When I commented yesterday on Elizabeth Warren’s speech to the AFL-CIO executive board a few days after the election, I left something out, thinking maybe it wasn’t germane, even though it bothered me. But while driving home last night after visiting my daughter and her family, I decided that it is germane enough (to me anyway) to make an additional comment today. By this point, you’re probably thinking – alright, already. Get to the point!

Ok. I hear you.

What troubled me is that not even a mention of the name Hillary Clinton found a place in her speech – let alone a word of thanks to her after what was an incredibly grueling campaign. Even if Warren disagrees with her positions on one thing or another, or even she thinks Hillary’s words and actions alone sealed her fate on election day (much too simplistic in my view), Hillary, as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, deserved a few words of appreciation in her remarks to labor’s leadership.

She isn’t on the other side of the great political divide that fractures our country. In fact, she (and women and young girls generally) were the object of an unrelieved and vicious attack from the right during this campaign. And at its core was the language of undisguised sexism and misogyny. Indeed it was so pervasive that no documentation is needed to prove the point. Even veiled, and not so veiled, messages of violence came Hillary’s way, including from the president elect.

Nor did Warren convey, in this moment of great unease and a spike in reported attacks against immigrants, people of color, women, and gay people, even a word of thanks to Hillary (or the President) for unhesitatingly standing up to the brazen politics of hate and bigotry of Trump and his gang. No doubt, this principled defense of tens of millions of people by Hillary infuriated the right and it surely hurt her on election day, as a section of voters across the Midwest, and even more so in the South, concluded, with the help of right wing networks on the ground, right wing talk radio and TV, and Trump himself, that Hillary won’t be “their president,” notwithstanding what she said to the contrary.

Of the many qualities that progressive and left leaders and movements should possess, if they hope to become a major player in U.S. politics, and eventually govern, a crucial one is a generosity of spirit. Or, as Michelle Obama said in much more compelling language, “when they go low, we do high.” And if I looked for a New York minute I could easily find a similar remark spoken by Martin Luther King. He had, after all, this spirit by the bucketsful, which explains in no small part why he was able to inspire and lead millions.

To be fair, in her speech, Elizabeth Warren didn’t go low, but she didn’t go high either. And that’s a problem as I see it. Hillary deserved better. She isn’t by any accounting an enemy; nor is she even an unreconstructed neoliberal, unwilling to reconsider and change her views.

Moreover, she has resisted the politics of the Republican right far longer than Warren has, and that should count for something, even if she has shown no desire to challenge the whole system of neoliberal financialization, globalization, and governance. But that’s true about most politicians and people.

Nor is it an unimportant consideration that Hillary would have been the first woman to sit in the Oval office. That too should have been mentioned (and regretted) in her speech.

Finally, Hillary’s – as well as President Obama’s – voice will be needed if we hope to turn back the assault that will come from the Trump administration and the Republicans in Congress. That too should have been in Warren’s speech. The Freedom Train now and for the foreseeable future needs everybody on board who upholds progress, democracy, equality, peace, and decency. And by that measure, Hillary Clinton and President Obama, who command the respect of tens of millions, should be wholeheartedly welcomed. Selective seating that only gives a seat to like minded people is, simply put, stupid and dangerous.

My hope: After a well deserved vacation, both of them will climb aboard as we move into the future.

Speaking to the AFL-CIO Executive Council this past Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D.-Mass., said, “… there are many millions of people who did not vote for Donald Trump because of the bigotry and hate that fueled his campaign rallies. They voted for him despite the hate. They voted for him out of frustration and anger – and also out of hope that he would bring change.

“If Trump is ready to go on rebuilding economic security for millions of Americans,” Warren added, “then count me in.”

Where is the evidence that many millions voted for Trump “despite the hate?” If she can’t offer any evidence – and she doesn’t – then it becomes a very problematic claim, to put the best face on it. And even if it were true, it avoids the larger question that she should have addressed at that meeting, as to why so many white people, including white workers, could so easily throw people of color under the bus, even if they thought he was a change agent? Anger alone isn’t an adequate explanation. Especially when we consider that over the past week numerous reports of physical violence, intimidation, and bigotry directed at people of color, immigrants, gay people, and women have been reported. I just read a story of middle school white children In Royal Oak, Michigan, chanting “Build the Wall, as Latino students looked on in shock and fear.

