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Liz Truss spent her childhood accompanying her father, a leftist University professor, on marches against the Thatcher government. It might be reductionist to suspect that one woman’s daddy issues have turned Britain into Europe’s leading political basket case,

In the long out-of-print “The Making of a Counter-Culture,” journalist Theodore Roszak argued that the 60’s-era left was greatly underestimating the ability of capitalism to co-opt their movement and sell it back to them.

In his recent “Soul of the Nation” address, President Biden spoke for 25 minutes about the threat to democracy posed by the Trump movement. Making a point to differentiate MAGA Republicans from the more “mainstream” ones, he explained:

“Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement - I would not have cared.” Believe it or not, that’s actually the least controversial thing Sam Harris said in a recently released clip from his appearance on the “Triggernometry” podcast.

The recent raid - ahem, pardon me - execution of a search warrant- on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was an escalation of the Cold Civil War that’s been raging beneath the surface these past several years.

While most oddsmakers seem fairly confident that a Biden vs. Trump rematch is the most likely scenario in 2024, it’s clear that both the Democratic and Republican parties are exploring alternatives.

Arming Saudi Arabia; drilling on protected lands; draconian, inhumane border enforcement; blocking a path to citizenship for DACA recipients; cutting taxes for the rich; banning trans people from the military; defunding health centers that perform abortions; preventing the government from negotiating for lower prescription drug prices; opposing sensible gun laws; opposing a $15 minimum wage; opposing restoration of the Voting Rights Act.

In January, The Brookings Institute published a report entitled “Is democracy failing and putting our economic system at risk?” Baked into its thesis is the faulty presumption that democracy can and should exist to accommodate capitalism - a practical impossibility since capitalism is inherently antidemocratic.

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was ousted from office last week in a recall election. The vote wasn’t close: 60-40 against Boudin. And while mainstream media outlets - both liberal and conservative - have emphasized the recall’s support among San Francisco’s poorer communities of color, the reality is that Boudin was also rejected - perhaps even in larger numbers - by the city’s affluent white liberal (and conservative) residents.

Gregg “Marcel” Dixon is a candidate for Congress in South Carolina’s 6th District, currently represented by James Clyburn. Dixon is mounting a primary challenge in which early voting is already underway.

As the 212th shooting of 2022 goes down, Americans still refuse to confront their dark side This constant nonsense of rotating between “No, we need gun control!” and “No, it’s a mental health issue!

Anyone who has ever tried to reason with, cajole, prevail upon, talk sense to, or in any other way, shape, or form, get anything out of the Democratic Party, has come to discover pretty quickly that there’s no one manning the phones.

It’s well and good to cite the statistics and reasons (which should not actually have to be explained, but Gabrielle Blair puts it so well here) on why women need to control their own bodies, but it doesn’t do much when we have a population that can’t even correctly identify the cause of why we’re still fighting for this.

Dear Nasty Woman, I know you’re angry right now. So am I. I’m a firm believer in a woman’s right to choose, and so the leaked SCOTUS opinion which shows them poised to overturn Roe v.

Biden’s ungodly proxy war with Russia, this time using Ukraine as a pawn to force regime change against Putin (it was Syria the first time), seems like a moment to remind people of one key point: When the government tells you something or some nation is a “threat”- a “national security threat” or threat to “U.

As the world watches the war in Ukraine drag on, Western states are upping the ante by offering more and more military aid to Ukraine. After all, we can’t just stand by and do nothing as a small country gets pummeled by the aggression of a bigger state (hold your tongue, Yemen).

Taylor’ Lorenz published an article in The Washington Post this week in which she outed the owner of the infamous “Libs of TikTok” Twitter account. However you feel about the content of Libs of TikTok - and we certainly find it objectionable - the biography of the person behind it would only be newsworthy if they were a particularly extreme character with a documented history of illicit or illegal behavior.

Bernie Sanders turned some heads this week when one of his advisors disclosed that he is not ruling out a third run for the presidency in 2024. The announcement came with the caveat that he would only consider entering the race “in the event of an open 2024 Democratic presidential primary,” meaning that should Biden decide to seek re-election, Bernie wouldn’t challenge him for the nomination.

On Wednesday, the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC announced its slate of endorsements for the 2022 midterms. Among them was Shontel Brown, the newly elected incumbent from Ohio’s 11th district, who defeated Bernie Sanders ally Nina Turner in a primary for 2021’s special election to fill the seat.

