[Mark] Lilla is a professor at Columbia University in New York, and he has waded into the debate about what Democrats and liberals should do now. Some Democrats answer nothing.

Let me name three of the people who influenced me, although it's definitely not a complete list. Ayesha Jalal, the formidable Pakistani-American historian, has rigorously re-evaluated Jinnah's political strategies leading up to Partition. Akbar Ahmed, a former diplomat and now a distinguished scholar, has documented Jinnah's life as a man who welcomed, worked with, and even married people of other faiths. And then there is Ardeshir Cowasjee, the great Parsi newspaper columnist, who in his mid-80s is a kind of living history of all of Pakistan, old enough to have known Jinnah himself.

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.

[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.

Researchers have been asking a basic question of young people. Should men be allowed to beat their wives? How you answer that question may depend on where you live. U.N. researchers put that question to adolescent girls in India and Pakistan and 53 percent - a majority of girls - said yes, wife beating is justifiable even if it's for refusing sex.

We need to be stronger. We need to deter the Russians. We need to show resolve, which is why cooperating with them on the other hand can be more difficult.

The president-elect seems to want Russia as a friend. President Obama arguably has not wanted to say that Russia is that great of a threat.