. I haven't seen any discussion of it on here. I quite like the book and Caro's style.

I'm curious what your opinions are. Of the book. Of Robert Moses. Of his influence over NY in the 20th century. Of the acquisition and manipulation of power in America.

(For my part, Moses' character and vision do not impress me and I'm disturbed by how much power he managed to gain.)

https://youtu.be/XG3x7GhKp98?si=f3bpKEkajr003WEI

Ezra joined some of my other favorite news podcasters for an interesting discussion about the media, the right, cancel culture, and the whole Biden situation.

I think he'd have an interesting take on what's going on with Polymarket, etc. right now.

Are there any pieces you have read that left an impression on you that you want others read? Something that changed your view or informed your thinking or something you keep coming back to?

I’ve got free time at work so I’m looking for interesting articles to read. Doesn’t have to be politics related!

Anybody else get the sense that Klein and Buttigeig have a stronger relationship that they imply in their interviews? I wonder if Buttigieg was an inside source for Klein early on getting Biden out and encouraging a primary process. Curious if there is any evidence validating or disproving my theory… thanks!

I’m wondering if he has analyzed the conversation. I found the episode difficult and refreshing - two people intellectually engaging, at points closing gaps and at other points facing gaps that didn’t seem to be closable. It felt like an accurate reflection of reality.

Ok, this is going to make me sound a little nutty, but follow me. In the most recent episode with Ta-Nehisi Coates Ezra talks about how he is frustrated with liberal Americans and American foreign policy and how it doesn’t actually grapple with the current issues in the West Bank, Gaza, etc. We (Americans and current leadership) have these grand dreams of a two state solution and then want to work backwards, instead of actually understanding the current situation.

As I listened, it made me think of the 17th episode of season 2 of South Park “Gnomes” (yes, I’m old - it came out in 1998). You can Google and the clip I’m about to talk about comes up right away. In the episode, gnomes are stealing underwear from the residents of South Park and plan to make a profit. The boys visit their cave and the ask the gnomes how they plan to make a profit with the underwear. The gnomes show them a chalk board with three phases: 1. Steal underwear. 2. ? 3. Make a profit. No matter how many times the boys tried to nail down phase 2, the gnomes could not explain how to get from phase 1 to phase 3. My brain connected this to what Ezra was saying. We, in the west, can’t seem to articulate phase 2 for a two state solution.

Thoughts? I’m new to this sub, so sorry if this is too ridiculous. I just can’t get it out of my head.

First, I ask this question as a lifelong progressive and Democratic voter, and as someone who was ecstatic when Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee. I think her campaign thus far has been generally well-executed. She’s a good candidate, if also flawed. I do think that her campaign feels as if it has stalled and is struggling to secure victory. I’m just curious on all of your perspectives on how she could win in November. How would you all advise her to close the deal?

Pundits and pollsters have talked a lot about the "shy" Trump voter -- people who may ID as Dem or independent when asked by friends or pollsters, but who quietly voted for Trump when they entered the ballot box -- in 2016, especially. The idea isn't new at all. It began as the "shy" Tory voter -- people who said they supported the Labor Party in the UK but actually voted conservative. It was one way to explain why the pre-election polls weren't so predictive. (The idea has deep roots in polling generally, the concept is known as "social desirability bias," a topic for another time). So the question here is: Could there be a cache of "shy" Harris voters in November that aren't showing up in the polls? Maybe GOP women in Red states who say to friends and family they still support Trump but who might secretly vote for Harris, in fact? And related, if so, should Harris in the final week of the campaign directly appeal to these prospective voters -- not by trotting around Liz Cheney but by calling them out in public appearances and telling them they will have a place and a say in her administration? What about revisiting the issue of school choice -- very popular across the board but identified with conservatives, especially Moms? Harris really needs to step up and message in a new way -- claim her own distinctive identity -- if she expects to win at this point. This may be one way. Liberal women -- and the teachers' unions -- may not like it -- but really they're already in her camp anyway.

So not directly Ezra related but the NYT Interview recently did an in depth interview with Vance

I feel like Ezra (and resultantly this sub) talk a lot more about Vance than most, so I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on the interview generally but also anything that might have been said specifically

Kinda a meta thing and don't mean to insult whoever he hired but frankly they're doing a terrible job. All kinds of weird cuts all over this Coates interview and it's not the only one. Does anybody else notice this? Half finished thoughts/sentences?

Does anyone know what interviewee Klein was referring to with this comment? I would like to listen to it.

I’m not a regular listener to the show but this interview with Coates was quite good - they definitely went deep into real topics.

Thanks in advance!