Which further convinces me of two things. One is that the election’s outcome can’t simply be explained by the class resentments of white people. Another is that any progressive economic populism (and Warren from her remarks seems to agree with this) that doesn’t address the politics of “bigotry and hate” will neither present a serious challenge to the Trump administration or Republican controlled Congress, nor improve the economic conditions of our multi-racial, male and female, native born and immigrant, gay and straight working class and people.

In this regard, I found the observations of Theda Skocpol, Harvard sociologist and author of a book on the Tea Party, to John Judis’ article on the elections helpful in understanding the outcome of this election as well as elaborating a way forward in what will surely be difficult and dangerous times.

Here is her (longish) reply:

“John, your piece is an elegant example of a genre of post-election autopsy that works no better, I fear, than those polling models.

You offer speculative interpretations of exit poll responses (known to be problematic data) presented as margins for various voter blocs in an aggregate national election and a lot of creative argument that HRC was a poor candidate because voters did not hear the economic message you wish she had delivered. Two problems: national polls showed that voters said she was better than Trump on plans for the economy. That is a small problem, however, because virtually no real policy discussion occurred in this election. Second, huger problem: HRC actually won the national aggregate election you are imagining in the TPM piece by a whopping 2.5 million or more votes. If America were what you measure here, she would be President-Elect.

The problem is that the United States is a federation that conducts fifty separate winner take all plurality elections for president. There too, she lost by a hair in half a dozen states. But the problem was Trump ran up huge margins in nonmetro rural, small town and some outer-suburban areas. Factory workers, even former ones are few and far between there. Previous work shows that Trump voters are NOT disportionately affected by trade disruptions, factory closings, etc. What is more likely is that these nonmetro areas had organized networks – NRA, Christian Right, some RNC and Koch network/AFP presence – that amplified the right media attacks (including racialized attacks – SW) on HRC nonstop and persuaded many non-college women and some college women in those areas to go for Trump because of the Supreme Court. (my italics)

You say Trump had no organization. True enough for his own campaign. HRC had the typical well-funded presidential-moment machine, an excellent one. We on the center left seem to treat these presidential machines as organization, and they are, but they are not as effective as longstanding natural organized networks (my italics). To get some of those working for him, Trump made deals to get the NRA , Christian right and GOP federated operations on his side. They have real, extensive reach into nonmetro areas. But off the coasts, Democrats no longer have such reach beyond what a presidential campaign does on its own. Public sector and private sector unions have been decimated. And most of the rest of the Democratic-aligned infrastructure is metro based and focused. That infrastructure is also fragmented into hundreds of little issue and identity organizations run by professionals.

HRC’s narrow loss was grounded in this absent non-metro infrastructure – and Dem Party losses in elections overall even more so. Obama overcame that deficit. But he is a once in half century figure. How can anyone blame the HRC campaign for failing to equal Obama’s margins among minorities? No Democrat would have done so. For sure, Bernie would not have done so.

Why do these different analytical approaches (aggregate attitudinal vs. organizational) matter? Because they lead to very different prescriptions for what should be done next. Mine says Democrats have to create sustained organizational reach, not just at election time, stretching beyond metropolitan communities and states (my italics). Yours, however, is the conventional wisdom: This type of argument is used to argue that Democrats must “message” better and move left on policy issues to attract an imaginary factory-based white working class. How would that have worked in an election where the media never conveyed any policy substance at all? Even next time, if a Trump type does not take over the media, all that approach would do is take the war to imaginary terrain. Failed HRC messaging about trade, etc. was not the reason Trump won. There are few such voters in non-metro America and none would hear trade pact focused messages plausible in the actual lives. In much of non-metro America, families and marriages are fragile, drug deaths are rampant, churches are the only community institutions, men try to piece together service and construction jobs, low paid, while women do the same and try to raise kids. Democrats and their messages hardly penetrate at all, and they seem directed at worlds these people do not live in. Indeed, Dem messages seem directed at blacks and browns – there is a lot of racial anxiety at work. (my italics)

You just have to get out and drive around America and listen and look to know this is the world that went for Trump and against HRC (and would have gone against Bernie even more). I analyzed the polls from the primaries, by the way: Bernie’s support was young, liberal whites. especially men. In most states, he did not attract extra working class support at all, outside of cities and university communities.

The key for Democrats is to build outward and look for issues that touch the lives of both urban and non-metro families. HRC made headway. More opportunities will soon arrive, for example if Trump/Ryan really do try to privatize Medicare and remove the huge ObamaCare subsidies that help so many in both urban and non-metro areas.”

