Democrats in environmental agencies tend to be more sensitive to environmental harm. And Republicans tend to be more sensitive to business harm.

Pain now is better than pain deferred.

Some children lack tools to see their course in the world in far-sighted ways. Just introducing school vouchers won't change that. You have to have nurse-home partnerships, early childhood education, mentoring programs and so on. People learn from people they love.

Populists love rich people. They just hate professionals.

I just think, realistically, there's a lot of room outside the Trump populist right and the Bernie-Sanders-Elizabeth-Warren populist left. There are a lot of us who believe in open trade, open borders, a dynamic forward-looking economy, not a nostalgic economy, but do want to provide a significant level of social service or sort of economic Milton Friedman foreign policy, Ronald Reagan domestic policy, Franklin Roosevelt. And there's a lot of room in the center.

My colleague Ross Douthat wrote that any time you give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt, he always lets you down.

Republicans are living in a hermetically sealed Republican universe, just as Democrats are. And so they're responding to their own universe, even if it leads to electoral downfall.