Those who’ve decorated their social media accounts with Ukrainian flag decals but had nothing at all to say about the U.S.-sponsored Saudi genocide in Yemen these past eight years get really annoyed when they’re reminded of this inconsistency.

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” said Joe Biden in Poland on Saturday in reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The White House quickly tried to walk back the statement, insisting that “The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region.

“If you should go skating on the thin ice of modern life, Dragging behind you the silent reproach of a million tear-stained eyes, don’t be surprised when a crack in the ice appears under your feet.

The Trump era was one of unrelenting malaise for the political class. Democratic politicians roiled in resentment and righteous indignation at every word and deed of the 45th President. The beltway media became, more nakedly than ever before, a propaganda arm of the DNC, and central command for the #resistance.

The great Lenin once said “There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.” Now we are living in such a moment. Putin’s risky ploy to overturn American unipolar global hegemony has crashed onto the rocks of poor planning and Ukrainian resistance and is turning into a catastrophe of historic proportions.

According to new reporting by Axios, President Biden is considering a trip to Saudi Arabia this Spring in order to mend relations and convince the Kingdom to produce more oil to offset a potential U.

After weeks of building up his forces in a way that screamed, “This is not a drill,” Vladimir Putin finally gave the order on Thursday morning to invade Ukraine. This was perhaps the single greatest act of white-on-white violence since the release of Taylor Swift’s Welcome to New York album.

Several accounts of the Canadian trucker convoy make the point that it’s about much more than vaccine mandates. Bill Maher’s recent guest Vivek Ramaswamy described it as an uprising “against the biggest threat to democracy, the rise of the managerial class.

Ben Burgis, our most recent podcast guest, chose the late Christopher Hitchens as the topic for his latest book entitled Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters.

A recent Pew poll shows waning confidence in President Biden’s ability to “handle the public health impact of the coronavirus outbreak.” As shown below, Biden’s numbers on covid have plummeted more than 20 points in less than a year.

Liberals flooded the streets in jubilation when the Presidential election was finally called for Joe Biden. After four anxious days of counting returns, major media organizations declared the winner on November 7, a Saturday, at around 11am - serendipitously, right around brunchtime.

**UPDATE: Since this article’s publication, ABC has suspended Whoopi Goldberg from The View** ICYMI, Whoopi Goldberg recently espoused perhaps the dumbest and most ignorant opinion ever expressed in the history of television.

Mostly, the podcaster gig is a blast. Get yourself a microphone, connect it to the internet, and start spewing your opinions consistently and with some modicum of wit, or at least personality, and while the world might not beat a path to your door, a small following is sure to come a’ knocking.

Last week, the Senate’s 52-48 vote against filibuster reform drove yet another nail in the coffin that is the Biden presidency. After having failed to whip his own party’s votes to pass Build Back Better in the last months of 2021, Biden attempted a “pivot” to voting rights legislation in 2022.

"SEC Rule 10b-5 prohibits corporate officers and directors or other insider employees from using confidential corporate information to reap a profit (or avoid a loss) by trading in the Company’s stock.

Bernie Sanders has been fighting the good fight for longer than I’ve been alive, and so it ought to go without saying that I’m forever grateful for his efforts to make the country and the world a saner, kinder, and more civilized place.

In his recent article in The Guardian, Stephen Marche argues that the United States is facing a crisis of institutional legitimacy that has split the country into already warring factions. He writes:

“My dad was a… petty thief. Never could hold down a job, so, he just robbed. Convenience stores, shops, small-time stuff. One time, he sat me down, he told me something I never forgot.

Climate change isn’t a comet hurdling towards Earth whose sudden and dramatic impact hasn’t yet been felt. Rather, it’s a slow burn already underway whose effects become more and more intense every year as the planet becomes decreasingly habitable for us humans.

When President Biden first assumed the office, his support for universal pre-K, a children’s UBI, and paid family leave came as a pleasant surprise to many progressives who went into this administration with the lowest of expectations.

This is a strange holiday season. To gather, or not to gather: that is the question for many as Omicron bursts onto the scene just in time to turn our seasonal festivities into millions of individual party games of Covid Russian Roulette.

Since his acquittal, Kyle Rittenhouse has been on a high profile right wing media tour. Days after his trial ended, he appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show for an exclusive interview. He then dropped by Steven Crowder’s podcast to discuss, among other things, his taste in women.

“Amazon won’t let us leave.” These were the last words Larry Virden communicated to his girlfriend via text message before being killed when a tornado struck his place of work, an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois, moments later.

