>We are missing something essential to the DNA of a functioning democracy, and it’s not obvious there’s any way to fix it.

Chasing Utopia, while not having answers how to get there, and for that matter even not knowing what this utopia looks like.

This is just I don't like what happened so let me see what could have made it not happen, that's all. Let me rearrange the world with no regard to how messed up it would get.

As exemplified in...

>It’s not clear American democracy can survive commercial media

He could have gone little more meta and said It's not clear if humanity could survive humanity. American experiment is longest surviving thriving experiment of democracy, security and prosperity to date. We are not going to change because you don't like the results. This election worked despite commercial media, it shows that American democracy is surviving and thriving. Any proposal to "fix" the situation must come with enormous proof of it working, and at reasonable cost, and with no significant downside, otherwise we would rather keep what we have, thank you very much.

>And the picture of Clinton as policy-wonk-in-chief is both compelling and again, tragic. This is her central feature: How is it most have no clue about this bit of her character?

The problem was Americans became too aware of it. Libya and Syria was her to own, and what it did to Europe was colossal failure as a policy-wonk. North Korea became what it is now on her watch. She should have lost with greater margin on that basis alone. I see this as not enough people paying attention.

Her problem was not that not enough people knew her record, but that she had lot of record for people to judge her for, and they found her not only lacking, but disastrous.

>Overwhelmingly, they believed their “representative democracy” was corrupt because it did not “represent” — at least them. And yet the campaign did nothing fundamental to address this fundamental fact about us.

"it did not "represent"" is wrong way to look at democracy, instead of people selecting professional representatives from Dems or Reps to represent issues that they themselves are not convinced of, the people chose Trump to represent them. At the end people won, campaigns lost, it was beautiful to watch. And I thank Trump of giving the people that, and as Michael Moore professed "it felt good".

>That blindness leaves the field wide open for the party of no — no taxes, no immigration, no health care, no (more) social security, no protection for privacy, no network neutrality, no family planning, no dreamers.

No arguments offered. Just take this and shove it down your throat, because that's the world they want to live in. Do I have an opinion or not? Do I get to hear why this is good for me or us, or not? Why are these the axioms of Dem platform? Why should I accept them?

>If we fixed democracy first, we might create a world in which the wisdom of the wonks could be heard again.

Democracy needs to be fixed because Clinton lost. Is that the argument here? This just got ridiculous.

Does Lawrence, as a wonk himself, thinks that if Democracy is fixed then he would get better audience to his wonky thoughts?

Did it occur to him that making people see things your way may be one of the basic skills of being a wonk? A skill, which he himself has compared to others whose thoughts get no attention from anyone. Like this comment here on hackernews, lol. Trump had this skill in heaps, and he made it count. Glad he did.

Long live America.