Trump will soon be in the White House, Republicans as of last week control Congress, and the Supreme Court by the spring will be back in possession of right wing extremists. A similar situation is found in a majority of states. And the power and reach of the right doesn’t end here.

Our side, on the other hand, has a well spring of political, cultural, media, and people resources and experience as well as the majority of voters who cast their ballot for Hillary Clinton in the election (and many more who didn’t vote at all) to prosecute our struggles. But our political and organizational capacities don’t match our adversaries at this moment.

Just read an article in the Nation – part of the special issue on President Obama – authored by the historian Greg Grandin. He ends his article with the famous observation of Rosa Luxemburg, “Socialism or Barbarism.” And then he adds, maybe on second thought, “or Social Democracy.” On one one level of analysis, this has undeniable merit and urgency, although I do think that socialism, if it is going to resonate with tens of millions, has to be accompanied by qualifying adjectives such as democratic, participatory, peoples, etc.

But I’m getting distracted here. My main point is that Grandin’s invocation of Luxemburg fails miserably as a strategic guide at this moment when in a few short weeks Trump and his right wing party will control the main levers of federal power and much more. In these circumstances, the strategic-political imperatives are twofold. One is a many sided, many leveled defense, and where possible an expansion, of broadly defined democracy and democratic rights. The other is the assembling of a broad, diverse, multi-class, multi-racial people’s coalition that possesses the moral authority, reach, and power to successfully prosecute such struggles. Socialism should be part of the conversation, but it isn’t an immediate strategic task or realistic possibility, given the balance of class and social forces at this moment. Every season has a purpose.

Once in office Trump will have his hands’ full negotiating the tension between his populist image and his anti-populist policies. And it will only get worse over time. Of course, the democratic, multi-class, people’s coalition that opposes his policies will have its hands’ full too. For the foreseeable future, it will be on the defensive by and large. In other words, our side won’t be setting the agenda for the most part at the national level; at the state and city level a different situation obtains in many cases. We will be reacting to what will likely be a broad scale, deeply reactionary, and anti-democratic political-legislative offensive in the early months of Trump’s presidency. Only expansive concepts of struggle and unity that have an eye to activating the nearly 70 million Clinton voters first of all will have any success in this unprecedented situation.

None of this suggests in the least that we should mothball an alternative vision for our country as we engage on the immediate terrain of struggle. It is needed now more than ever.

Hope, in the words of Tom Waite, “everything is alright with you and your dreams come true,” as we say goodbye this evening to the old year and look ahead, albeit with a mix of trepidation and resolve, to the new one.

Happy New Year!

1. In this election when the Republican candidate represented a different kind of danger, or evil if you will, any assessment of the left’s role has to go beyond how people on the left voted. Most, it is probably fair to say, voted for Hillary, but that alone isn’t an adequate measure of it’s role. In fact, other considerations carry greater weight, especially its mobilizing role in quantitative and qualitative terms.

2. It seems to me that the left had a very flawed strategy from the outset of this year’s elections. It was framed as a struggle against neoliberalism by most of the left. And that never changed in any meaningful way as the campaign moved from one phase to another. As a result, most of the left sat on its hands this fall, while reminding anyone who would listen that Hillary was a very “flawed” candidate in order to protect their “radical” credentials and inoculate its audience from “bourgeois” illusions. And, as election day approached, they proudly proclaimed, as if it was a badge of honor, that they would vote for Hillary, while holding their nose. Some even cast their ballot for Stein. Because the elections were so closely contested, one has to wonder if the outcome might have been different if the left – and Bernie as well – had adopted a year ago a different strategic approach that singled out the overarching necessity of defeating the right.

3. I worry that across the coalition that supported Hillary too many are concluding that “identity politics” – not a term I like because it leads to too much confusion – should give way to class or economic populist politics that are more unifying. Such a framing would be a huge mistake. It was unsuccessful in the past. And it will be of no help in the near term as we go up against Trump and a revengeful right wing regime. Hillary attempted, in my opinion, to interrelate the two; she may not have been successful, but she had the right idea. And that is the challenge going forward.