It’s been a week that could arguably described as the effective end of the Biden presidency. Over a span of just 72 hours, the administration announced that the student loan payment freeze would expire at the end of January, that they would defer to Congress to deliver the $10,000 in student debt forgiveness they promised on the campaign trail, and that they’re shelving Build Back Better until 2022.

Even Joe Biden’s insultingly meager campaign promise of $10,000 in student debt relief for borrowers in exchange for public service seemed dubious at the time he made it. After all, this is the guy who deemed it impossible to discharge student loans in bankruptcy, and has been a lifelong prostitute for credit card companies and big banks, both of whom profit greatly off the interest from their clients’ crippling debts.

In her December 6th press conference, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki sarcastically mocked a reporter’s suggestion to make Covid tests free of charge to whoever needs them. Instead, she described a convoluted scheme in which qualifying individuals would be able to seek reimbursement from their insurance companies after being tested, and implied it would be too expensive to simply provide them outright (watch the exchange below):

“We need somewhere to live,” says Alex to her social worker in episode 6 of Netflix’s Maid, “I’m on seven different types of government assistance right now, and I’m working the maximum amount of hours I can work without getting my benefits cut.

“I am not right wing, I am very much a Democrat,” said Henry Bridger, campaign manager for the recall effort against Seattle’s socialist city councilwoman Kshama Sawant in a televised debate earlier this month.

Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all five counts: first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide, attempted first-degree intentional homicide, and two counts of reckless endangerment. The verdict was met with predictable backlash from the Left, who are calling the trial a disgraceful miscarriage of justice, and another victory for the white supremacist Right.

Hey, Little Liberal. We know you’re probably feeling pretty betrayed right now, and maybe you feel like you can’t express those emotions because they’re too big and scary. Especially because it didn’t just happen to you - most of your friends and family were right there with you hanging on every twist and turn of the Russiagate story for four whole years.

Kyle Rittenhouse’s homicide trial is the latest in a continuing series of high profile court proceedings to be televised for all to see. Yesterday, Rittenhouse burst into tears when recounting the events leading up to the moment he shot three men, killing two.

From a drunken, jibbering James Carville appearing on CNN to lament the state of the race in Virginia a few days out, to the NBC poll that dropped over the weekend showing Joe Biden with a 42% approval rating, there was bad Juju for the Democrats written all over the first major election night of the Biden Presidency.

Yes, 90% of the “Let’s Go Brandon” chanters have politics that are pretty different from mine. After all, the phrase was born at a NASCAR event. During a TV interview with winning driver Brandon Brown, an NBC reporter nervously interpreted the crowd’s chants of “Fuck Joe Biden” as “Let’s Go Brandon.

“McNulty: I’ve gotta ask you: if every time Snot Boogie would grab the money and run away… why’d you even let him in the game? Kid: What? McNulty: Well, if every time, Snot Boogie stole the money, why’d you let him play?

Joey Holz went viral shortly after posting the following to his Facebook page on September 29: At this writing, the post has been shared 18,000 times, and has gotten the attention of multiple media outlets, including, most famously, Business Insider, who wrote a full article on his experiment entitled “A worker in Florida applied to 60 entry-level jobs in September and got one interview.

At the start of negotiations, President Biden seemed to throw his weight behind the progressives’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation package to supplement the bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill. But as centrists in both the House and Senate raised objections to what Joe Manchin calls a “reckless expansion of government programs,” Biden began to cave to their demands.

“She literally has the devil on speed dial,” says terrified intern A special Halloween-time investigation Senator Krysten Sinema this week denied claims that she sold her soul to the devil in exchange for earthly power and riches after several former and current aides came forward to make the accusation.

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” Ursula K. Le Guin

Alexander Sammon, staff writer at The American Prospect, wrote a recent article entitled “The Undignified Demise of Centrism.” In it, he concludes: “Centrism, now, is imperiled as a political orientation not for its competitive viability, but for the emptiness and corruption that has been exposed at its heart.

As you’ve probably observed if you’ve been paying any attention to the ongoing negotiations over infrastructure spending, Democratic lawmakers and voters are growing increasingly frustrated with Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema. She is one of two Senators currently preventing the passage of a $3.

On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that President Biden, in meetings with House Democrats, has significantly lowered his goals on additional infrastructure spending. Until now, he has thrown in with progressives who insisted on passing a $3.

