I’m not sure what the value is of articles on bottom up organizing in the community or labor movement that are filled with lots of prescriptive advice — do this and that, we need this and that — and the latest organizing terminology, but are also notable in their failure to mention, let alone stress, the strategic imperative of defeating Trump and the Republican right next year. They lack, what I call, political embeddedness. Without the latter, such articles and analyses are problematic. And maybe that is putting it too nicely. The anti-electoralist, anti-Democratic Party strain of thinking on the left no longer packs the same wallop as it once did, but it still surfaces — sometimes reflexively — in people’s thinking.

If Barack Obama was the avatar and herald of a multi-racial, egalitarian society to the right wing, Trump, by contrast, is, in its world view, the exemplar and last line of defense of white skin and male privilege — of the way things were.

Some people on the left (and I’m defining the left broadly) conflate gaining hegemony in the Democratic Party with domination. But the two aren’t the same and unless this difference is appreciated, the left could piss away a unique opportunity to move from the margins to the mainstream of U.S. politics. Actually, I could be convinced that both concepts should be retired as part of a strategic rethink of the left’s role in today’s circumstances. Sorry for the generalities.

In the 20th century, two movements were transformative in their impact. One uprooted an unregulated, crisis-ridden capitalism in the 1930s, while the other overturned a deeply racist system, sanctioned by law, custom, and violence in the 1960s.

Neither one of these movements, however, boycotted or stood apart from the electoral and legislative process. They engaged in a very practical way in “bourgeois politics” as well as embraced expansive concepts of struggle. Their aim wasn’t to take over, but to draw together diverse social and political constituencies around a common objective. But that didn’t weaken their cause. In fact, it was an essential part of the explanation for their success. A mature left will learn from these experiences.

The struggle against Trump and the right is a form of the class struggle. In fact, it’s the main form of the class (and democratic) struggle at this moment. Only someone with a dogmatic cast of mind would think otherwise. Politics, including class politics, never come in pure form.