Ezra Klein’s Alternate Reality

Alternate history is fascinating to many. The often seemingly arbitrary procession of events that leads up to the present offers endless possibilities for wondering about “if it had happened otherwise,” to borrow the title of one such collection of counterfactual eventualities. Some imagine darker outcomes, such as what might have followed Confederate victory in the Civil War or Axis victory in World War II. Others posit how bad events could have turned out better, such as if the Titanic had had more lifeboats.

The preferred alternate reality of Vox editor-at-large Ezra Klein is one in which Elizabeth Warren is in charge. Promoting an interview he conducted with the Massachusetts senator and unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate, Klein called it “a strange, slightly melancholy experience: like glimpsing an alternate reality where political leadership is proportionate to the crisis we’re facing.”