[Mark] Lilla sees a deeper problem, and he wrote an article in The New York Times denouncing identity liberalism.He says liberals have appealed to African-Americans or women or the LGBT community but failed to craft a strong, broad national message. He's not the only person saying this. Long before the votes were cast, Bernie Sanders argued the Democrats lost the white working class by not speaking broadly to the country.

Ever since [Ronald] Reagan, they've been able to capture the message and an understanding - or persuade people of a certain understanding of what the nation is about and what's good for it.

Many Democrats are in a reflective mood . They lost the White House this year [2016], which would not matter as much as it does, except they also failed to take back the Senate, remain out of power in the House and are out of power in most states.

I've just been flooded with emails of people just giving testimonies of their lives, saying exactly this. I got an email from a guy who works for some sort of defense contractor, some lower-level job, served in the military. And he said, look, I served in the military with black and Latino soldiers. My supervisor is a young black woman who's smart as a whip, and I admire her, and we get along great.

People don't know where they stand and what they're going to lose, and that makes things uncertain. The political parties try to meld people together, but then that becomes a problem. There are parallels here, to American cities, which, in the '80s, with massive rural to urban migration, saw incredible amounts of violence.

Identity liberalism, as I understand it, is expressive rather than persuasive.

I do know that a law professor there [in Columbia University] published an article calling me a white supremacist.