MaxSpeak, You Listen!

With all the loose talk about negotiations over the next stimulus package, I am compelled to rise in defense of Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi. This is a new role for me. She is getting grief from the so-called Problem Solvers’ Caucus in the House and that nitwit, Andrew Yang. Rep. Ro Khanna, of whom I think well, has also brought some shade. The question has blown up in recent days after an interview Pelosi did with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

The short and inadequate summary of this debate is that the Administration has offered a $1.8 trillion relief package, in response to the Democrats’ proposal for a somewhat higher number. People hampered by low information, such as Blitzer, can’t really evaluate either proposal because they have no clue as to the contents of either proposal. In the interview, Blitzer just kept repeating “$1.8 trillion” as if he had an actual argument. He does not. The government does not necessarily solve problems by spending money. It matters how it is spent.

The conservative bias against the public sector is to apply reductionist criteria to policy. In this case, we are asked to fixate on the total ‘headline’ number in a proposal, or to elevate sending cash to individuals as the be-all and end-all of public policy. Even then, it matters how much cash, and to whom. From a radical standpoint, this is commodification writ large. Even from a mainstream economic standpoint, cash assistance is not a substitute for public services. In particular, we need money spent on services to deal with the pandemic, and we need aid to state and local governments, so that they can maintain the services that make civilized life possible.

The reductionist frame for stimulus is being championed by the right wing of the House Democratic Caucus, the aforementioned ‘problem solvers.’ This caucus consists of both Democrats and Republicans and thrives on the bogus polarization frame of U.S. politics: why or why can’t ‘both sides’ get together and get things done? The simple answer is that one side is deeply insane. A massive rebuke at the polls next month might bring some of them back to Earth, or it may simply shrink the Republicans in Congress to a more intransigent, hard core. That is a problem for later.

Blitzer accused Pelosi of being narrowly concerned with denying Trump any possible boost to his campaign. A compromise would give the stock market a bump up and provide a political win for Trump, but it is too late for the money to have any political effect on the ground before November 3. Even so, there is a case for denying Trump any such benefit, because he is the most awful president ever, remember?

It can also be said that Pelosi has the leverage. It’s a curious progressive critique to fault a Democratic leader for failing to exploit any such leverage. The criticism from the “problem solvers” makes more sense. The problem they are dedicated to solving, including a Member in my own state of Virginia named Abigail Spanberger (a former CIA agent), is getting elected in Trump-friendly districts.

Blitzer’s elementary-school understanding of politics, besides the implied, bogus “gridlock” idea, neglects the fact that there is no reason to think Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would let any compromise measure to come up for a vote in the Senate. Arguably, Mitch is looking past the impending defeat next month to considering how to sabotage a Biden Administration. Blocking stimulus now or before January 20 is one way to do that. Blitzer also asked, without embarrassment, why Pelosi didn’t call up the president and do the deal. Trump doesn’t operate that way. He doesn’t do things. He tweets.

I’ve never had much use for Pelosi. She’s a skilled legislative operator but has no policy vision. She needs a president to follow. In this case, however, grounds for criticism from the outside seem notably thin. Unless you can read minds, you don’t know the details of what is at issue in the negotiations. My guess is that the Democratic bill reflects a constructive use of funds, while the Republican proposals are a pile of stinking monkey crap. Which side are you on?

Showtime’s two-day replay of Trump’s ascent to power is a useful repackaging of the entire disgraceful episode. It is evidently based on the perspective of James Comey himself, with all the possible biases that might entail.

The foundational bias is Comey’s judgment that he was compelled to torpedo the candidacy of Hillary Clinton to protect the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There is an historical parallel in the colossal flop of the Mueller probe. Mueller was similarly constrained in his pursuit of Trump, evidently in observance of Department of Justice conventions.

In both cases, neither of these lifelong Republicans seemed to have considered that their attempt to protect institutions in the near term would set the stage for their utter corruption subsequently. We see that now in the form of Attorney-General William Barr’s rubbishing of the Department of Justice.

A couple of characters’ reputations are well skewered in this account. The lead shitweasel is Rod Rosenstein, who betrayed Comey and the FBI. He had been on a high-level career track but was used and discarded by Trump. He is now mothballed at the elite King and Spaulding law firm. There are worse fates.

A bit more surprising was the nonfeasance of Obama Attorney-General Loretta Lynch, who permitted Comey to destroy Clinton and committed the blunder of meeting with Bill Clinton in the middle of this clusterfuck. She is now ensconced at the elite Paul, Weiss law firm. Obama himself could be accused of low energy throughout the affair.