I would add – and I bet Skocpal would agree – that for such an approach to be successful, it has to become the property of the labor movement and the rest of the far flung democratic coalition in addition to the Democratic Party. And no less important, the struggle against racism, sexism and misogyny, nativisim, Islamophobia, homophobia, and segregation – in its geographical and other dimensions – has to be addressed with every bit as much vigor (and creativity) as the “natural organized networks” and candidates of the Republican right relentlessly peddle these toxins in order to exploit the fears, resentments, and misunderstandings (including a sense of “earned” racialized entitlement and advantage) of white people and reinforce their social and spatial separation from the Other.

The actions of big city Democratic mayors today to protect immigrants is a practical example, demonstrating that the Democratic Party has not only a place, but an important role to play in resisting the Trump administration and its agenda.  Any notion that the Democratic Party should be “blown up,” which I have heard from some on the left, is irresponsible to put it diplomatically.

Reforming it is quite another thing, but that is the prerogative of Democratic party leaders and activists. And even that process, I hope, would be done without forgetting the earthquake that occurred a week ago and what it portends for the future.

And while I’m on problematic notions, I would include any idea that the left or progressives or “the movement” is enough to turn back the coming threats to democracy, democratic rights, economic livelihoods, and planetary sustainability. Only a coalition of the immense majority, anchored among working people, people of color, women, young people, immigrants, LBGQT, seniors, urban and rural America, Democrats, independents, moderate Republicans, and anyone else ready to climb on board has the wherewithal to prevent what looks like the deluge to come. If we ever needed wide angled and big tent strategic thinking and flexible tactics, it’s now.

And one final thing, people on the left should spend no time reminding each other or anyone else that our democracy is limited and restricted. What purpose does it serve other than to protect our own radical credentials. When our democracy, freedoms, and future are threatened, it is imperative to make people aware of this impending danger and provide them with entry points to participate in an expanding coalition that can withstand this assault.

Yesterday I read Bernie Sanders’ op-ed in the NY Times. To write, as he does, that the vote across the Midwest was a “protest vote,” and leave it at that, is shocking. But, as much as I appreciate what he has done as a presidential candidate in the primary and then supporter of Hillary in the general election, I’m not completely surprised by his characterization. This isn’t, after all, the first time that his “class politics” have come up wanting in my opinion.

When Trump throws particular sections of the working class and their communities under the bus, as he did in the campaign, and will more than likely do in his presidency, no one, including Bernie, should do anything to dignify or give legitimacy to the white workers who helped elect him. But in attaching “protest” to their vote,” Bernie does exactly that. It would be fairer to characterize their vote as “scabbing,” but that wouldn’t be helpful either. At least one has to ask why Trump’s brazen politics and rhetoric of hate didn’t, to use the words of Detroit Pistons basketball coach, Stan Van Gundy, immediately “disqualify” him to be president, no matter what else he said, in the moral and political calculus of white workers in the Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and other battleground states?

“Them versus Us,” especially in our country, isn’t class politics, if it doesn’t include at its core an understanding of other forms of oppression experienced by particular sections of the working class and their communities – people of color, women, immigrants, LGBQT – along with a readiness to resist these oppressions by the entire working class. And this applies with special force to those sections of the working class who aren’t the object of such oppressions, or who even gain relative advantage over their class brothers and sisters because of them.

Lenin, who is out of favor these days, insisted more than any Marxist in the last century – and probably this – that the struggle against oppression in its various forms (or, as he would sometimes write, the struggle for democratic rights and equality of every section of the working class and people) is an indispensable training school for the formation of a mature and class consciousness working class and the bedrock of working class unity. It also is, he would argue, the adhesive of strategic alliances and wider forms of unity. And absent that any hope of a better and brighter future is wishful thinking.

Thus anything that back benches this terrain of struggle, especially now when the assembling of the most diverse (including Democrats and their elected leaders) and united coalition is absolutely imperative and urgent, is a mistake of the highest order. The barbarians, after all, are no longer at the gate, but occupying the fortress from the federal government on down and expect them to move quickly.

I first read this poem by W.H. Auden, titled “September 1, 1939,” nearly 50 years ago, while attending a small catholic college in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Those were pre-political years for me, but still it resonated. Since then I have dug it up now and then for a little enjoyment as well as inspiration. But today the poem touches me in a deeply existential way, and I’m sure that needs no explanation. Here is the last stanza:

“Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.”