1. Keeanga-Yamahtta Tayler writes in Jacobin:

“Last Wednesday, Bernie Sanders passionately argued for a “democratic socialist” United States. Sanders’s clear arguments for a complete transformation of the country showed why the mainstream media and the leadership of the Democratic Party have tried to marginalize his electrifying presidential campaign.

In the course of a single speech, Sanders demonstrated the existential threat he poses to the political status quo in the United States by exposing the roots of the hardship and deprivation that roil wide swaths of the country. He named capitalism as the culprit and democratic socialism as a solution. What a breathtaking turn of events.”

Democratic socialism did find its way into the speech for sure, but what also informed it as much or more was a robust and progressive interpretation of liberalism. It was the continuation of Roosevelt’s New Deal and the completion of its unfinished tasks that commanded center stage — not Debsian socialism, not the experience of Denmark or Sweden, not the writings of Norman Thomas or Michael Harrington.

Whatever the motivation for this emphasis, it makes good sense to me. Radical politics has to find inspiration, poetry, legitimacy, and insights in the common experience, past struggles, and popular traditions of the American people, as it gives voice to new popular desires, needs, and existential imperatives of the present moment. Sanders’ speech commendably did this.

2. If I were a Democratic Party leader, I would move heaven and earth if that is what it took for Robert Mueller to appear at the earliest possible date at a public congressional hearing. Such a hearing would give the American people in red and blue stakes alike a chance to hear straight from the horse’s mouth what he uncovered in the investigation of Trump’s wrongdoing in far more detail than his sparse statement of a month ago.

Most people haven’t and won’t read the Mueller report, but they will tune into his live testimony or see clips of it later as it makes its way through the news cycle. And it surely will. In so doing, the false narrative of Trump and Barr — No Collusion, No Obstruction — that has framed the conversation so far will be challenged and a compelling counter narrative will see the light of day, but this time in a form that millions can easily digest and from someone who is considered as close to an impartial and independent arbiter of the truth as there is. Right now public opinion polls tell us that a majority of people aren’t on the impeachment train. This can’t be ignored in the name of some higher moral or political principle. Public attitudes do matter. It is not enough to be right, especially at this moment when so much is at stake.

Moreover, the assumption that public opinion will seamlessly morph into a majority movement upon a formal declaration of impeachment is pure conjecture, if not wishful thinking. Why isn’t it as likely to think that such a declaration that has no chance of successfully making its way through the Senate could become Trump’s main talking point in next year’s election. After all, he does the politics of resentment and victimization pretty well. Actually, when you think about it, other than a buoyant economy which Trump had little to do with and which is showing some softening, he has little else to run on.

I’m not against impeachment proceedings, but before the battle is formally joined, the political conditions should be created so that our side comes out of what will be a fierce confrontation, if not a winner in a technical sense, because of Republican opposition in the Senate to impeachment, then, and more importantly, a winner in the court of public opinion and advantageously positioned to win in November of next year.  There is nothing opportunistic about making such a political calculation as to how things might play out. In fact, not to do so would be the height of irresponsibility. Too much is at stake now and next year to be guided by only righteous indignation.

What is more, the only reliable check on Trump and his authoritarian behavior is at the ballot box next year. House Speaker Pelosi understands this well. And we should too.

3. Any understanding of the rise and spread of right wing extremism that doesn’t situate it as a extreme, if not predictable, reaction to the Civil Rights Revolution of the sixties and the explosion of other democratic aspirations, demands and movements that followed is not only analytically wrong, but also will find itself badly wanting strategically and tactically. And at this moment when right wing extremism has morphed into its authoritarian, Trumpist, and unapolegetic and unrelenting anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian form, it is all the more true. The lens of class, class interests, and class struggle is indispensable in understanding the rise of the right and the trajectory of politics over the past half century for sure. But only if it is employed flexibly and dialectically. When it crowds out (or subordinates) other democratic desires and movements of struggle, they need a tune up at least, probably a major retooling.

4. As I have grown older, I have realized more and more that class and class struggle don’t explain everything (even in the last instance). Moreover, they reveal and exert their influence in many instances in unanticipated and roundabout ways. I would argue that democratic discontents and desires left a larger imprint on the canvas of struggle over the past half century than economic (class) grievance, even though the U.S. and global economy was changing in deep going ways and labor, organized and unorganized, was the target of a many sided assault. Actually, for much of this period, labor was on its heels and unable to organize a broad  counteroffensive.

5. The experience of last half century suggests that the assigning of vanguard or leading role to the working class because of its place in a system of social production is a fool’s errand. History and human desire give rise to variegated social movements that seldom cooperate with the predictions of narrowly constructed class theory and politics. Working people do and will leave their imprint on the political process, no doubt about that. But in most instances, they will do so in ways that we didn’t imagine nor conform to abstract theory. Moreover, if we don’t allow space for such, we will lag behind unfolding political reality.

6. People ask: what will posterity think if we don’t attempt to impeach Trump? Fair question. But we could also ask: what judgement will posterity render if we don’t defeat Trump at the ballot box next year? I can’t understand the thinking of those who ask the first question, but fail to consider the second. And for me, the latter is primary and overarching.

7. Finished watching the series “Chernobyl” last week. It is a powerful dramatization of the nuclear power disaster there, but a bit depressing to watch. It reminded me once again that socialist ownership and control of the nuclear power industry is no guarantee of the safety of nuclear power use. But this was almost an article of faith in the communist movement back in the day. Chernobyl challenged, if not shredded, that faith — a faith grounded in a downplaying of scientific evidence, a mistaken confidence in the Soviet Union, and a failure to distinguish between formal/legal and actual relations of social ownership and control in the nuclear power industry and industry generally. In other words, what’s on paper and codified into law isn’t necessarily what exists on the ground. Neither safety nor worker empowerment necessarily come first in real life.

