Every Democratic candidate in the presidential primary is a reformer of some kind. Either they offer a model of reform that is moderate in its aims or one that is progressively/radically democratic. No one in the field is suggesting that we simply return to “normalcy.” To think otherwise bespeaks an under appreciation of the changing and fluid political dynamics of US politics and the Democratic Party.

The conundrum of intergenerational justice is too often presented as a zero sum game. If the older generation wins, the young generation loses. What is missing here is a class analysis that locates the crises that both generations face at the top of the class structure — the 1 percent — and the imperatives of capitalist exploitation of labor, nature, and people generally.

Really good read. I also don’t give too much weight to polls of head to head match ups at this time. The salient questions for me are (1) how will the nominee and her of his campaign message fare in the cauldron of an election campaign against Trump and the extreme right, and (2) what kind of coalition can she or he assemble and will the constituencies that make up this coalition over perform on election day?

Between democratic rule and fascism lie various iterations of right wing authoritarian rule. And if we looking at the global landscape today, we see evidence of this.

So far it seems like being a woman in the presidential primary is more a disadvantage than advantage. That no woman has ever sat in the Oval office doesn’t seem to register as a significant consideration across a good chunk of the political spectrum, albeit for different reasons depending on where a person fits on that spectrum. Even on the left it registers far less than one would hope.