The way the electoral college works, the way the states have kind of sorted themselves out in such a way that most states, the conclusion is foregone and there's no reason for the candidate to be there and for that reason, for that same, because of those same dynamics there's no reason for the journalist to be there combing the opinions of voters there because we know that California's gonna vote Democratic.

I remember going to a Trump rally in South Carolina, and it was really important and it was really interesting to talk to the people who'd shown up there because they were not caricatures, and so often Trump voters, Trump supporters were being portrayed in the media, probably I'm guilty of it as well, as caricatures. Each of these people, and I talked to maybe a dozen of them, had a very particular reason why he or she was supporting Donald Trump , but these were not casual, inexplicable decisions.

If every four years in a presidential election, if you're a New Yorker or a Californian, and you realize that you are so much less important, that nobody is actually kind of targeting your needs because they're laser-focused on what will play in Florida and on what will play in Virginia.

You don't feel you have the same voice in a presidential election if you live in a solid blue or a solid red state. I also don't think we've educated voters well on the different ways in which primaries work in different states. It doesn't need to be the case that you end up with one Democrat and one Republican, you have open primaries, you can have jungle primaries. There are various permutations and combinations of how to do this.

Books are personal, passionate. They stir emotions and spark thoughts in a manner all their own, and I'm convinced that the shattered world has less hope for repair if reading becomes an ever smaller part of it.

I think the Donald Trump's obsession is, is bigger than just polling. I mean it's funny because we've been harping on polls like never before, Trump was harping on his own polls endlessly. I mean his stump speeches would begin with him crowing about his latest poll numbers and that was just a kind of odd convergence.

If you look at why do we end up with the nominees that we get often? It's because you have only a very small number of Americans participating in the primaries, and those people tend to be your most dyed in the wool partisans.