1. A day after Mueller’s first public statement on his report, I conclude, first, that he didn’t punt. His remarks challenged the narrative of Trump and Barr. But he didn’t forcefully advance the ball either. His language was too oblique, lawyerly, neutral, and sparse to do that.

He didn’t have to call for impeachment nor spit fire, but he could have taken advantage of the platform afforded him to elaborate on his team’s investigative findings in a way that would have brought clarity to tens of millions as well as better position Congressional Democrats and a few courageous Republicans to carry out their political and constitutional duties. Had his words been forceful and pointed, they could have also cut deep holes in the false narrative tapestry of Trump, Barr, Fox News, and others to defend Trump’s indefensible actions.

2. Mueller opened and closed his statement by calling attention to the fact of massive and coordinated Russian interference in our elections. Fair enough; it should be addressed. But that isn’t the main problem facing our democratic and constitutional system. Trump and his gang are. This fact should have figured far more explicitly in Mueller’s statement yesterday.

3. I still like Pelosi’s approach to impeachment. I find that many of the Impeach Now advocates traffic in facile assumptions about the readiness of millions of Americans to jump on the impeachment bandwagon as well as the positive impact of an impeachment process on the elections. Pelosi is right that impeachment is, above all, a political process and thus the case for impeachment has to be built in Washington and around the country. But it isn’t built yet. Politics takes patience as well as boldness. This is a dynamic situation and it will be interesting to see what polls show next week.

4. Why isn’t a rebuke of Trump at the polls next year a powerful repudiation of Trump’s authoritarian mode of governing? Why isn’t it a deterrent to future presidents who might like to embrace his governing style? Does defeat of Trump at the ballot box really pale in impact to his impeachment, especially when the former is far more doable than the latter?

5. “The center cannot hold” has become the favored phrase of political commentators these days. And the results of the European Parliamentary elections have provided fresh meat for this argument as the left and, especially, the right gained ground at the expense of traditional parties.

That said, I would offer three thoughts on this matter. One is changes at the economic level alone don’t explain this phenomenon; two: the experience of each country requires close and concrete examination; and three: any idea that the center (which is a mass trend) is no longer of any political consequence is completely wrongheaded. Such a conclusion would doom our hope of defeating Trump next year. Unity — broad, diverse, and expansive — has to be the watchword in these perilous times.

I post this every Memorial Day to remember my friends whose lives were cut short in the Vietnam War. Let’s continue to lift our voices against the insanity of war and insist that peace be given a chance. Too many flowers have gone. SW 

Today, I will again lift a pint of ale in memory of my three friends and their comrades who died in Vietnam.

I honor them without honoring the aggressive and unjust war in which they fought.

I don’t know what their reasons were for joining the military, maybe it was simply that the draft gave them no choice, but it really doesn’t matter. What I do know, f0r sure, is that their lives were unnecessarily cut short.

As a young peace activist in the late 60s, I probably didn’t always make a distinction between the soldiers fighting the war and the war itself. The soldier and the general were equally responsible as I saw it.

But I think differently now. I place the main responsibility for war on its architects in high places and a social system – capitalism – whose logic is to expand, dominate, and make war.

Ricky, Tuna and Cotter — my friends, all of whom were good at merrymaking — were at the bottom of the food chain of war making, nothing but cannon fodder, They were working class kids whose lives didn’t count for much in our government’s war plans. None of them were born with a silver spoon in their mouths, which is why in no small measure they ended up with a gun in their hand so far away from their homes.

I will always wonder what kind of lives they would have lived has they safely returned. With no hero’s welcome, no counseling waiting for them, no easy slide into a well paying job, I can’t help but think if they would have had the internal resources and support to come to terms with their war experience and live productive lives?

I easily (perhaps unfairly) doubt it, because each of them was not that different from me, and I have no confidence at all that I could have made that transition. It was hard enough to grow up in the 1960s without the ghastly and up close bloodletting of Vietnam on my emotional resume.

I wish, though, that they had a chance. I wish that their lives hadn’t been wasted doing things that no one should be forced to do. I wish that they had the opportunity to live long and, to the degree possible, joyfully.

I miss them. I celebrate them. They were “my buddies, my friends.” I wish they could join me at the Bronx Ale House today for a pint in their honor, although knowing them, I suspect, a single pint wouldn’t quite satisfy them, or me for that matter.

I also wish that we would toast to the millions in our generation who opposed the war. Some of them lost their lives, some of them went to jail, and some of them were scarred by the experience. They, too, deserve to be honored. In choosing to oppose the war, it was our generation’s “Finest Hour.”

Finally, I like to think that the four of us would clink glasses to the people of Vietnam who suffered so much during and after the war, and who are now rebuilding their country in conditions of peace.

Maybe that would be too much to expect. Unfortunately, I will never know. They will join me only in memory this afternoon. I wish it were different, but I will treasure their memory anyway, as I wash down my pint of ale.

The singular focus on the draconian features of the abortion bill passed by the Alabama legislature is understandable. They are draconian. But such a narrow focus can easily become a problem when it is turned into a pivot by anti-abortion advocates and too many well meaning people to legitimize a more “reasonable and humane” legislative bill to limit a woman’s right to make her own reproductive decisions.

The framing in this contentious fight isn’t pro-life vs pro-choice, but pro-choice vs anti- choice.

War threats and the peace movement is barely in sight. Ironically, peace sentiment endures, and broadly so, and acts as a restraint on Trump’s war making. The Iraq debacle still resonates with lots of people across the country. This enduring feeling provides the ground on which to not only challenge the Trump administration’s militarist rhetoric and actions, but also the assumptions that underlie both.