Those are the liberals who don't want to win. Those are the liberals who are in love with noble defeats, and I'm sick and tired of noble defeats.

When I choose the picture of the cover of the book 'Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi', I thought, gosh, many people in Karachi may not like this image; I'm representing the city as a burning bus. But to the contrary, they loved it, because that is people's understanding of their own city, of going on with life no matter what.

So many awful things have happened in Karachi, it's true. It has its own crazy rhythm. Even as crazy as other news is in Pakistan, the city manages to beat that in the frequency of catastrophes.

When I go to American cities and speak to American audiences about Karachi, I am able to draw their own wonder and consternation about the cities they live in as an entry point to this other faraway, instant city.

I'm just imagining some of [Mark Lilla] fellow liberals being rather angry at you saying such a thing [that Democrats and liberals, more generally, lost a lot of political capital ].

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.

Those are the liberals who don't want to win. Those are the liberals who are in love with noble defeats, and I'm sick and tired of noble defeats.