What’s the energizer bunny of Trump’s base? In Trump’s mind and by his words, the answer is clear. It’s racism. Whenever he’s in trouble, and he’s in big trouble now, racist tropes come out of his mouth, fast and furious, to rally his die hard supporters around him. Yesterday he did it again when he said he was the victim of a “lynching” by Congressional Democrats who are doing no more than exercising their constitutional duty as a check and balance on presidential misbehavior and lawlessness.

Here we have the appropriation of a word and act that has a particular meaning and long and shameful history and its redeployment in the service of — of all things — an out of control white supremacist president. This isn’t so much an irony of history as a butchering, emptying, and refashionig of history by a political descendant of racist hangmen and redeemers of the 19th and 20th centuries in the South and elsewhere. Impeach now, and if necessary, defeat next fall.

Bluster is never a good substitute for a politics that is grounded in reality.

The slogan, “Strengthen the Left and Defeat Trump and the Right” may sound militant and appealing, but it’s strategically flawed.and should be benched. At the core of any strategic approach of the left (and other democratic actors for that matter) should be the following political imperative: Unite and mobilize the diverse currents that make up the broad democratic, anti-Trump coalition and the Democratic Party in a common struggle to decisively Trump and the Republican right in next year’s election. The failure to mention, let along highlight, this overarching task is a mistake and ends up narrowing the left’s role at this moment.

What energizes Trump’s base? In Trump’s mind and by his words, the answer is clear. It’s racism. Whenever he’s in trouble, and he’s in big trouble now, racist tropes come out of his mouth, fast and furious, to rally his die hard supporters around him. Yesterday he did it again when he said he was the victim of a “lynching” by Congressional Democrats who are doing no more than exercising their constitutional duty as a check and balance on presidential misbehavior and lawlessness.

Here we have the appropriation of a word and act that has a particular meaning and long and shameful history and its redeployment in the service of — of all things — an out of control white supremacist president. This isn’t so much an irony of history as a butchering, emptying, and refashionig of history by a political descendant of racist hangmen and redeemers of the 19th and 20th centuries in the South and elsewhere. Impeach now, and if necessary, defeat next fall.

I don’t find anything positive in Trump’s ostensible foreign policy of isolationism and America First. We need a new foreign policy for sure, but not one that disengages from the rest of the world. What Trump is doing now makes the world more, not less dangerous. His withdrawal of troops from Syria not only gave a green light to Turkish aggression against the Kurdish people, but also could easily give way tomorrow to some crazy U.S. military adventure.