“Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will” may sound like a cool turn of phrase, but it doesn’t fit this moment. Yes, great challenges exist. And none more important than the elections next year. But they aren’t insurmountable. A revitalized Democratic Party, an expansive, loosely knit, heterogeneous, and democratic minded coalition of millions, a revitalizing left, and favorable public opinion polls should give us more than a dollop of hope (and confidence) that we can, albeit with a lot of sweated labor, meet these challenges.

Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Communist leader, popularized this turn of phrase, but remember he did it, while sitting in a fascist prison and well aware of surging fascist governments in Italy and Germany. Both were beating down, to say the least, the opposition in their path.

I’m not sure what the value is of articles on bottom up organizing in the community or labor movement that are filled with lots of prescriptive advice — do this and that, we need this and that — and the latest organizing terminology, but are also notable in their failure to mention, let alone stress, the strategic imperative of defeating Trump and the Republican right next year. They lack, what I call, political embeddedness. Without the latter, such articles and analyses are problematic. And maybe that is putting it too nicely. The anti-electoralist, anti-Democratic Party strain of thinking on the left no longer packs the same wallop as it once did, but it still surfaces — sometimes reflexively — in people’s thinking.

If Barack Obama was the avatar and herald of a multi-racial, egalitarian society to the right wing, Trump, by contrast, is, in its world view, the exemplar and last line of defense of white skin and male privilege — of the way things were.

Some people on the left (and I’m defining the left broadly) conflate gaining hegemony in the Democratic Party with domination. But the two aren’t the same and unless this difference is appreciated, the left could piss away a unique opportunity to move from the margins to the mainstream of U.S. politics. Actually, I could be convinced that both concepts should be retired as part of a strategic rethink of the left’s role in today’s circumstances. Sorry for the generalities.

In the 20th century, two movements were transformative in their impact. One uprooted an unregulated, crisis-ridden capitalism in the 1930s, while the other overturned a deeply racist system, sanctioned by law, custom, and violence in the 1960s.

Neither one of these movements, however, boycotted or stood apart from the electoral and legislative process. They engaged in a very practical way in “bourgeois politics” as well as embraced expansive concepts of struggle. Their aim wasn’t to take over, but to draw together diverse social and political constituencies around a common objective. But that didn’t weaken their cause. In fact, it was an essential part of the explanation for their success. A mature left will learn from these experiences.