Looks like Trump and GOP may well attempt to make “illegal immigration and porous borders” the overarching issue framing the coming elections. They figure it plays well in those CDs where they have to protect GOP House incumbents, while at the same time making it difficult for a number of Democratic Senators to defend their seats in red states, such as Missouri.

I don’t take too seriously Trump’s mention of a path to citizenship for Dreamers yesterday. If anything, he’s perhaps thinking that some form of a path to citizenship for Dreamers could be the chip to entice Democrats into signing an immigration bill that would be draconian and catastrophic for immigrants and their families.

1. “Cave In” would fit if Democrats had power to leverage to begin with. But that wasn’t the case. The other party controls government in toto at least until November. On the positive side, CHIP is now funded, the Democrats and the rest of us can fight another day, and a rift among Senate Republicans might give Democrats some room to maneuve

2. Not persuaded at all that an extended shutdown of the government would play out in the favor of the Dreamers, the Democrats, or the larger movement. In fact, a prolonged closure could easily dissipate public support for the Dreamers and our side generally. In effect, we could end up losing ground in the immediate battle as well as the larger war in November. Sometimes tactical retreats are necessary, and I believe that is the case here.

3. Leveraging a government shutdown to secure political demands, no matter how just and righteous they are, is difficult in any conditions, but that is especially so when optics — if not reality — suggest that Democrats initiated the closure and when the other side not only holds a tight grip on the main branches of government, but is determined to give the Democrats and democratic movement no legislative achievements to tout in the fall elections unless the weight of public opinion gives them no other alternative. And it may well be the case with regard to the Dreamers now that the legislative fight is disconnected from a shutdown government.

4. From the shutdown debate, it is clear that the strategy of Trump and the right wing extremists is to cast, with a cascade of lies, demagogy, and disinformation, the Democrats as the “party of porous borders and Illegal immigration.” In their cynical calculus, they believe that such fear mongering will play well in those states and congressional districts that they figure they must retain this fall when voters go to the polls.

Their tactic that rests on the murky, but time tested ground of racism and nativism should be resisted by Democrats and the rest of the resistance movement. But not by giving up even an inch in their defense of immigrants in general and Dreamers in particular; in fact, they should embrace with new vigor these civil rights issues of the 21st century.

At the same time, they shouldn’t allow themselves to boxed in by the Trump/Republican sound bite-tweet machine, as the elections draw close. Indeed, they should speak — and I’m sure they will — to the whole range of issues that are weighing heavily on the entire electorate, while articulating an overarching narrative or story of a country that is generous of spirit, welcoming, inclusive, and rises when all rise, beginning with people who dally encounter discrimination, oppression, and violence.

5. And not least, nearly 100 years ago, someone named Lenin wrote:”In Russia, however, lengthy, painful and sanguinary experience has taught us the truth that revolutionary tactics cannot be built on a revolutionary mood alone. Tactics must be based on a sober and strictly objective appraisal of all the class forces in a particular state (and of the states that surround it, and of all states the world over) as well as of the experience of revolutionary movements. It is very easy to show one’s “revolutionary” temper merely by hurling abuse at parliamentary opportunism, or merely by repudiating participation in parliaments; its very ease, however, cannot turn this into a solution of a difficult, a very difficult, problem.”

Not sure we have fully metabolized his advice.

1. “Cave In” would fit if Democrats had power to leverage to begin with. But that wasn’t the case. The other party controls government in toto at least until November. On the positive side, CHIP is now funded, the Democrats and the rest of us can fight another day, and a rift among Senate Republicans might give Democrats some room to maneuve

1. Like January 21, 2017, yesterday’s women’s marches electrified the country, and its echoes were heard around the world. Once again, millions of people, led by courageous women, young and old, took to the streets of our nation’s capital and hundreds of other cities and towns. It was an explosion of social protest, both organized and spontaneous, as well as a dramatic assertion of women’s autonomy and an insistence for a society free of sexual harassment, exploitation, and violence. Not least, it constituted a massive repudiation of Trump and everything he stands for. And not left out of the mix were other urgent concerns, including the fate of the Dreamers, racism, the threat to the environment, and the upcoming midterm elections.

It would be a stupid’s man’s bet to think that the energy and righteous demands on display yesterday will go away anytime soon. Though Trump, the GOP and a patriarchal society don’t realize it, a political juggernaut, guided by a vision of gender equality, justice, peace, and the eradication of Trump and Trumpism is IN for the long haul. As the Civil Rights song says, “ain’t nobody going to turn us around.”

2. My Take — the shutdown could have been easily avoided had it not been for Trump and the extreme right of the Republican right in Congress and the White House.

