After listening to Trump’s reactions to the awful mass killings of gay people in Orlando (who did nothing but joyfully and unapologetically celebrate their humanity and sexuality in what they thought was – and should have been – a safe space), I can only think that each of us and the country would be best served if we join with labor and the many other social organizations in their efforts to register, speak to, educate, and bring voters to the polls on election day. This might not feel radical, but in this moment it is. The defeat of Trump and other Republicans down the ticket in a landslide would save our country from a very bleak future, create a favorable terrain to pursue a progressive agenda in 2017 and beyond, and constitute one way to honor the deaths of 49 innocent people. Squirreling ourselves off in left and progressive initiatives that highlight this or that issue, while keeping a distance from the practical on the ground tasks and conversations that are necessary to winning this election strikes me as counterproductive.

Heard this song this morning on my way to my new hangout, “The Outdated.” (coffee shop in Kingston, NY). Couldn’t help but think of the horrific hate crime in Orlando that took so many lives for doing nothing but following their human desires.

I think the notion that Hilary is an unmitigated disaster, but a bit better than Trump is wrong on more than one level, and especially on matters of democracy, broadly understood. We don’t have to heap praise on her at every moment, but we should avoid as well attaching nothing but scorn to her. Neither one is a good measure of her. She operates in the center of the political spectrum – much like the president – and the defeat of Trump and Republicans down the ticket will take a coalition of center and progressive/left forces – to begin with.

Left and progressive people can’t do it on their own. If they could, they would have done it a long time ago. But here is the problem: Too often I find that people on the left/progressive end of politics, who in their desire to protect their “radical” credentials and popularity, worry too much about being challenged by critics on their left flank. When this becomes their posture, their strategic and tactical concepts become narrow and their assessments of political developments, personalities, and events suffer from one sidedness.

The failure of too many on the left to acknowledge – even in a quiet voice and bland tone – that a huge glass ceiling was shattered for the FIRST time in our nation’s history on Tuesday night when Hillary Clinton won the Democratic Party nomination reveals little about Hillary, but speaks volumes about too large a section of the left. Namely, it brings to the surface its shortcomings on issues of gender, equality, and democratic rights. But also its one sidedness and lack of complexity in its analysis, its tendency to collapse everything into categories of class, its penchant to think that role of the left is to turn up the temperature and stake out the most radical position in every circumstance, and, not least, its inability to think strategically (that is to understand that political struggles issue from a very concrete study of the exact balance and dynamics of class and social forces operating at any given moment).

Below is my note to a friend earlier this week. It’s my latest installment to a conversation that goes back to the beginning of this election season. In recent weeks much of our discussion, as you would probably guess, has revolved around Hillary, Bernie, and the upcoming Democratic Party primaries. While differences between us seem to take center stage in our conversations, I suspect that our divergent views are more a matter of different emphasis than something fundamental.  Anyway, here is my note:

“I can only say that your understanding of the nature of right wing extremist power, the imperative of defeating that power in the coming elections, and the dynamics that would ensue upon its defeat is very different than mine. But rather than going into our differences in any detail, I would only say this: The defeat of right wing extremism – Trump and all – in November is an absolutely necessary, if not sufficient, condition to any sustained and successful challenge to corporate power on a broad range of issues.

In other words, if you skip this stage of struggle, you can kiss goodbye any serious struggle against what Bernie calls “Establishment” politics and economics. But it is precisely this interconnection that Bernie hasn’t adequately or systematically articulated in the course of the primary contest between Hillary and himself.

This blank spot in his analysis, even as his campaign draws lots of people into struggle and creates a new sense of political possibility that goes beyond the centrist boundaries of the top leadership of the Democratic Party, misleads people new to politics on the one hand, and reinforces a sectarian strain on the left on the other insofar as it flattens out the differences in the policies, political representation, and social constituencies of  the Republicans and Democrats, tends to collapse the struggle for democracy and equality into categories of class and class struggle, and plays down the necessity of establishing diverse, broad, and complicated strategic and tactical alliances. In short, it simplifies the process of social change.

That may seem like no big deal, especially when people are in motion and thinking anew, but I would argue otherwise – partly from my own experience, but more so from my reading of history and its turning points.

One more thing, as positive and promising as the surge around Bernie’s candidacy is, its social composition is still too narrow, and thus its social power is limited. And it does no good when some of his supporters attempt to minimize or run away from this fact. A “political revolution” is, in the final analysis, the handiwork of only a movement of an “immense majority” (from “The Communist Manifesto”) that is heavily represented among working people, people of color, women and the young – not to mention able to elaborate a well considered strategy and employ a range of tactics and equipped with an inspiring and radical vision.

That’s my two cents. Next week, I will elaborate on all this in a post on my blog.”