Politics should seize the imagination.

When Donald Trump yells at his supporters to throw somebody out of the hall - and usually that somebody is brown or black or often is - that means he's galvanizing a kind of mob spirit, which is also a racial mob spirit.

The ranks of educated professional swelled as more Americans went to college and more Americans sort of adopted a more cosmopolitan lifestyle and worldview. And as the Democrats were looking for an alternative to the unions who no longer seemed like a large enough base for the party, they found the educated who veered more toward a progressive cultural outlook, who may have had - may have been working in the financial sector, in entertainment, in media, in universities. That became really the rank and file of the Democratic Party over a long period of time.

People in Congress are willing to shut down the entire government or to make it impossible for a Supreme Court nominee to get a hearing or for routine appointments in the executive branch to go unfilled for years because of a hold placed by a senator.

I really do put it on Bill Clinton's presidency as the time when the Democrats became the party of the college degree as the key to success in life.

When I interviewed Paul Bremer in his office he had almost no books on his shelves. He had a couple of management books, like "Leadership" by Rudolph Giuliani . I didn't take it as an encouraging sign.

Like an odorless gas, [inequality] pervades every corner of the United States and saps the strength of the country's democracy. But it seems impossible to find the source and shut it off.