Lincoln didn’t possess the most radical outlook as a candidate or president, but what set him apart and served the country well was his strategic depth, his capacity to change his views in the face of new experience and sober self-reflection, steely determination when things weren’t going well, and nearly unmatched ability to capture in few words the stakes and meaning of the Civil War..

Climate science, not to mention the need to set the economy on a self sustaining and equitable trajectory, should tell us that a Green New Deal is long overdue. Its realization, in its robust version, will take something similar to what it took to legislate the New Deal in the 1930s — an aroused and informed public, an engaged labor movement, a multi-racial coalition of the many, and a political realignment at the national level in a progressive and left direction. A big challenge, but within reach.

Finally reading “At Canaan’s Edge,” the last volume of Taylor Branch’s history of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. In his extraordinary telling, MLK is somehow able to navigate waters in which he is simultaneously pressured to go slow by some and proceed at breakneck speed by others. I’m no expert, but I believe he — with others — did it well in circumstances that were fraught with tensions, filled with competing pulls, and resistant to formulaic answers. In reading this monumental history, I’m reminded that determining the proper pace (and scale) of reform in conditions in which the political fabric has ruptured and the boundaries of the politically possible have expanded, is a reoccurring dilemma and first class challenge for leaders and movements that entertain transformational hopes. In studying King’s life and work we can find some clues as to how to do that as we attempt to navigate another turbulent period in our country’s life. In my later years in the Communist Party I would sometimes say that we might learn more from studying King’s United States (and Allende’s Chile) than Lenin’s Russia. It would raise an eyebrow or two.

The only good thing about Trump’s State of the Union is that its shelf life will be short. Larger political realities will take center stage — the shutdown, the border wall, a probable declaration of a national emergency, congressional investigations, the Mueller report, etc. — and very quickly eclipse in the public mind his SOTU speech.

I’m not surprised that some of the polling registers a positive response to the speech. Lots of people figure it could have been a lot worse. For these people any sign, no matter how small a break from Trumpian chaos and recklessness, is welcomed, albeit with fingers crossed and a nagging feeling that it won’t last even one or two news cycles. It shouldn’t be taken to mean that millions suddenly executed an about face in their attitude toward Trump last night.

1. Trump, it appears, will declare a national emergency and order the building of a wall along the southwestern border. This is dangerous, undemocratic, and authoritarian on its face. It rests on pure invention. There is no border crisis. If there is a crisis, it is a crisis of a crumbling presidency, increasingly besieged on all sides. And herein lies the other danger of his declaration of emergency powers. It could easily become a precedent that Trump would unhesitatingly  employ as other walls close in on him. It goes without saying that this declaration should be vigorously contested from every side — Congress, the streets, the courts, the media.

2. A sober minded radicalism and a reality grounded marxism would give Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues  their rightful due for their role in the Trump engineered government shutdown. There were other players in this drama for sure, including government workers and working people generally. And they had a significant hand in bringing an end to this sorry episode, which should also be said. Still the role of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressional Democrats was crucial every step of the way. To accord them no role or damn them with faint praise is analytically wrong and politically counterproductive. It feeds the notion that both parties are to blame for our present predicament, not to mention takes any complexity and novelty out of the process of social change in favor of a simplified “from the bottom up” scheme. In doing so, it fits facts to ideological predispositions. Never a good idea, and at this moment it stinks.

3. Of the candidates likely to run only a few fit into the New Democrat mold, if we judge them by their present political positions, which we largely should. A mature and engaged movement not only allows people to change without a lot of bellyaching, but also understands that changing circumstances change the minds of politicians and people generally. Lincoln, Roosevelt and Johnson are examples of this dialectic..

I doubt if any Democrat aspiring for the nomination will run as a Bill Clinton Democrat. Why would they? The party (and millions across the country), after all, are tacking in a progressive direction. Democracy, equality, economic fairness, humane immigration reform, planetary sustainability, and thumping Trump next year will frame the conversation of Democrats, not austerity, unregulated markets, and triangulation.

4. One question that can’t be definitively answered at this point is: is the Republican Party by its stubborn support of Trump, if not sounding its immediate death knell, relegating itself to a minority status in the longer term? Sure, it can utilize undemocratic means to prevent such an outcome, as it has, but it will be more difficult if Democrats score big in next year’s election. Such an outcome would position tens of millions of engaged people, an array of social movements, and the Democratic Party to democratize the laws, rules, and some of the structures of the existing political system. This would make a GOP comeback a much steeper climb.

5. The criticism of Kamala Harris coming fast and furious in the wake of her announcement to run for president once again reminds me that, among other things, some on the left dislike nothing more than liberals. This is wrongheaded at any time, but it is sure not smart in this moment when Trump sits in the White House and a crucial election is around the corner.

The ascendancy of Trump has imposed strategic and tactical coherence on the left, but it remains partial, incomplete, and reversible. And I’m afraid that may become more evident as we get deeper into the Democratic presidential primary. Political maximalism, ideological purity, and the politics of “class” could weaken, if not dissolve, the imperative for unity against right wing authoritarianism.

6. I learned years ago that an answer to the question “what is to be done?” depends in large measure on the balance of power in and across society at any given moment. In other words, the prospects of change in a progressive or retrogressive direction turns on the distribution of power among competing class and social constituencies on the macro level of politics.

The balance of power, however, shouldn’t be understood statically. It changes over time and sometimes abruptly in one direction or another. Still ascertaining the balance of power at any given moment is crucial if we hope to figure out what is to be done — strategically, tactically, and politically.