These days Joe Biden is a tragic figure and also a symbolic one. As he dodders and mumbles his way through the rare press conference and occasional speech, it’s hard not to feel like we’re into the final scenes of King Lear, with the monarch’s mind crumbling under the weight of too many cruel realities arriving at a time in life when he is least able to manage them.

Whether to DemExit or to primary centrist Democrats and elect progressives within the party has been a contentious debate in Left circles since the 2016 election. Those in the latter camp argue that the party can be reformed from within if enough insurgent candidates can successfully defeat incumbent moderates.

(originally published on An Appeal to Reason) Class collaboration occurs when a member of one class is given special benefits by another class in order to contain or coopt revolutionary spirit.

Liza Featherstone recently wrote an article for Jacobin entitled [“Barack Obama Has Been One of the Worst Ex-Presidents Ever.”](http://Barack Obama Has Been One of the Worst Ex-Presidents Ever) In it, she argues that Obama’s post-presidency has been “strikingly bereft of public-spiritedness,” the most recent example of which was his opulent 60th birthday bash at his Martha’s Vineyard mansion amidst surging Covid numbers.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stole the show at Monday night’s Met Gala when she appeared in a white dress with bright red lettering that read “Tax the Rich.” Immediately, “Tax the Rich” was trending on Twitter (at this writing, it still is), as well as - of course - AOC herself.

In December of 2020, we published an article entitled “Why Progressives Joining the Republican Party Isn’t as Crazy as You Think.” In it, Russell Dobular argued that because of the shifting class dynamics within the Democratic and Republican electorates (Republicans have become more working class, Democrats more upper-middle class), populist Left economic policies could catch on in Republican circles more so than in Democratic ones.

The Supreme Court recently voted 5-4 not to intervene and block the implementation of Texas’ anti-abortion law SB8, which bans all abortions past six weeks and offers monetary incentives for citizens who report anyone “aiding and abetting” an abortion.

The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change released a report on August 9. The team of 230 scientists said, “Many of the changes observed in the climate are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, and some of the changes already set in motion—such as continued sea level rise—are irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years…unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.

In the wake of the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan and the subsequent usurpation of the Afghan government by the Taliban, there seem to be two competing widespread opinions. Predictably, the corporate media, essentially an arm of the military industrial complex itself, has been nearly unanimous in its messaging that the turmoil in Afghanistan is a cautionary tale for why America must remain the World Police, and that the Biden administration’s decision to withdraw was a disastrous one.

If God is a novelist, he has a disposition towards the trite, the obvious, and the too on-the-nose. Case in point: Andrew Cuomo. If one wanted to write a book whose theme was personal and political hypocrisy, you couldn’t do any better than to produce one in which liberals rally around one notoriously corrupt bully, in order to demonstrate their rejection of another.

Nina Turner entered her primary for Ohio’s 11th Congressional District with massive advantages in name recognition, fundraising, and polling. In fact, as recently as June 1, her lead seemed insurmountable; she was polling at 50% to Shontel Brown’s 15.

At her press conference last week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked a question about the Biden administration’s policy on the issue of student loan debt forgiveness. As we on the Left have long known, neither Biden nor Democratic leadership have any real interest in forgiving student loan debt, and so it wouldn’t have come as much surprise to see Pelosi dodge the question by muttering a stream of meaningless, meandering gobbledygook.

July 20 marked the one year anniversary of the passing of Michael Brooks, co-host and producer of The Majority Report and host of The Michael Brooks Show. When news broke of his death, I was shocked and devastated.

In the days and weeks after the coronavirus lockdowns began, many on the Left called for a general strike. What better time than now, we thought, to demand a more robust social safety net, and to withhold our labor until we get it?

We on the Left had always assumed that the defense of free speech and freedom of expression were core principles of Leftism, and that the impulse to censor and ban was a right-wing phenomenon.

“You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy.” Arthur Jensen, Network For years, leftists have been digging through the internet archives to prove that when Democrats are in power, they never actually deliver on their promises to the voters, even when it’s fully within their power to do so.

Progressive candidates swept control of the Nevada Democratic Party on Saturday, March 6th. With the backing of the local DSA chapter, Judith Whitmer was elected chair of the state party, and four other Left candidates also prevailed in their respective races.

I’ve been holding my fire, ‘cause fair is fair; we had to give Biden a little time to either break his previous mold or prove to be the war mongering corporate stooge he’s always been.

When Barack Obama took the lead in the 2008 primaries, many of us who supported him at the time were surprised to learn of people called superdelegates: party big-whigs who got to cast their own heavily weighted votes in the Democratic primaries.

