The challenge for progressive change makers in the Democratic Party and democratic coalition is to maintain center-progressive-left unity, while shifting the center of political gravity of the coalition and the Biden administration toward measures to boldly tackle the interlocking crises gripping the country. Here is where politics becomes as much (or more) an art than a science.

Of course, the degree to which any of this is possible depends also on the larger political-economic environment – not least on which party controls the Senate.

It’s a problem when the left feels it has the right and duty to blast the shit out of anybody who isn’t down with its politics and then when someone takes issue with it cry “Foul Play.” The left and every other grouping in the Democratic Party should understand that the struggle for unity isn’t someone else’s problem.

Given the depth and scope of crisis facing the Biden administration and the fierce opposition that can be expected from the Republican-Trumpian political bloc to even the smallest initiative of the administration, the accent in the Democratic Party and the democratic coalition should fall on unity, not fractious infighting.

What some economic populists and “class struggle” advocates fail to understand is that the meeting of the demands of the African American freedom movement are bound up with the restructuring of class relations as well as the role of the state in ways that lift up the entire working class.

This doesn’t necessarily obviate the need for an “explicitly class-based and ethnically inclusive organizing strategy (Mike Davis, Trench Warfare, New Left Review)” but without an appreciation of the former any such strategy will end up disappointing.

Senator Feinstein should step aside and make space for the governor to fill two vacant Senate seats. Even if she wasn’t having short term memory and mental acuity lapses, it would be reasonable, given her age (87) for her to make room for a younger person. I was in a similar situation when I was in the Communist Party. An older leader in decline mentally and physically wouldn’t willingly step aside and allow for a leadership transition. In the end the transition happened, but it was unnecessarily delayed, awkward, and left behind some hard feelings. It didn’t have to be this way, although in the 20th century communist movement, it was rare that a General Secretary stepped down before death was at the door. Interestingly, one exception was Fidel Castro who made space for a leadership transition.

The coup failed miserably yesterday. That is no surprise. It had no legs to begin with. What is troubling though is that millions of Trump supporters, living in informational silos, reject the verdict of the electoral college. They still believe that the election was rigged against Trump. We haven’t heard the last from them or Republican leaders who hope to speak for them going forward.