Tim Shenk
@Tim_Shenk
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Dissent co-editor, historian at GW, writer of this:
Joined July 2011
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The left is struggling, rightwing populists are on the march, and democracy is under threat. This is a story about a global political revolution that I don't think either the left or right has truly reckoned with. And it’s the story you can read here.
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In 1991, Barack Obama and his closest friend at Harvard wrote a 250-page playbook for transforming American politics. By my count, five people have read the whole thing—including me. Here’s what I found.
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Histories centered on the rise of neoliberalism explain a lot. I wrote about some of the stuff they leave out, and what that means for how we think about modern history as a whole.
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I poured everything I have into this book. It’s a biography of American democracy told through the country’s dominant electoral coalitions and the people who made them. I'll have more to say closer to pub day. For now, you can check it out here.
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I wrote about Obama’s new memoir. It turns out he’s not a very reliable narrator. But looking at where he plays fast and loose with the truth reveals more about him than anything else in the book.
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I want to thank Dave Garrow—the guy who actually found this thing—for being the best colleague you could imagine. Helpful, generous, and a model I'll be emulating for the rest of my career.
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It's true! I'm becoming co-editor of
@DissentMag
. I look forward to a long tenure publishing outstanding leftwing criticism while my upper body floats in front of stylish logos.
We are thrilled to announce that
@Tim_Shenk
is joining
@mkazin
as co-editor of Dissent. Please join us in welcoming him! 🎉🎉🎉
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Kamala Harris has a chance to crush Trumpism and build a new progressive majority—if Democrats fix their relationship with the working class. This starts with taking another look at Bill Clinton, a neoliberal president who knew how to win blue-collar votes
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I wrote about what went wrong for Warren
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And 🙏🙏🙏 to the great
@laurareston
. This piece went through many, many drafts—but she knew what it should be from the start, and waited patiently for me to catch up. She's extraordinary
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Democrats in 2004: Let's play it safe and nominate Kerry.
Democrats in 2008: Fuck it, I want Obama.
Republicans in 2012: Let's play it safe and nominate Romney.
Republican in 2016: Fuck it, I want Trump.
Democrats in 2020: Let's play it safe and nominate...
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I wrote a history of Trumpism for the Guardian. It's a lot stranger than you think
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Tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of the debut of Parks and Rec. I wrote about how a show that started as a funny look at small town government became the Obama era's version of the West Wing, and what that says about American liberalism.
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I reviewed Jonathan Chait's new book about Obama. Like contemporary liberalism, it has some problems.
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I spoke with Fred Block, one of our great sociologists, about his new book making the case against "capitalism."
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I wrote about how a Bernie bro ahead of his time became one of establishment liberalism’s most unyielding defenders
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I wrote for
@newrepublic
about why the democratic crisis is also an extraordinary political opportunity
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The Democratic establishment broke their party. I think the left can fix it—and take it over.
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And if you want more on Obama, democracy, and where we go from here, check out:
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Did we need more proof that meritocracy is a money-laundering scheme for plutocracy?
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On the fall of Steve Bannon, the retreat of Trumpist intellectuals, and the future of socialism.
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I wrote about how conservatism is changing under Trump. It's even worse than you think
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I wrote about Mayor Pete, democratic socialism, and where millennial politics goes next.
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If only there was some clue about why the kids these days don't want to call themselves liberal.
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Which is the tragedy of Obama—not that he was always an establishment cipher, but that he really wanted to change politics, then failed (for a lot of complicated reasons), and now pretends that he never even tried.
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I wrote about how the financial crisis of 2008 became the political crisis of right now for
@NYMag
:
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Thanks so much to
@MatthewSitman
and
@SamAdlerBell
for this fantastic conversation, and for getting me to say in public "Barack Obama is the Anakin Skywalker of the American Left."
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Happy tenth birthday, Parks and Rec. You were a good show until you became a really bad one.
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2003: Failure of the foreign policy elite
2008: Failure of the economic elite
2016: Failure of the political elite
Here we come, 2017!
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Now broken free of its paywall, a conversation with the
@KnowYrEnemyPod
boys that’s one of the *best* few hours I’ve spent in ages
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Thanks to
@LRB
for letting me review Gareth Stedman Jone's excellent, idiosyncratic biography of Marx
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The Resistance Super Team
President: Oprah
VP: James Comey
Attorney General: Leslie Knope
State: That Game Theory Twitter Guy
Treasury: Jed Bartlet
Defense: David Frum
Education: Dumbledore
CIA Director: Louise Mensch
Chief of Staff: Jeb!
Head Strategist: Norms
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There's nobody in public life today that I admire more than Ady Barkan. His latest beautiful, hopeful, heartbreaking essay shows why.
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It’s now clear that all of American history has been building to the Taylor Swift vs. Kanye West presidential election of 2024. Should be a great series finale.
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What would he want to hide, you ask? To start with, the role his administration played in making Trump a spokesman for the GOP, as explained by David Plouffe here
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You won't find a better—as in more careful, sympathetic, and ultimately devastating—take on Ezra Klein than this, from
@daschloz
in
@DissentMag
.
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I'd add that if your intellectual history draws a straight line from Eduard Bernstein to Joe Biden, it's time to take another look at the sources.
I really enjoyed "The Primacy of Politics" and learned a lot from reading it, but it is not the book/thesis I'd turn to for understanding the Democratic Party and the Left today. (1/)
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@dbessner
An old professor liked to say that instead of writing so many long, boring books historians should try to write more short, interesting ones. That seems right to me.