“The Black Panthers are the single greatest threat to our national security,” proclaims Martin Sheen as J. Edgar Hoover at the beginning of the new film, Judas and the Black Messiah, “Our counter-intelligence program must prevent the rise of a Black Messiah from among their midst - one with the potential to unite the Communist, the anti-war, and the New Left movements.

Last week, The Washington Post published an article entitled “A majority of the people arrested for Capitol riot had a history of financial trouble.” The article found a pattern of bankruptcies, tax liens, and defaults on loans amongst those charged with breaking into the Capitol on January 6th.

For a brief few days after the inauguration, it seemed as though the country actually had been unified. Not by Biden’s speech, or the pageantry, or the poetry, but by the virally memed image of Bernie Sanders, sitting by himself in his winter jacket and giant mittens, with his cheap blue mask on crooked, arms and legs crossed.

Christian Smalls was a supervisor at Amazon’s JFK/Staten Island warehouse until Spring of 2020, at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. When he noticed workers had been falling ill on the job with severe flu-like symptoms, he approached his local HR department to inquire about workplace protection measures against Covid-19.

“We like the stock.” - Jim Cramer, January 28, 2021 Except for a few rare moments of populist uprising big enough to force concessions from elites (the labor movements of the late 19th-early 20th century), the story we tell ourselves about our own history, is mostly the story of the upper classes.

The “short sell” is a somewhat common practice on Wall Street. It’s a technique in which an investor will borrow a stock and instantly sell it at the market price, in the hopes that when the stock is due to be returned, it will have declined in value.

Last summer, Nathan Robinson reviewed Krystal Ball’s and Saagar Enjeti’s book, A Populist’s Guide to 2020. He criticized the authors for overstating the compatibility of Left and Right wing populism, stating that Right wing populism is more or less “just fascism,” and that the Left should confront supposed Right wing populists, rather than court them and seek common ground with them.

The alliance between the liberal establishment and big tech has so been long entrenched that it’s difficult to discern where one ends and the other begins. It became obvious in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory that this amorphous yet coordinated power structure would stop at nothing to ensure that such a thing could not and would not ever happen again.

At around this time last year, Bernie Sanders was surging in the Democratic primary polls, causing panic amongst his centrist rivals and their media mouthpieces. Op-eds abounded, sounding the alarms about Sanders’ vulnerability in the general election, largely due to his calling himself a democratic socialist.

At the start of the House session (January 3), Democrats will hold the narrowest majority by either party in modern American history. It’s still unclear at this writing what the exact makeup will be at the swearing in ceremony, as one House race is still too close to call, and some members are stuck in quarantine.

Over the past couple of weeks, we saw the United States Congress in lockstep agreement over the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act renewal. The bill includes the following: 93 new F-35 fighter jets to be manufactured by Lockheed Martin (even though the Pentagon only requested 79).

Publisher’s Note: This article was first published in December of 2020. Given recent developments in which many Republican candidates and politicians are running on policies like a public healthcare option, marijuana decriminalization, and Universal Basic Income, we’ve decided to recirculate it for your reading pleasure.

Few intellectuals on the left are as widely respected as Cornel West. Because he is a decorated, recognized leftist intellectual and activist, West has been placed on a pedestal, and many on the left take his words as gospel.

As coronavirus cases surge throughout the country and the death toll climbs by thousands per day, it seems, as widely predicted, that Americans are staring down what will likely be the darkest and deadliest winter of our lifetimes.

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I understand that Time magazine has a long history of making Presidents-Elect their “Person of the Year.” This tradition started in 1932, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected on the promise of a New Deal to rebuild America’s economy.

Barack Obama, in one of his latest interviews following the release of his presidential memoir, A Promised Land, sounded off on the Black Lives Matter movement’s “Defund the Police” slogan:

At this writing, Democrats have lost 8 seats in the House of Representatives, as results from the 2020 election continue to be finalized. As predicted, much of the blame for Democrats’ losses is being laid at the feet of the progressive movement, with particular admonishment given to Black Lives Matter activists over their controversial “Defund the Police” slogan.

There is only one party in the US, the corporatist party. This is a fact that that is readily apparent and has been well documented by many people, from pundits like Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Ralph Nader, Chris Hedges and even Ann Coulter to comedians like George Carlin, Lee Camp and Jimmy Dore.

The formal presidential transition process is now underway, according to a letter from the General Services Administration sent to Joe Biden sent on November 23, signaling the beginning of the end of a bizarre and mostly incoherent effort by the Trump campaign to challenge the results of the 2020 election.

