Seems like Trump has concluded that the incitement of turmoil in the streets is his only path to a second term. And to gin up turmoil and violent confrontation, Trump will enlist the help of his rabid supporters as he did in Kenosha and Portland this past week. We should’t fall for the bait. It will require on our part discipline, a refusal to respond to provocations, and an insistence on protest actions that are peaceful and non-violent.

If the center of political gravity in the Democratic Party (as well as the larger democratic coalition) was leaning in a progressive direction six months ago, the Democratic Party convention tells us that this tendency has become more pronounced due to the force of an unforeseen and deadly pandemic, an imploding economy, the uprising in response to the police killing of George Floyd, and the fascistic shadings of the Trump administration and his base.

In other words, today’s Democratic Party isn’t the party of Bill Clinton. Nor is it in the tight grip of neoliberalism. The latter, if we understand as a particular mode of accumulation and political governance, had considerable sway among Democrats in the last two decades of the 20th century. But by the time of the Great Recession of 2008, its advocates were fewer in number and are still fewer today.  The Democratic Party that will face off against Trump and his Republican gang is far more diverse and complicated. As it tacks in a progressive direction, it contains multiple tendencies at the leadership and mass levels that are fluid, permeable, and grow and shrink, depending on the issues and conditions at hand.

Only by collapsing moderates, liberals, and even some progressives into the neoliberal camp or by declaiming that anyone who embraces anything less the demands of the “insurgent wing” of the Democratic Party is a neoliberal can a case be made that neoliberalism retains anywhere near the same influence that it did two decades ago. Not only is this a faulty conflation, but, if embraced by too many, will lead to a politics that doesn’t match the moment, too static when it should be fluid, too narrow when it should be expansive, too subjective when it should be sober minded and strategic. And who needs that with the most important election in arguably the country’s history roughly two months?

I have no trouble saying that the architects and organizers of Democratic Party convention brilliantly and strategically did what they had to do this week. They assembled a coalition of social and political constituencies of great breadth and depth, which is exactly what is required to beat Trump and gang in November. It rightly ranged from Bernie Sanders to Colin Powell, while impressively including lots of grassroots activists and popular culture. What I won’t do is damn it with faint praise or pick it apart for this or that weakness, while occluding the larger achievements of this convention. There is, in my opinion, nothing radical about such a posture.

Michelle Obama’s speech tonight was extraordinary and riveting. She is a political and moral leader with few if any peers in our country. No one touches so many hearts and rattles so many minds in good ways as she does. If our country has a north star in our political firmament, it is her. Tonight she made a lot of “good trouble.” Bravo, Bravo!

That was the best Joe Biden speech I have ever seen. It was a home run, not a broken bat single. It was well crafted, well presented, and heartfelt. It hit all the right notes, without trying to hit every note. The challenges that he highlighted were the right ones: ending the pandemic with science, national coordination, and compassion, turning the country’s attention to addressing and ending systemic racism, rebuilding the economy and creating jobs, seizing the opportunity to attack climate change, restoring decency in public life, and protecting our democracy. A wise movement lives, first of all, in the present, gives people and politicians space to change and when they do welcomes that change, and, not least, recognizes the new dynamics, pressures, and possibilities of the times in which we live.