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@_TimBarker
@rortybomb
My favorite anecdote so far: Walter Lippmann only discovered that his private dining club was segregated when he invited Du Bois to lunch, and they refused to let him in the building. Their name? “The Liberal Club.”
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The US is randomly dropping bombs on the Middle East and history is the
#1
major at Yale again? The 90s really are back.
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I wrote about a new history of American conservatism from Matt Continetti. Here’s the piece, with the tl;dr version below.
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Very cool to make an appearance in George Packer's latest for the Atlantic on how to balance the horror and hope in American history.
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Pierre Rosanvallon (Harvard University Press, 2018) vs. Wikipedia.
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But the most striking—the saddest and most infuriating—part is a change in the way he writes about the first Black mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington. There's too much context to explain here, but for a flavor this is what he wrote in Dreams.
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Such an honor (and kind of a surreal experience) to be put under the microscope by the great Kim Phillips-Fein
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Re-upping this piece from last year. Buttigieg has tacked back to the center since I wrote it, and his weaknesses—an overwhelmingly white base, blech with young voters—are more obvious. But I still think it gets at why his kind of politics is a threat :
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The Clintons don’t get enough credit for their pioneering work in whataboutism. It’s been their signature move right from the start.
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The question for the left today is how we deal not just with an explicitly authoritarian GOP but also with a conservative movement that could prove capable of winning a national majority fair and square.
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"So much more" in this case included
@davidsess
's brilliant guide to Nicos Poulantzas, the philosopher of democratic socialism.
Can’t overstate how excited I am to read this
@DissentMag
issue on the labor comeback, plus
@dimmerwahr
, Michael Behrent on Michéa, and so much more.
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The brilliant Wendy Brown explained neoliberalism to me (and through internet powers THE WORLD):
http://t.co/F7pVVulNFN
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I'm writing a joint biography of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. It's called "Two People Who Never Should Have Run for Fucking President."
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I have come on social media to post about why I don’t like social media. You’re welcome, world.
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I spoke with Michael Walzer about why he wants to rescue the liberal tradition from actually existing liberalism—and why so many people across the left and right think it's never gonna happen
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Interview with an economist, or failed attempt to pass the Turibg test?
http://t.co/uFJd7VSKd3
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A short piece on Hanna Arendt, Paul Berman, and why I'm a bad patriot.
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Pankaj Mishra gives
@samuelmoyn
the Sam-Moyn-in-the-Nation profile treatment, and it’s spectacular:
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And there's his views on immigration, which seem to have evolved from when he wrote this in 2006.
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Politics feels miserable right now. But the left can (still) do something about it.
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Come for the conversation with me,
@samuelmoyn
, and
@ProfSchleich
on how democracy can (maybe) change the world, stay for David's wrong views on fancy DC restaurants
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Remember when Democrats thought they could replace ideology w/demographic trends and data analytics? Those were the days
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Anyone looking for more on Jonah Goldberg should check out
@SamAdlerBell
's fantastic review from Commonweal.
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My conversation with
@elizabhinton
is up. Come for the carceral state, stay for the tragic fate of Angelo Lasagna:
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Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized:
“Whom amongst us does not recall the profound democratic theorist, Thomas Dewey?”
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@DanielZamoraV
@epopppp
@maxime_dt
I think Roberto Unger was the bigger immediate influence. But there's more on what Obama had to say about markets in my book (sorry, can't help shilling)
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A theory.
MSM: Where liberal-ish hosts pretend to be neutral
Fox: Where hosts who don't give a shit pretend to be conservative
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Thanks to
@mattsheffield
for a fantastic conversation about why you can't save democracy without first winning lots of elections
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Last night was tough for Sanders, but more Americans voted for a socialist yesterday than at any other time in US history.
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"Hey self from 2014, it's me. Just want you to know Dylan has a Nobel, the Cubs won the World Series, and Trump is president. Okay bye."
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I've had weeks to process it, but it's still hard to believe that "trumped up trickle down" didn't get the job done.
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It's hard to describe how happy it makes me that Wikipedia thinks JFK's occupation was "sailor."
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The best thing I've read on Foucault in a while, and I spend way too much time reading about Foucault:
http://t.co/X3GFaZ2ydl
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Left Adrift gets its first review: "a wise analysis on the past, present, and future of liberalism . . . Perfect for political junkies."
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I talked with Eric Foner about slavery, freedom, and lots of stuff in between:
http://t.co/qKonhF7MBw
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Whatever, national championship winner here.
On the subject of Buttigieg and Fed challenge: Photo has been located
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What was that, Ivy League college with a $10.9 endowment? You want money so that finance majors can take more art classes? Sure, let me get my wallet.
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Robert Lucas, with a pretty astute burn on Paul Samuelson/the last 80 years of US political history.
http://t.co/dyDK2aqrGP
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Despite the headline, the piece understates its case: the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action in the country today, by a mile, are conservative pundits
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And so yes: a huge, huge honor to join Dissent's masthead. Maybe now I can finally start that blog about TV...I mean...social democracy.
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A sneak preview from the next issue of
@DissentMag
:
@JedediahSPurdy
on the crisis of democracy, the limits of norms, and so, so many books.
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Remind me why we thought a candidate who got slaughtered by Bernie in the caucuses would win bc of her ground game
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