Why Reihan Salam Thinks 'Antiracialism' Could Break the Democrats
About this episode
Klein wraps up 'The Rising Right' series with Reihan Salam, president of the Manhattan Institute, on how Republicans might build a more diverse party. Salam argues Democrats made a foundational error: trying to assemble a transracial majority while steeped in the hyper race-consciousness of elite progressive discourse — 'racialism.' His alternative is 'anti-racialism': rejecting race essentialism, treating people as individuals, and favoring broad policies that aren't explicitly racial. He says failures of Democratic governance in blue cities — crime, the housing affordability crisis, decaying public services — give the right an opening. The conversation ranges across policing and mass incarceration (where they disagree on drivers), school choice and Florida's education laws, the 'return of fiscal constraint' after Trump's big-spending years, health-insurance design, and why so many Americans embrace conditional-reciprocity moralism.