And then there is Comey himself. Jeff Daniels plays him as if he has a stick up his arse. I wonder, does Comey realize it? If not, it explains a lot.

The story takes decided note of the Russia connections but does not overplay them. Indeed, there is no way to confirm the true extent and impact of Russian interference. Proof of collusion is also murky. And there’s not a lot of evidence the public cares much about Russia, one way or another. We’re a long way from Ronald Reagan’s bear-in-the-woods commercials.

The real locus of Trump Administration criminality is less in the Russian agent sphere than in the dazzling display of abuse of power and garden-variety graft, all for the most part arcane matters that fail to excite the public. The Democrats’ signal failure in this vein was trying to make more of the Russian side than could be supported and making little or nothing of all the other shit.

The Left’s conceptual difficulties here are twofold.

One is indifference to the national security frame used by the House, especially in the impeachment resolutions. Not surprisingly, the left is internationalist in orientation. There is no moral case for criticizing Russian interference, such as it was and is, while ignoring the long history of much more egregious acts by the U.S. government.

However, the case need not devolve to Cold War jingoism. After all, Russia is no longer Red, and V. Putin is no friend of the international working class. Any interference by Russia in any other nation’s politics cannot be welcome.

Second, we on the left are not instantly motivated to rise in defense of “The Rule of Law.” In the past, this formulation, or its more agitational cousin “Law and Order,” have been deployed against both legal protest and non-violent civil disobedience, frequently to justify criminal behavior by the authorities.

But there is a use for the law. Otherwise thousands of attorneys in the ACLU, National Lawyers Guild, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, etc. have been wasting their time. We want public officials to be bound by the law, rather than able to ignore it willy-nilly, as Trump does. We spend a lot of time trying to improve the law. The rule of law is flawed but potentially benefits us, at least to some extent. At the very least, it would be impossible to protest, organize against, or vote out a completely lawless regime. So be careful how you discount the Rule of Law.

“The Comey Rule” ties up with a bow the utter failure of ordinary criticism of Donald Trump and his Republican Party. As the recent debate showed, we are no longer in a political contest. Trump is running against democracy, and democracy is a law we need.

People seem to be confounded by Donald Trump’s repeated assertion that more testing for the virus has generated more cases. It sounds incredibly stupid on its face. Even for Trump, it is hard to believe he is that stupid, or that anyone is stupid enough to believe him. Actually, his statement makes perfect sense, in one perverse respect.

When Trump refers to cases, he is referring to the tragedies suffered by other people, people to whose welfare he is explicitly hostile. It is well-known that people of color have been more stricken with the virus, on average. When Trump says more testing brings more cases, he means that more testing imposes a greater communal obligation on the country by revealing more black and brown people requiring medical care, more absorption of hospital capacity, and often depending on subsidies from the government.

Of course, in absolute terms, more white people are getting sick and dying. But as in the debates on poverty, welfare, or food stamps, this reality gets erased, not least by white people at risk themselves. Susceptibility to the virus due to benighted financial circumstances, as with poverty, is a source of shame that needs to be glossed over. The pretense of poverty or the virus being a racial matter helps to insulate the Administration from criticism within its own racist constituencies.

At this writing, in the U.S. there are 157,000 recorded fatalities, with an end nowhere in sight. Without doubt, the actual total is higher, but 157,000 should be quite enough to commend the worst fate possible for our current overlords.

The president’s more recent babbling about saving the suburbs testifies to his dependence on racial politics. And if that isn’t enough, we also have the more recent story of political calculations within the White House associated with the idiot-child Jared Kushner that the virus was mostly a blue state problem that could be discounted in hopes of a more rapid economic recovery.

It is impossible to imagine a U.S. regime deserving of a worse fate than the current one. There is no comparison to Ronald Reagan or George Bush. Suggestions to the contrary reflect profound ignorance. To be sure, previous presidents have visited disastrous harm on other nations, as well as on the original, indigenous populations of the Americas. Under current circumstances, however, these comparisons are meaningless since there is no telling what calamities lie before us. The U.S. is not merely a danger to itself. It is a threat to the world.

The current danger can be tied to two types of error on the part of some on the left. The obvious one is any ghost of an implication that Joe Biden would be no better than Trump. We might ask, is there any fatality count prior to the election that would lead one to reconsider this premise, assuming 157,000 is not enough?

