Part of what we have to do is not just keep ignorant people away from the polls. We have to actually change the structural realities that make people make bad choices beyond their ignorance or what have you.

The Trump voter isn't just an ignorant white guy in the South that if he were more educated would vote differently. The Trump voter is also someone who is dealing with an entirely new economy that his father, grandfather or grandmother didn't have to face 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago.

I'm not defending the Trump vote. I think they're making a bad choice. But I'm saying the bad choice isn't one out of pure ignorance, and I think it's too easy. And it plays into cliches about, you know, elitist liberals to say, oh, these Trump voters - if they knew more, they would do better. And it's like, well, maybe they would do better if we had a legitimate set of policies in place that doesn't encourage the kind of gross radicalization that has happened under the Trump candidacy. So for me, it's all about developing a richer conversation.

Nothing lasts forever, whether it's Greece, Rome or the British Empire. It doesn't mean that America has to end. The country could be reshaped and reimagined in a way that is even more democratic and less imperial in nature. We're trying to radically reshape the nation in ways that are more just and fairer. That's what I mean when I say that empires eventually fall. I'm not calling for the end of America. I'm just calling for a reimagination of its democratic possibilities.

Part of what we have to do is not just keep ignorant people away from the polls. We have to actually change the structural realities that make people make bad choices beyond their ignorance or what have you.

We have to convince the white worker that they have something to gain by forming a solidarity politics with black workers because everything that's happened over the last three to 400 years in America has divided the white and the black worker.

Part of the narrative which is sort of supported by the data is that Trump voters are the least educated, and they're voting for Trump out of white solidarity or out of frustration that they're, quote, unquote, "losing their country". And my concern with that is that it sort of reduces the condition of the Trump voter to one of pure ignorance. And I think it's far more complicated.