Start Making Sense

Joe Biden has one thing in common with Donald Trump: a campaign promising “restoration” of a lost past, rather than the kind of transformation we need to deal with our current problems--  That’s what Harold Meyerson says.  Of course the past Biden wants to restore is not the white man’s 1950s, but rather the pre-Trump America of the Clintons and Obama.  Harold is Executive Editor of The American Prospect and a regular contributor to the LA Times op-ed page. Also: during the presidential campaign, Donald Trump often talked about an American soldier in Afghanistan who became the longest-held American POW since Vietnam.  Trump said he was “a dirty rotten traitor” who should be shot or thrown from a plane.  He was talking about Bowe Bergdahl.  Michael Ames explains how the Bergdahl story reveals a lot about why the Afghan war has been a disaster.  Ames is co-author of the new book, “American Cypher: Bowe Bergdahl and the U.S. Tragedy in Afghanistan.” And we’ll also talk about immigrants, with Nation columnist