Democrats were ready to make a compromise that would keep the federal government open, while at the same time protecting Dreamers, health care for children, and others living on the edge. Bernie Sanders made the point yesterday that DACA was essential, but Democrats were also committed to funding other essential programs — not later but now.

The challenge for the larger movement now is twofold. First, counter the Trump-right wing narrative that Schumer and the Democrats are responsible for the shutdown. And, second, express support for Congressional Democrats as well as remind them once again that the defense of Dreamers and other people in vulnerable situations shouldn’t be bargained away.

3. Small-d democratic movements which capture and energize millions of people can’t be rolled out smoothly. There will be missteps, wrong turns, excesses, tensions, competing priorities and centers, etc. They can’t be choreographed. That’s the nature of movements with a mass and spontaneous character.

The main thing, it seems to me, is twofold. First, resist the movement’s opponents who do everything to depreciate its just demands and divide its participants. And, second, lend energy and a unifying (and principled) spirit to these mass, popular, long overdue democratic surges.

4. Any compelling economic narrative on the part of Democrats and the rest of the resistance movement has to give special attention to raising living standards in general and among the lowest paid workers in particular. And the ways to do that are many, although it should be unequivocally said that such a narrative shouldn’t be set against so-called “identity” issues. The class struggle will quickly hit a dead end if it isn’t organically connected to the struggle for equality, democratic rights, and democracy in general.

5. Marxism understands class as a wide brimmed, variegated, inclusive, and fluid phenomenon, grounded in an exploitive production process. But it has become evident that sections of white workers don’t abide by this understanding. In voting for Trump the candidate and supporting Trump the president, they set aside, if they ever embraced, this understanding of class.

In its place, they substituted a notion of class that is sectional, racialized, gendered, nativist, exclusivist, and zero sum. Whiteness, masculinity, and americanness became the main markers for their social identity and political outlook.

This shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. After all, the default position of the U.S. working class historically hasn’t been that of a tightly knit and politically progressive social grouping. If anything, that has been as much the exception as the rule. Nixon’s Southern Strategy, Wallace’s presidential bid, Reagan’s ascendency, and the rise of the right over the past 40 years — each was able to draw a section of white workers into their camp. Seen from this angle, Trump’s support among white workers isn’t an aberration.

I would also add that full blown class understanding-consciousness doesn’t simply and inexorably issue from a worker’s position in a system of social production. It is, instead, historically conditioned and politically constituted in the the course of a protracted struggle.

1. My Take — the shutdown could have been easily avoided had it not been for Trump and the extreme right of the Republican right in Congress and the White House.

Democrats were ready to make a compromise that would keep the federal government open, while at the same time protecting Dreamers, health care for children, and others living on the edge. Bernie Sanders made the point yesterday that DACA was  essential, but Democrats were also committed to funding other essential programs — not later but now.

2. Small (d) democratic movements which capture and energize millions can’t be rolled out smoothly, with no missteps, no wrong turns, no excesses, no tensions, no competing priorities or centers, etc. That’s not the nature of movements that possess a mass and (to no small degree) spontaneous character.

To think that it is possible to choreograph every step is a fool’s errand. The main thing, it seems to me, is twofold. First, resist the movement’s opponents who do everything to depreciate its just demands and divide its participants. And, second, lend energy and a unifying (and principled) spirit to these mass, popular, long overdue democratic surges.

3. Any compelling economic narrative on the part of Democrats and the rest of the resistance movement has to give special attention to raising living standards in general and among the lowest paid workers in particular. And the ways to do that are many, although it should be unequivocally said that such a narrative shouldn”t be counterposed to so called “identity” issues. The class struggle will quickly hit a dead end if it isn’t organically connected to the struggle for equality, democratic rights, and democracy in general.

4. Marxism understands class as a wide brimmed, variegated, inclusive, and fluid phenomenon. But it has become evident that sections of white workers don’t abide by this understanding. In voting for Trump the candidate and supporting Trump the president, they set aside, if they ever embraced, this understanding of class.

In its place, they substituted a notion of class that is sectional, racialized, gendered, nativist, exclusivist, and zero sum. Whiteness, masculinity, and americanness became the main markers for their social identity and political outlook.

This shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. First, the default position of the U.S. working class historically hasn’t been that of a tightly knit and politically progressive social grouping. If anything, that has been as much the exception than the rule. Nixon’s Southern Strategy, Wallace’s presidential bid. Reagan’s election strategy, and the rise of the right over the past 40 years — each was able to draw a section of white workers into their camp. Seen from this angle, Trump’s support among white workers isn’t an aberration.

It also reminds us that full blown class understanding-consciouness doesn’t simply and inexorably issue from a worker’s position in a system of social production. It is, instead, historically and politically constituted in the the course of a protracted struggle.