It’s often observed that Democratic Party paved the way for Trump’s rise. Historian Lily Geismer discusses how we got here, examining the remaking of liberalism and the Democratic Party, populated by a professionally-trained, technocratic elite who did what technocrats do: tweaking the system, not fundamentally changing it.
Brent Cebul and Lily Geismer (eds), Mastery and Drift: Professional-Class Liberals since the 1960s University of Chicago Press, 2025