The Democrats have won a Pyrrhic victory with Joe Biden. They got rid of Trump, but in electing Joe Biden they may have set the Democratic Party on a death spiral that could culminate in four years.

I was very excited to receive an email this afternoon from Movement For a People’s Party announcing that they will be seeking ballot access in their first state, the state of Maine, next month.

The Associated Press called the 2020 Presidential election for Joe Biden in the late morning on November 7, after days of suspense-inducing vote counts in 7 states that were too close to call on election night.

According to polling, betting markets, and professional oddsmakers, Joe Biden is the clear favorite heading into Tuesday’s election. He has Donald Trump spread very thin across the electoral map, leading in states like North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio, and within striking distance in even the traditionally red states of Georgia and Texas, which have not gone blue since 1992 and 1976, respectively.

Noam Chomsky says we “must push the lever for the Democrats” in order to oust Trump. Briahna Joy Gray says we need to “leverage” our votes against the Democratic Party in order to force them to take the Left more seriously.

Noam Chomsky’s recent appearance on the Bad Faith podcast has been fodder for debate among Leftists as Election Day draws near. Hosts Briahna Joy Gray and Virgil Texas challenged him on his support for Joe Biden, claiming that progressives pledging their unconditional allegiance to Democrats in general elections has led to a decades-long rightward shift in Democratic politics, and American politics more broadly.

Given the massive groundswell of anguish and fury over the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court, one might expect to see more news coverage of the multiple ways Congressional Democrats are trying to block her nomination.

In 2017, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, more commonly known as the “Trump Tax Cuts,” effectively eliminated the Affordable Care Act’s controversial individual mandate by reducing the penalty for not having health insurance to zero dollars.

Writer’s Note: This piece was originally published in October of 2020. Slight adjustments and updates were since made to reflect the results of the presidential election. As Inauguration Day approaches and Joe Biden is poised to become our 46th President, many on the Left are concerned that a Biden presidency will usher in an era of liberal complacency and neoliberal normalcy - the exact things, they would correctly argue, that led to Donald Trump’s 2016 victory in the first place.

In his recent essay titled “Why Liberals Hate Poor White Trash,” River Page writes the following: “The term ’liberal,’ in the popular imagination, has become synonymous with upper-middle-class white urbanites, a stereotype borne out by statistics.

“Protect our democracy!” has become a rallying cry in the final weeks of this election season, as moderate, liberal, and progressive Democrats seek to coalesce behind Joe Biden for the sake of ousting the increasingly authoritarian Trump regime and letting our democratic institutions live to fight another day.

I am, and have been for some time, what many would call a “conspiracy theorist.” In a friendly game of Zoom trivia a couple of weeks back, there was an “assassinations” category, and I found myself blanking on obvious answers like Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray - that’s how skeptical I tend to be of mainstream narratives.

“All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.” -President Roslin, Battlestar Galactica If there had been any doubt about the notion that the collapse of the American Empire was no longer ahead of us, but something that we’re now experiencing in real time, the first presidential debate of 2020 should have settled the question once and for all.

So, the first debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is in the books. And if the next two debates are canceled, as some have suggested they ought to be, and we complete our slide into authoritarianism, this could, in theory, have been the final debate in American history.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing, and Donald Trump’s subsequent nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, has us all rightly worried about the impending collapse of voting rights, women’s rights, gay rights, labor rights, and civil rights more broadly.

If you live in New York City and you’ve watched a New York crime show in the last twenty years, it probably felt a lot like alternate history science fiction. *What if you put Starsky and Hutch in a world with cell phones and the internet?

Last week, MSNBC’s Morning Joe did a segment on Joe Biden’s low Latino support in Florida. According to recent polling cited in the segment, Trump leads Biden among Cuban Americans by a whopping 68-30 margin.

As a volunteer for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign, I canvassed in three states talking to voters about Bernie’s policies, including the Green New Deal. It was clear that the climate and environment was an important topic for many of the citizens with whom I spoke.

“Of course Democrats will blame the Left if Biden loses!” You say, “Isn’t this old news?!” Well, yes and no. It’s true that Green Party voters, Bernie-or-Busters, and all other lefties who withhold their vote from Joe Biden will be chided and shamed by Democratic leaders, voters, and pundits.

