Here is an article on the politics of big policy ideas. It’s worth reading. As it pertains to the current presidential primary, Warren and Sanders have such ideas. They are needed not only if the country has any chance of addressing the structural problems — climate, wage and economic stagnation, economic and other forms of inequality, etc. — that unless addressed make the future problematic. But also in order to engage the American people and to change their perception of the role of an activist federal government.

I would be happy with either one as the nominee.

The strategic objective in this election isn’t to bring the country to the doorstep of socialism. The political conditions doesn’t exist for such a leap, notwithstanding the popular interest in more deep going reforms and, to a much lesser degree, socialism as a socio-economic system.

What then is the objective? Simply put, to defend and expand democracy that is presently under a sustained, furious, and unprecedented assault at the hands of Trump and his right wing authoritarian movement.

Storming heaven, metaphorically speaking, will have to wait a few moons! On the other hand, successfully blocking Trump and gang in their sordid effort is a BFD and would create a more favorable terrain on which the struggle for reforms can begin anew.

Not everyone agrees with this approach.

If military actions, threats, and tensions ease in the coming days, it is thanks to the leadership of Iran, not Trump. They were the grown up in the room. His recent actions and longer term policy toward Iran are criminal in nature and dangerous to everyone’s future. Either by impeachment or the ballot box we have to get rid of this cancer on everything that we hold dear!

If military actions, threats, and tensions ease in the coming days, it is thanks to the leadership of Iran, not Trump. They were the grown up in the room. His recent actions and longer term policy toward Iran are criminal in nature and dangerous to everyone’s future. Either by impeachment or the ballot box we have to get rid of this cancer on everything that we hold dear!

Wald’s analysis leaves much to be desired, but, as someone who was in the party’s leadership for many years, he is right to write that our inability to critique our past turned into a self inflicted and disabling wound. But for such a critique to be helpful, it wouldn’t be limited to the party’s relationship to the Soviet Union, nor the first half of the last century, as his analysis is. It would entail a rigorous look at our practice, theory, and internal culture over a century. On two occasions in the last half of the 20th century, we had opportunities to do just this, when larger events precipitated a crisis within the party. But each time the necessary mass in the leadership didn’t exist and an embedded culture didn’t allow for a process of critique and renewal.