The other is more arcane, the difference between cash transfers and what economists call “public goods.” Most of my career has been about cash transfers, to families and to state and local governments. Without doubt, people need cash. There is no getting around that. But people, especially lower-income people, also need public goods.

What is a public good? It is a good or service that can be shared without any reduction in a given individual’s use. If the government sends you $10 that you spend for personal consumption, nobody else benefits. The money could be subdivided into nickels, but the same stricture applies. But the extent to which that money is devoted to something that benefits many persons at the same time ‘supercharges’ the spending power of the government.

The preeminent public good today is public health. Free vaccines and treatments benefit the community as a whole, as do restrictions on behavior and regulation of commerce that reduce the incidence of the virus. Public goods equalize well-being by raising the floor of consumption, by expanding collective consumption.

Not a few on the left have become infatuated with schemes such as Universal Basic Income. Its other myriad deficiencies aside, no UBI can substitute for public goods. Only the very wealthy can afford to forego the benefits of public services and facilities, though even they are not entirely immune. Rich people have contracted and died from the virus too.

The obsession with cash is a surrender to commodification, a devolution from even a basic idea of communal well-being. Socialism means a lot more than equalization of personal money incomes.

I’m no expert on criminal justice, but that never stops anybody else from holding forth, so here goes. I did have a career in public policy, so I do think I have a few words of wisdom to impart. I’m also thinking aloud, since these issues are not cut and dried, as far as I’m concerned. As Marx (Groucho) said, “These are my views, if you don’t like them I have others.” Feedback is welcome.

First we have to back up a bit. Do we think we are going to smash the capitalist state? If we do, I’m afraid we are drunk. As long as there is a State, it will have a police force, or under current circumstances, several police forces. Not surprisingly, these police forces will be obliged to preserve the power of the State.

Next question, do we think the State is an irremediable institution impervious to reform? If we do, we can simply stop reading now. We are doomed. But like the joke about the man who responds to a dire medical diagnosis by resolving to find a different doctor, we could choose to begin with different presumptions.

A more optimistic view is that the State is a contested field. It can do both good and bad things. The idea that it cannot possibly do anything good is usually cast in illogical terms, and usually by people with a weak grasp of the details of policy. If for instance you are moved to denounce some new act of commission or omission by the State, I’m afraid you are stuck with the idea that constructive reform is indeed possible. After all, if you are outraged by some new, terrible development, it means that ex ante, things were somewhat better, or less bad.

What Lenin referred to as special bodies of armed men are surely one of the tougher nuts to crack, among other State institutions and policies. Unlike Lenin, we are not confronting a czar, at least not yet. In the interest of honoring #BlackLivesMatter, we should be interested in measures that are both effective and practical. In that spirit, I want to try to sort out the proposals that are floating around right now.

In one corner is the slick #8cantwait campaign promoted by Campaign Zero, under the leadership of Deray McKesson. This is often identified as a Black Lives Matter project, and McKesson has claimed to be a leader of BLM. The truth is that Black Lives Matter is a wholly separate organization that does not overlap with Campaign Zero.

McKesson came out of the anti-union ‘Teach for America’ operation and is networked into the Democratic Party and the NGO/foundation world (as was I, on a limited, obscure level). From where I sit, #8cantwait’s reform proposals are a mixed bag, and certainly wonky food for thought. Whatever you think of it, however, it is not the product of any sort of consensus among BLM activists. To the contrary, the project looks like a one-man operation by someone who rejects working directly with the plethora of BLM groups around the country. Campaign Zero is really striving to take ownership of the BLM brand.

Unfortunately, to some extent the protests have gravitated to a polar opposite of Campaign Zero, an abolitionist “defund” stance. Now I understand that can be an abbreviation for some kind of radical restructuring of policing, or a kind of opening bid to generate political pressure. We could reduce police budgets and allocate the funds for other purposes. It’s all good.

“Defund” does not necessarily mean a fantasy world without any police, but it does beg the question of alternatives. What it would look like is often left to the imagination, and there are voices literally calling for zero police. After all, abolition is an entirely negative position. Absent some more substantive proposal, the audience for this slogan is likely to default to a literal translation, namely that we will not have a police force.

That’s just ridiculous. It’s a dead end. It will never happen. People can keep yelling it, but eventually the protests will thin out. People have lives to get back to. There is burn-out. Police enforcement magnifies the attrition, in the form of physical injury and legal entanglement.