On the morning of September 3, Rick Snyder, former Republican governor of Michigan, announced he would be voting for Joe Biden over Donald Trump. Calling Donald Trump a “bully who lacks a moral compass,” Snyder declared he would “continue to support and stand up for Republican policies and values,” but would not support Trump for re-election.

It seems like hardly a day goes by that we aren’t being urged to cancel somebody. Whether it’s a media celebrity who lacked the foresight to behave according to current standards, 10 years ago, a historical figure who had the poor judgement not to be woke in the 1700’s, or just some poor schmuck who didn’t get the memo on the universal hand gesture for “okay,” no longer being okay, the list of non-persons just keeps on growing.

As the George Floyd protests erupted in late May, Dr. Cornel West appeared on CNN and said, “We are witnessing America as a failed social experiment.” He went on to lament the United States’ seemingly unbridgeable racial divide, our biased and unjust legal system, and our brutal market-driven economy that renders far too many of our citizens unable to live with dignity.

It’s September, and both major party conventions have come and gone, which means the general election has officially begun. To say that 2020 has been a volatile year would of course be an understatement.

PART 1: A LITTLE REVOLUTION CAN BE GOOD Franklin Delano Roosevelt is often credited with having “saved Capitalism in America”. Indeed, FDR even described himself as “the greatest friend the profit system ever had.

As the DNC and RNC reality TV shows wrap up, an Orwellian mood fills the air. We are told from all corners that now is not the time to raise uncomfortable questions about Biden’s record.

“Boris has just given me a summary of his views. He is a weather prophet. The weather will continue bad, he says. There will be more calamities, more death, more despair.

I know people are angry at this 17 year old kid, Kyle Rittenhouse. I get it. I am too. But please keep in mind, and in heart, he’s just a 17 year old boy.

“To vote, or not to vote…for Joe Biden,” is the soliloquy on the lips of the Left as this foul year of our Lord 2020 approaches its sure to be spectacular, in an Irwin Allen disaster movie kind of a way, conclusion.

On the third night of the Democratic National Convention, President Barack Obama addressed the nation from the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. In what’s being described as a “stark, sober address” intended to frighten Americans about the dangers of a second Trump term, the former president took a moment to acknowledge the hopelessness and cynicism that has become so prevalent in today’s political discourse:

Opening night of the Democratic National Convention ended with a performance of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What it’s Worth” by Billy Porter, accompanied on guitar by Stephen Stills. The intention was clear: to invoke the rebellious spirit of the 1960’s and package it as a multigenerational call to action from both the old white man who wrote the song and the openly gay African American superstar singing lead vocals.

As the Democratic National Convention kicks off, so begins perhaps the most hopeless general election season this country has ever seen. Predictably, progressives are debating each other over how to vote, if at all, in November.

Jim Langford is one of over 700 delegates who will be voting ’no’ on the DNC platform at next week’s virtual convention over the party’s rejection of Medicare for All.

Last year, I had the pleasure of interviewing Nick Brana, founder and national director for the Movement for a People’s Party. Anticipating a possible repeat of the 2016 primary in which Bernie Sanders would be denied the nomination by a combination of Democratic Party chicanery and Democratic voter vapidity, I asked him how he thought his organization should approach the question of how progressives ought to vote in the general election, assuming someone like Joe Biden would be the nominee.

The primary contests on August 4th were a major boon for down-ballot Leftists, and a much needed lift for the progressive movement. Following Jamaal Bowman’s decisive upset victory over incumbent Eliot Engel in New York’s 16th Congressional District primary on June 23, the spotlight turned to St.

On July 18, a peaceful Black Lives Matter rally was planned in Pleasant Valley, NY. Permits were secured, arrangements were made with local law enforcement, and trained peacekeepers had volunteered to attend to ensure the safety of all participants.

It has been several weeks since Valerie suffered a nightmare. After falling asleep, instead of suddenly finding herself at a grocery store checkout counter with no money, as happened so often in the past, or under arrest for crossing state lines to find shelter with her children, she has dreamt simply of flying, traveling, being alone in quiet fields, and reading.

In spite of what you might have heard, Democrats aren’t stupid. Nor are they spineless, cowardly, incapable of messaging, or any of the other things offered as explanations for their decades-long failure to win most elections in most places, or to secure meaningful policy reforms for their voters.

We published a podcast a couple of weeks ago about the differences between “leftists” and “liberals.” It was our most listened-to episode ever. There’s obviously an appetite out there for a deeper understanding of political philosophies, how they come to be, and how they manifest themselves in real world conflicts and struggles.

