Finishing up Pulitzer Prize winning “Wilmington’s Lie: The murderous Coup of 1898 and The Rise of White Supremacy,” authored by David Zucchino. It reminds me that the white Southern ruling elite reclaimed its position of exploitative and racist dominance in the states of the former Confederacy by eagerly and vengefully embracing Mao’s dictum before it was a dictum: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

Here is a struggle that should concentrate the mind and energy of the coalition – including the left – that elected Biden-Harris. The passage of this budget plan was a first step in an effort to restructure the role of the federal government and set into motion a new form of people’s governance. Next comes the budget reconciliation process in which each item and the price tag attached to it will be contested and voted on.

This struggle shouldn’t be confined to the corridors of Congress. Tens of millions should be informed of what is at stake and encouraged to take part in this great policy debate. Republicans and their media network will surely spread distortions and lies about what is at stake. Our side should counter their lies as well as spell out the significance of this battle – its meaning to those who’ve been left out, discriminated against, ignored, slandered, abused, and exploited.

After all, the outcome of this struggle will go a long way in either beginning the burial of Reaganism, Trumpism, and neoliberalism or setting the country on a new path in which people and nature are the overarching priorities of government and society.

Every time a candidate of the left loses in a Democratic Party primary to another candidate (usually a liberal), her or his supporters are quick to cry “Foul Ball” and rail against “The Establishment.” Never is the idea entertained that maybe the other candidate had greater appeal, maybe a better game plan and maybe a more accurate read of voter sentiments. To ignore the latter interpretation, to dismiss it out of hand isn’t smart politics. It may feel righteous, but I doubt it will serve the left well in the longer run.

Lift the Blockade on Cuba and send humanitarian aid, Joe. That’s what neighbors do (or should do). Don’t embrace the sound bites of your right wing opponents or voices in your own party that would like you to tighten the screws on Cuba, not to mention China. A majoritarian audience awaits a new foreign policy that accents peace, diplomacy, mutuality, and the imperative of a global response to the existential threats – climate disruption, pandemics, nuclear proliferation and war – of our times. Do the right thing!

I’ve read a few different takes on strategy recently. Here’s mine. Strategy, as I learned it in the Communist Party and from reading Lenin is wide angled and dynamic. Never narrowly focused, Its field of vision is the larger political landscape on which competing coalitions (or, in Gramsci’s language, blocs) collide and compete for advantage (war of position), and power (war of maneuver). It brings into focus the main class and social constituencies in that field of struggle, clarifies where they stand in relation to each other and the main issues of struggle, and, above all, takes into account the distribution of power – the balance of power – in the moment between/among the contending coalitions.

A strategic excavation doesn’t stop here though. It goes on to specify the key alliances that are crucial to each side’s success, the key constituencies to be won, and the key democratic and class issues that, if settled in favor of one or another coalition, will either move the whole chain of struggle to a new, higher stage or in a backward direction. And of course, any strategic rendering is set within and deeply informed by a particular economic and political conjuncture.

In today’s circumstances, the main clash is between two competing cross class coalitions, each with its own distinct class and social makeup and politics.  One is right wing, white nationalist, authoritarian, and if need be, fascistic. While socially diverse, it skews toward white billionaires, millionaires, and middle income Americans. The other is  democratic minded and leans in a progressive direction. Unlike its rival, it can claim a majoritarian status and skews toward working people, people of color, women, and young people. While it scored victories last fall at the ballot box – the biggest the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris – and legislative breakthroughs this spring, the outcome of what can fairly be described as an existential clash of these two grand coalitions is still to be decided.