If anybody asked me — and I doubt if anybody will — I would suggest that August 28, the anniversay of the 1963 Freedom March, be turned into a day when all the streams of the working class and people’s movement descend on the nation’s capital where the stage would be set for a massive mobillization this fall and an even more massive turnout on Election Day.

A section of the left is wedded to a view of the Democratic Party – and it goes back more than a half century – that resists any adjustments in its thinking and practice no matter the alignment of class and social forces, no matter the election’s stakes, no matter the shifts in thinking in a progressive direction among Congressional Democrats. I suspect that we will see this dynamic in full play once again this fall. On the other hand, millions of people, including people on the left, don’t subscribe to this mode of thinking. And that’s a good thing!

The events of recent weeks have revealed a structural flaw in and a dangerous feature of our political system insofar as the president can decide, practically speaking, whether or not the country goes to war irrespective of what Congress and the American people, even the president’s advisors, think is the best course of action.

While this has always been the case, it comes into sharp and bold relief in recent days and weeks as Trump’s decision to go to war against Iran was soley decided by a self described “genius.” Neither Congress nor the American people had any say in the matter. Nor did the views of even his own party and movement figure into the decision. And even if they did, it wouldn’t have mattered. In his mind, it was his decision alone.

While this feature of our political system can’t be changed overnight, it should be on the agenda of the American people going forward, including in the coming elections this fall. The stakes are too high for it not to be. Tump’s war against Iran starkly reminds us that it is a life and death question.

A mature movement of the left not only gives people space to change their political positions that life has proved mistaken, but welcomes such changes by them. Assembling a movement of the majority in the interests of the immense majority becomes a sisyphean task without such an attitude.

Know your adversary is an ABC of politics and political struggle. In picking a fight with Pope Leo, Trump obviously forgot, if he ever learned, this rule. The support for the Pope and his message of peace has been overwhelming and from nearly every quarter, save the Republican Party, Fox News, and the MAGA movement.