One angle to keep in mind, reminiscent of my younger years, is that the intensity of the moment drives one to seek deep, radical explanations. Back in the day, the twin evils of the Vietnam War and racism drove students like myself to hackneyed vintages of Marxism-Leninism. A tough problem required a tough solution. Today we see a tendency to reject reforms with tortured arguments that they are not sufficiently radical.

So in the other corner, a prime example of the desire for ruthless criticism, which I share, is this well-circulated graphic. Its authors are obscure, if not anonymous. The basic frame for criticism is the above-cited principle of abolition. Reforms must reduce the power of the police, regarding which “defund” is the signifier. The desired alternatives are reforms that challenge the legitimacy of policing itself. This is a horse of a different color.

My preferred remedies lie somewhere in the space between #8cantwait and abolitionism. I share some of the abolitionist critiques of #8cantwait proposals, though for different reasons. For instance, the plea for better police training. The wave of assaults on demonstrators and innocent bystanders that we observe are not the result of inadequate training. To the contrary, they are the fruit of malice unencumbered by fear of consequences.

I’ve also a jaundiced view of ideas that rely on what could be called self-regulation of police behavior, like an honor system, such as the demand for body cams. This requires that officers actually turn their body cams on, or leave them on during times when they have a substantial interest in turning them off. Another is the plea to show badges not covered by tape to prevent their identification.

In principle the government can discipline police who failed to self-regulate. In practice this is difficult. Police are a political power unto themselves. They can make life difficult for citizens and business owners. When they unionize, their power is enhanced. When one or a few screw up, the rest rally in support.

We ought not neglect low-hanging fruit – changes that are simple and easy to verify. For instance, deprive the police of military equipment that has no place in the community. Problem is, this has little practical import. Police brutality is not committed by fancy equipment, but by means of the most primitive of instruments – the billy club. The exception is weapons of chemical warfare. Removing that from the police arsenal would be welcome and is simple enough to implement.

The most relevant policy neglected in the protests is a demand for institutions capable of policing the police, what used to be called civilian review boards (CRB). In my ideal set-up, these boards would command the internal affairs division of the police department and have the power to investigate, discipline, fire, arrest, and prosecute police officers guilty of misconduct.

In an era of ubiquitous camera phones where police are under constant threat of being recorded committing crimes, the workings of a CRB could have a significant impact on behavior. The abolitionists reject CRBs on the ground that they have never been effectively stood up before. But on these grounds, we could reject the entire abolitionist platform.

Finally, there is the matter of policy, which goes to whom we elect to public office. Over the past few weeks, a wide assortment of liberal mayors, both black and white, have been exposed as either incapable or unwilling to direct their police forces to focus on public safety, rather than counterinsurgency. In other words, if less police manpower was wasted on the pointless task of moving around large crowds of law-abiding demonstrators, they could be deployed to prevent property damage.

The failure of local governments in this regard is mystifying. You might say they need to demonstrate the power of Capital to brutalize the population, to assert control, or ‘domination,’ as the president demands. I’m skeptical. Or perhaps police forces in conditions of mass upsurge are simply impossible for their elected bosses to control. I don’t have a better explanation. Maybe you do.

In any case there is a lot of good that could be done, by ongoing mobilization. Pressure works, and the State will react. Its legitimacy, which underlies the consent of the governed, is in worse shape than ever before. Even the Amish have come out.

The failure of a medley of liberal mayors opens up a new political space, but to fill it, a new movement needs organization and an appealing program that goes beyond three-word slogans. Thus far the local BLM agitation has a way to go in this regard. A demand to defund the police might fill a town square, but it will not win an election. In the vacuum, the danger is that an #8cantwait posture of noodling with reforms and herding people back to supporting lackluster Democratic politicians will coopt protest energy and stave off more compelling solutions.

The new political opening places a new burden on the opposition. It will have to get more specific about positive reforms and self-avowed reformers. After all, some of the failing mayors themselves came up as critics of police misconduct. Now more than ever, there is potential for progressive electoral campaigns, founded on candidates who make hard commitments to reforms. In this context, the Democratic Socialists of America, to which I belong (but do not speak for), could play a crucial role.

An account of the right way for DSA to engage the agitation, from my standpoint, is here. I am not referring to the demands themselves, which smack a bit too much of the abolitionist error discussed above. The two key takeaways for me are: 1) cooperate with local leadership of the protests, and do not pretend to be leading them, unless there really is no other leadership; 2) be clearly identified as DSA, with banners if possible, and do not be shy about inviting others to learn more about DSA (literal recruiting on the spot would be ham-handed).

