Luke Savage is a writer and essayist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Statesman, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. Born in St John’s, Newfoundland, he studied political science, history, and philosophy at the University of Toronto, where he edited Canada’s largest student newspaper The Varsity. Having worked for several years as an investigative reporter covering Canadian politics and the far right, Luke has been a staff writer at Jacobin since 2018 – where he is a frequent commentator on American, British, and Canadian politics. He is co-host of the popular Michael and Us podcast, a twice-weekly show about politics, cinema, and our crumbling world.

Introduction: The Dead Center

A Note to the Reader

Part I: Salvos
Liberalism in Theory and Practice
Why Liberals Pretend They Have No Power
David Brooks’ Capitalist Fatalism
What Canada Can Teach Us About Liberals Everywhere

Part II: Bipartisan Bromides
The Curse of Bipartisanship
Liberalism’s Veil of Ignorance
2004 Redux
How Liberals Fell in Love with The West Wing
The Never Trump Delusion

Part III: Dramatis Personae
The Fraudulent Universalism of Barack Obama—co-authored with Nathan J. Robinson
Justin Trudeau and the Politics of Spectacle
Fear and LARPing on the Campaign Trail
Farewell to Betomania
Why The Pundit Class Loves Amy Klobuchar|
Variations in B-Flat Minor
Keir Starmer and the Genealogy of Centrist Non-Belief
Joe Biden Is Not a Radical

Part IV: On the Media
Manufacturing Consent, One Chyron at a Time
The Agony and the Ecstasy of Chris Matthews
All the President’s Tweets
Erasing the Working Class
James Carville Will Never Stop Being Wrong
The Progressive Era That Wasn’t

Part V: All That’s Solid…
Savory Snacks for Social Justice
The British Monarchy Will Not Survive Late Capitalism
Barons of the Valley
From New Deal to Nudge
Neoliberalism? Never Heard of It.

Acknowledgements

Endnotes

About the Author