Why Does the Writer Ezra Klein Think His Job is Strategy?

Ezra Klein, to his credit (and I mean this. Klein could easily have stuck to the centrists-to-right-wing pundit self-congratulation circuit. Small credit, but credit nonetheless) had a long discussion with Ta-Nehisi Coates about Klein’s column praising Charlie Kirk (and it isn’t odd that mere weeks after his death and the resulting firestorm, Kirk’s salience has largely disappeared?) actions and Coates rightly taking Klein to task for it. I recommend reading the whole thing, as it is an honest and fascinating look at two distinct perspectives. But what struck me is just how desperate Klein sounds. He cannot seem to imagine a world in which he is not the hero.

At one point, when discussing their roles, Klein comes right out and says “I don’t know what my role is anymore. I’ll be totally honest with you, man. I feel very conflicted about that question.” To me, this is the heart of Klein’s problem — he sees himself as the hero of the story rather than a participant in a democratic society. He has a platform and he is a writer. He has chosen to be a writer rather than a politician or a consultant. But he seems unwilling to grapple with what that means.

Putting aside the notion of heroes, Klein is not a driver of action. No one in his position should be, something that he is obviously struggling with. Klein talks about how our politics have gotten harsher with more people one on side of the line or the other. And that diagnosis shows why and how he is missing the point. He talks about Clinton’s “deplorables” speech and how that was really a mark that politics was about division. Ezra, my friend, that shows a disturbing lack of understanding of recent history.

My entire life, people on the right have attacked the values of people who live in cities. They have claimed that gays are pedophiles by nature. They have cast immigrants as violent criminals. They have blamed the breakup of the family on women who want equal rights. They have called abortion murder, and targeted abortion providers for violence. They had an entire industry built around the idea that Bill Clinton murdered people and that Obama wasn’t really an American. The lines have been drawn for a long time, and they weren’t drawn by Hilary Clinton.

Klein claims that the Democrats got the ass kicked in 2024 and thus he worries that the Democrats are too divisive and thus must give in to the lines drawn by the other side, if for no other reason than to prevent even worse outcomes. First, Harris lost on of the closest races in US history, she did not get her ass kicked, and she did it running the kind of inclusive, moderate campaign Klein thinks is needed. Second, Klein is missing the fact that he can do something about where the lines are drawn.

Klein has a platform on one of the largest, most influential media properties in America. He is a talented writer, or at least his presence on the Times op-ed page suggests he is a talented writer, and so he could change where the lines reside. He could try and remove the presence of lines. He could act as if he is in a democratic community and try to persuade his fellows that somethings are good and some things are bad. Worried about how trans rights poll? Try and dispel the myths and bullshit. Worried about how immigration polls? Make a forceful case for the benefits of immigrants. Think defund the police is a stupid slogan? Stop taking the bait and talking about the slogan and talk about police abuse and how to improve community safety. Change minds.

And minds can change. Not all of them, and not quickly. But support for gay marriage has dropped among Republicans as there has been a concerted push on the right to demonize gays. Support for immigration has gone up as Trump has unleashed his secret police-like deportation force. People do change their minds. And while politicians sometimes have to deal with the voters as they are, Klein is not a politician. He can try to do something about the problems he sees — he can talk to his fellow Americans through his massive platform. He can try to convince people, rather than condescendingly assume that they are mere slaves to their existing narratives.

But that would require seeing himself as something other than the hero of the story, and Klein seems blind to that possibility. When Coates pushes him on the difference between politics and right — using FDR as an example — Klein then falls back on his confusion about his roles. Coates clearly set out the difference between politics — FDR having to make the New Deal more racist than he liked in order to win the votes for anything — and right — people at the time correctly calling that damage out and trying to limit it through persuasion and the judicious use of political power. Klein cannot, it seems, see himself as anything other than a proxy for politicians. The idea that he can persuade, that he should persuade people, not politicians, is completely foreign to him.

Klein has two problems. One, the one we all share, is that politics right now is dominated and controlled by a media and political side that is openly contemptuous of democratic values and entire classes of human beings. This is bad. What is worse, however, is Klein’s second problem: his rock solid belief that if he just tells enough politicians how to act the first problem will go away. It won’t. The irony is, Klein is actually well positioned to help with the first problem. He has a platform he can use for persuasion. In the end, shifting the lines, so to speak, is the only way out of our current mess.

Too bad Klein can apparently not see past his need to be the hero.