A couple of thoughts that International Women’s Day brings to mind. One very brief, the other a bit longer:

* To say that women hold up half the sky (and just about everything else) is a gross understatement. I learned that as a young child, and have come to more deeply appreciate it as a (much) older man.

* The notion that waged work on a “production” site and in the formal sectors of the economy set the parameters for who’s in, who’s out, and who’s on the bubble of the working class – not to mention who has a hand in the production of the economic surplus from which profits and a fresh round of capital investment are derived – is a gendered as well as a racialized and generally exclusionary concept. In earlier centuries, it left large numbers of women as well as slaves of African ancestry, indigenous peoples, and new immigrants outside the category of working class, even though their labor was commonplace, abundant, and essential to capitalism’s accumulation, industrialization, and commodification process.

Today, global capitalism continues to rely on such labor, albeit on a much broader scale and in new as well as old forms, to sustain and expand its accumulation process, But in doing so, it makes this truncated and limited notion of class no more serviceable now than it was in previous centuries. This is especially so in the Global South.

Only a wide angled framing and understanding of who constitutes the working class, along with the specific class trajectories, histories, needs, and, not least, capacities, of each constituent group, and especially the historically invisible, uncounted, and subordinate, will provide us with a sturdy basis for unity and thus the grounds for victory against the nasty coalition of the right and alt right that is threatening democracy and everything that is decent and good in our country. In the elections, an exclusivist, racialized, gendered, and nativist concept of class captured the thinking of many white workers, and thus contributed significantly to the election of Trump – a candidate who was proudly, outspokenly, and uniquely misogynist, racist, and xenophobic. This, needless to say, presents the broad democratic movement and the Democratic Party a major challenge, if they hope to congeal a united people’s movement and transform a dire situation into a new step down Freedom Road.

* Someone said on Morning Joe – Joe Scarborough I think – that instead of tweeting groundless charges against former President Obama, Trump should turn his attention to the security threat from North Korea. Really? Who in their right mind wants him doing that? Trump is unstable and erratic. He is capable of doing crazy things, as he once again demonstrated over the weekend. It’s time to make a case for Impeachment.

* It is argued that Trump’s tweets this weekend accusing former President Obama of issuing an order to spy on him were successful in so far as they distracted public attention from the growing firestorm around his attorney general, Jeff Sessions. Sessions, it came out earlier in the week, had misled Congress about his meetings with the Russian government officials – another thread in a growing scandal that could lead to impeachment and much more.

But I don’t buy this argument. People are more sophisticated than that. They have longer memories. Sessions and his misdeeds remain in the public mind. If anything, what Trump did serves to reinforce the growing impression that Sessions as well as Trump himself and his advisors are swimming in a sea of duplicity, coverup, lawlessness, and gross violations of democratic and constitutional norms.

* I hope that the broader opposition to Trump turns impeachment into a popular, well argued campaign. I got to think that what he did this weekend left a lot of people – in high and ordinary circles – wondering – once more – about his fitness for office and thinking much more seriously about his removal for the sake of the country – some to protect their own positions. And their first reactions were reinforced when the FBI and NSA quickly challenged Trump’s claims.

He’s a clear and present danger to democracy and humankind. Time to impeach.

A sound strategy for this moment and the foreseeable future will resist the normalization of Trump; if he fit on the spectrum of what we consider the politically accepted bounds of “bourgeois democratic” governance, I might think otherwise. But he – as well as Bannon and Sessions and others – don’t. They present a threat to democratic governance the likes of which we haven’t seen. Thus we should do nothing to normalize him.

What is more, a significant section of the public question the legitimacy of this administration. It’s not something that we on the left have a franchise on. Which should come as no surprise. After all, Trump didn’t win the popular vote, the role of Russia in meddling in our elections is far from settled, and Trump’s rhetoric and actions so far have left many still wondering if he has what it takes to be president.

So why would we normalize him at this juncture? Because his speech earlier this week had a different tone? I don’t think so. For one thing, the change in tone is explained largely by the widespread opposition to Trump and his low polling numbers. What other choice did Trump and Bannon have? Full speed ahead? I don’t think so. To suggest that it was product of the artfulness of Trump and Bannon is to turn effect into cause. Furthermore, the speech’s tone can’t be severed from its substance, and the latter was awful on nearly every count.

Which brings me to my beef with the much debated comment of CNN analyst Van Jones. He mentioned none of this. Nor did he make plain that the father of the soldier who was cynically memorialized in Trump’s speech chose not to attend the event because he blamed guess who – Trump – for his son’s death. Instead, Jones said Trump became “presidential.” In doing so, he normalized Trump; he gave him a legitimacy that he hasn’t yet acquired. It shouldn’t come that cheaply.

As I see it, resisting the normalization of Trump isn’t a posture of disengagement, of standing apart, of rhetorically shouting from the sidelines. It conforms with the thinking of millions of people and rests on a broad awareness of the unique and unprecedented danger that this administration presents to our country’s democratic fabric and progress. It is a particular approach that challenges Trump – his rhetoric, policies, and legitimacy – at every turn and in every arena of struggle.

Its charge isn’t to search for common ground with the Trump White House, but to defend democracy (broadly understood), join with the immediate targets of Trump’s attacks, and advance a clear and compelling alternative to Trumpism. Its strategic underpinning lies in the formation of a broad, democratic, multi-racial, multi-class, multi-national people’s coalition, while it resists, at the same time, sectional thinking and approaches, such as we saw with some of the building trades. It’s mindful as well of the overarching importance of next year’s election. And, not least, it takes advantage of any rifts in the ruling coalition and dominant classes.

If there is a slogan that captures its spirit and politics, it’s “All for One and One for All.”

The tone was different – which is a concession to the widespread opposition to Trump and his low standing in public opinion polls; what other option did Trump and Bannon have – but not much else changed in a substantive sense. In fact, the political substance was worse in some ways.

Lies, false claims, and empty promises littered the speech and collided with the actual policies of the Trump administration. People’s stories of hardship and pain were cynically exploited, including the soldier who died in Yemen, whose father blames Trump for his death and refused to be part of the photo op.

Immigration reform was a joke, but not half as bad the depiction of immigrants as existential threats to the well being, wages, and job opportunities of U.S. workers.

The paternalistic, patronizing, and racist themes of earlier speeches reappeared. His economic policy, if it deserves that name and notwithstanding a temporarily bullish stock market, is unsustainable and sure to bring trouble to tens of millions and throw the country’s finances deeper into the red. This will give Trump and Congressional Republicans an excuse to turn the issue of spending on infrastructure and people’s needs into a moot question.

The poor and communities of color were warned in the speech of storms soon to come. The word “women” and the words “women’s issues” were barely mentioned. And the rest of world has every right to worry after listening to Trump last night.

Will he get a bounce in the polls? Probably, it’s hard not to. Some of the media will say that at last he acted “presidential,” while more than a few people will spin it positively even if it seems completely at war with what they know about this demagogic, crude, and ignorant lout, this poor excuse for a human being.

But the bigger questions are: How big a bounce? And will it last?

While it appeared that the Republicans in the chamber greeted Trump’s speech enthusiastically, don’t think that everyone in the GOP is on same page. As for the Democrats, if they continue to resist the political-legislative offensive to come, while projecting their own package of clear and compelling alternatives and prepare for next year’s elections – beginning with the recruitment of able and attractive congressional candidates – things could take a turn for the better sooner than we think.

One final thing: what was worse: the optic of Trump at the podium or the image of Ryan and Pence behind him? What a “Rogues Gallery!”