We should not require candidates to declare themselves socialists; such affirmations are as easily abandoned as anything else. But we can take steps to cement them into progressive positions. The key disciplining mechanism is the establishment of independent progressive organization, which can make credible threats to withdraw political support when necessary. An added source of flexibility is that third party candidacies are more feasible at the local level. There is not as much of a penalty if a left campaign causes a centrist to lose to a right-wing candidate. We can survive conservative mayors. Surviving another four years of Trump is altogether a different thing.

In general, the objective should be to create something durable out of the current, unprecedented upsurge. Very few such opportunities present themselves. It would be a tragedy to let one pass by, not least considering the burgeoning, multiple crises with which we are now confronted.

At the risk of exploiting unforeseeable turns of events to validate all my priors, I want to argue that the unfolding of the 2020 Democratic primaries does not invalidate a class-based approach to politics. The exponent of this notion whom I want to criticize is Zack Beauchamp in “Why Bernie Sanders Failed.”

His basic argument is that the Sanders’ campaign strategy rested on two premises that didn’t prove out. One was to ground the appeal to the working class and youth, which fell flat because black voters supported Biden, white workers who flirted with Bernie in 2016 are now for Biden or Trump, and youth didn’t turn out.

Beauchamp concludes that identity and party affiliation trumped class. He fails to consider that those things are themselves founded on material self-interest, which is to say, class.

The normal reason to be interested in politics is out of an interest in policy outcomes. How will this candidate affect my life. Are her policies good or bad for the country. So the first question ought to be, what outcome should we prefer?

The horserace commentary seldom takes that concern as a point of departure, perhaps on the grounds that it reflects a bias. I would suggest that a neglect of policy is also a bias. Choose your poison.

There is widespread acknowledgment that Sanders’ proposals are popular, well beyond the boundaries of his actual electoral showings. If the usual warnings about climate change are taken seriously, then his proposals are not merely nice to have, but vital to the future of humanity. Beauchamp conflates a vote for Biden not merely with a rejection of Sanders’ proposals, but with a flight from material interest.

A different conclusion is that voters interpreted their class interest more broadly, and more pragmatically, than with support for Medicare For All, etc. In other words, they could have concluded that because Biden is the most electable of alternatives on offer, a vote for Biden was the best guarantor of their class interest. One could disagree with that reasoning, but it makes perfect sense, as far as it goes. Your class-obsessed author happens to think a second Trump term will create more irreversible damage and constitute a harbinger of a more open fascism. Defeating fascism is a legitimate, class-based interest too. The underlying sentiment is not necessarily detected from the responses to survey questions that ask, “What is more important, beating Trump or free college?” The refusal of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of which I’m a member, to endorse the only candidate who can prevent a second Trump, namely Joe Biden, is a travesty.

One could make similar arguments when it comes to identity or party affiliation.

I’m not the person to explain African Americans to anyone, but it seems reasonable to suspect that Trump is viewed as profoundly inimical to black material interests, over and above his class warfare. Trump screws the working class, but there’s an extra turn of the screw for minorities. Nor does it take a genius in a minority group to realize that political power depends on alliances, which points back to electability and class consciousness. In other words, African Americans understand they have some common economic interests with a broader group – the working class, so they see the Democratic Party as most deserving of their support.

When it comes to women, anyone who does not think reproductive rights are unrelated to material interests just needs to fall back. As for racial or religious minorities, a pragmatic choice should not be conflated with an indifference to class.

It is true that minorities and women may perceive a material interest that is often not well-served by a narrow class-oriented politics. The dilemma is that there is no viable, alternative way to pursue that interest, other than accepting the limited rewards that come from Democratic Party rule. Support for an often disappointing alternative is somewhat compensated for by hopes of progress, and indeed progress – incremental, positive reforms – are often observed.

When it comes to party, of course Sanders has always based his appeal on not being a Democrat. But why are Biden voters Democrats in the first place? Is it possibly out of some conception of their class interest? I don’t think one can reject this possibility out of hand, or legitimately ignore it altogether, as Beauchamp does.

Another angle of criticism of Sanders is the claim that voters do not act on policy, so a programmatic campaign lacks the juice for voter appeal. This could be read as another knock on class politics, but here again a preference for an anodyne appeal based on ‘values’ or warm fuzzies, a performance rather than a platform (Hi, Senator Booker!), is not a neutral policy stance. By foregoing policy commitments, we simply cede decision-making flexibility to the powers that be.

I do think the Sanders movement is hampered by some misconceptions and biases.

