In thinking about today’s left, albeit broadly defined, it strikes me that it is different from its counterpart in the sixties in important ways. Here are a few that come to mind. First of all, most people in any expansive rendering of the left aren’t organizationally attached to one or another socialist organization. They aren’t footloose by any means, but their thinking and actions don’t stem from a single organizational source.

They also proceed less on the basis of an articulated and systematic worldview and more on the ground of their deeply felt opposition to injustice and inequality at the level of values, policy, and experience.

Moreover, the contemporary left, unlike a considerable section of the sixties’s left, is more willing to engage in electoral politics, including within the Democratic Party, and in presidential politics. Such participation isn’t considered, as it was in the sixties and after, a fool’s errand and the burial ground of its radicalism. Few people on the left, for example, are sitting out next year’s election or lending their energy to any chimerical and diversionary third party presidential candidates or only in the game if their favored candidate wins the nomination.

The 21st century left’s understanding of the shape shifting role of race, gender, and sexuality in politics, culture, and society is on a deeper level too, even if the transforming power of 2nd wave feminism still goes unappreciated.

Today’s left isn’t wedded to the notion of a single revolutionary subject either, as we were in the sixties. It’s agent of change rests more on a host of social constituencies, with no one constituency assigned the vanguard role before the battle is joined.

Finally, this broadly constructed left embraces a socialism that draws more from social democracy and a commitment to deep going democratization and equality than one or another model of 20th or 21st century socialism.

The unity of the broad democratic movement opposing Trump in next year’s election should be the overarching task of progressive and left people. This isn’t some minor tactical matter for a few, but a strategic necessity that should be embraced by all who dream of a more just, equal, and livable world.

The political center isn’t constituted by a handful of Democratic Party politicians, nor is it frozen in time or in its views. Instead, It is a broad and fluid belt in the Democratic Party as well as a significant force in many mass organizations, including labor. And in recent years, its politics have shifted in a liberal/progressive direction in the face of persistent social problems, failed policies, new popular movements, and existential challenges.

Any notion that the center isn’t a major and necessary player in the effort to decisively defeat Trump and his Republican acolytes next year and move the country onto a progressive trajectory in the years ahead is wrongheaded and worse.

The streets of London were filled this weekend with protesters opposing the Brexit deal that parliament is fiercely debating now. Brexit was always problematic because the right wing was (and still is) at the head of the Leave movement. It — not the left —provides the talking points, including xenophobia and racism, and defines the exit terms. In engaging in any struggle, one has to be mindful of which political bloc/coalition occupies the high ground and frames the nature and terms of the struggle.

It is magical thinking to believe that the ground for bipartisanship will be different after the elections than it is now. And yet some of the Democratic Party presidential aspirants are assiduously selling us that bill of fraudulent goods. The Republican right will not turn tail in the event of a Democratic Party win next year anymore than it did in the wake of President Obama’s victory in 2008.