One goes to a running argument I’ve had with anti-Sanders voices complaining that he failed to drop out in 2016 or this year when it became obvious he could not be nominated. My point was that the Sanders campaign is a movement, not a mere electoral vehicle. It’s raison d’etre is to be self-sustaining, indefinitely. No letting up, no permanent victories. A primary campaign is just another opportunity to preach the gospel, one that some on the left discount to their disadvantage.

It is possible to continue to campaign, even compete with Joe Biden, without diminishing his chances in November. In fact, I would argue that a continued campaign could enhance those chances, providing it focuses its fire on Trump. If I was Sanders, I would focus on the locales where I had the best chance of turning non-voters or Trump voters into Democratic voters.

Civil criticism of Biden is conducive to party unity and heightens the contrast with the current, barbaric administration. The contrast also tends to debunk likely Republican charges that Biden is some kind of crypto-socialist. Moreover, the other extreme of Bernie-or-nobody reduces the prospects for future contenders from the left for Democratic Party nominations. You can’t expect to be welcomed to compete within the party if you walk away after a defeat. Nobody wants to play heads-I-win/tails-you-lose.

Ironically the campaign itself may have lost sight of this, its fundamental mission. One factor is its failure to discipline the ranks of its most toxic supporters, which diminishes prospects in November, as well as for the indefinite future. I happen to think that factor is highly overblown, but it is not utterly without significance.

The other was the reported belief that Sanders could win the nomination if he could beat the other candidates one-on-one with pluralities of votes, what we could call a thirty percent strategy.

Both of those notions may have been magnified by the urgency of winning this year by hook or crook, since it will be Sanders’ last rodeo. But if we acknowledge the campaign is an ongoing movement to radically change capitalism, not just an electoral campaign, then it should be realized that this is not accomplished with 30 percent pluralities and a Congress full of meh Democrats. It’s a long-term project, a marathon rather than a sprint. Politically it requires not a thin majority, but a crushing one.

Moreover, it must be about more than Sanders. There ought to be a new raft of leaders that are being groomed to take over. I love AOC as much as anyone, but we need more than one or four of her, and probably some with a decade or two of additional experience. A singular leadership lends itself to personality cults.

I go back to the question, what do we want? If it’s ultimately the Sanders platform, the working class is the logical vehicle. It would be foolish to fail to appeal to all who would benefit from one’s proposals.

There has been an argument that racism has been indelibly ingrained in white people since the dawn of America, but in one sense that is beside the point. The nature and doings of racism are shaped by the social and economic environment. There have been periods when class power reduced the salience of race. In particular, the industrial union movement in the 1930s, which included not a few profoundly racist white workers, wreaked enormous, positive changes that benefitted the entire working class. Clearly those benefits were not uniform across racial lines, but they left everyone better off.

In more recent years, the Jesse Jackson campaign resonated with a noticeable slice of the white working class, and we also have stories about Obama-to-Trump voters. Given the closeness of the 2016 election, it only requires the defection of a slender margin of such Trump voters to swing the outcome to the Democrats.

The usual alternative proposed to class politics is an appeal to ‘the suburbs.’ This is a bit of a misnomer. Of course, there are working class suburbs. What’s really in question is politics without much of a redistributive edge. A ‘suburban strategy’ is just another way to evade class issues, an evasion that is equivalent to an anti-working-class posture. There is no neutrality in this dimension. You’re always on one side or the other.

A common attack on Sanders was his neglect of race and gender. While he is fair game for that criticism, when the choice was between him and Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, any hint of a relative shortcoming on issues of race is ridiculous. There was more grist for this mill in the case of gender, but only in comparison to Clinton.

It remains the case that removing the Trump Administration is a necessary condition for progress, since progress requires survival. Another four years of Trump further erodes voting rights, especially for youth and minorities, fills out the Federal judiciary with right-wing ideologues, and removes all regulatory constraints on capitalist predation. In that scenario, survival, much less opportunities for our revolution, look unlikely.

All indications are that the Sanders movement, the U.S. social-democratic movement, will keep banging away on its class program. It has obviously gotten the message that it needs better roots in African American communities, better turnout among youth, and more difficult work cracking the white working class.

Coming of age in the 60s, my awakening to the country’s racist and imperialist moorings led me to think a revolution was not just urgent, but because it was urgent, it would also be possible in a relatively short time. The former does not imply the latter.

Lost in the history of the New Left, a wise woman once said something to the effect, “We had convinced ourselves we would make a revolution. But revolutions are not made. They are rare events.” Practical possibilities do not follow from moral imperatives.