In the pre-Covid world, Trump was consistently favored across numerous betting markets and forecasting models to win reelection, and the Republicans maintaining control of the Senate was a virtual lock. Alas, however, times have changed.

Below is the Majority Report’s tribute show to Michael Brooks, who died suddenly and tragically on Monday, July 20. I’ve also listed some of my favorite Michael Brooks videos here as well.

Lately, we’ve published a few blog posts whose headlines have used the word “liberal” in the headline. I myself published two pieces titled “Black Lives Matter is Winning, and They Don’t Need Advice from the Liberal Establishment,” and “Our Useless Liberal Media Still Won’t Commit to Medicare For All.

Writer’s Note, 2/17/21: This article was first published in July of 2020, and the podcast interview attached was recorded during the summer of 2019. Given President Biden’s recent rejection of the $50,000 debt relief proposal put forth by progressive, and even some moderate, Democrats, I thought the article and the podcast were both worth re-posting.

How is the Democratic establishment able to exert so much influence over American society when its hypocrisy is so blatant? Why are so many Americans prepared to throw away any hope of progress just to “stop Trump”?

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism is a book by Robin DiAngelo about her experiences as a for-hire diversity trainer for corporate America. The book was first published in 2018, but has recently soared atop the New York Times bestseller list as race relations are back in the forefront of our collective consciousness.

“A Letter on Justice and Open Debate” was recently published in Harper’s Magazine and co-signed by dozens of writers, authors, and academics from all corners of the political spectrum. The letter praised the new wave of activism that has swept the nation in response to the murder of George Floyd, but expressed concerns about the growing zealousness of the emerging Left, and warned of an “intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.

Over the weekend, Donald Trump gave a speech at Mt. Rushmore. Unlike his failed rally two weeks prior in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in which he delivered off-the-cuff remarks including a bizarre twenty minute tangent about his difficulty descending a ramp at West Point, this was a prepared speech delivered more or less as written, with minimal Trumpian improvisation.

RootsAction.org and Progressive Democrats for America are urging Joe Biden to select Elizabeth Warren as his running mate, as per an open letter they published just this week addressed to his campaign.

Progressives have been widely sharing the new Op-ed in The New York Times by its editorial board member Jeneen Interlandi entitled “Employer-Based Health Care, Meet Massive Unemployment.” Finally, it seems, liberal establishment outlets have realized the necessity for universal healthcare in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

An interview with Brett Story by Keaton Weiss and Richie Rosencrans Brett Story is a Candian author, filmmaker, and prison abolitionist. In 2016, she released her documentary film The Prison in Twelve Landscapes, and three years later, published a book called Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power Across Neoliberal America.

Since the murder of George Floyd, a massive protest movement has sprouted in cities across America, large and small. Out of this uprising, a political demand has emerged: “defund the police.

In 2008, Hillary Clinton raised some eyebrows when she implied that President Lyndon Johnson deserved more credit for the passage of the Civil Rights Act than Martin Luther King, Jr. She said in an interview, “Dr.

Polling indicates that 74% of Americans believe that George Floyd’s death is a symptom of a broader, systemic racial injustice. In a separate poll, that same percentage support the massive protest movement that arose in the aftermath of his horrific murder.

At least seven times this week, I’ve sat down and tried to write about what’s going on right now in this country. And every time, I found myself staring at a blank screen, not because I didn’t know what to write about, but because I didn’t know what notto write about.

Last week, news broke that YouTube had censored the new film *Planet of the Humans,*from executive producer Michael Moore, director Jeff Gibbs, and producer Ozzie Zehner. On Tuesday, Michael tweeted out an open invitation for anyone with the ability to help distribute the film independently to write him.

“Which side are you on boys? Which side are you on? Which side are you on boys? Which side are you on?” -Pete Seeger “The Hamptons are not a defensible position.

“I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life,” said Amy Cooper, as she took out her phone to call the police on Christian Cooper (no relation), a black man who asked her to leash her dog in accordance with the rules of Central Park’s “Ramble,” where their paths happened to cross early Monday morning.

On Wednesday, May 13, The New York Timespublished yet another absolutely fucking horrible op-ed entitled “These Young Socialists Think They Have Courage. They Don’t.” The article’s main point (do I even have to tell you?

A new Emerson poll has found that 51% of Bernie Sanders supporters are considering casting their vote for an independent or 3rd Party candidate in November. In my previous piece on the movement to #DemExit, I explored the reasons why so many were planning on leaving the party in response to the way both the 2016 and 2020 primaries were conducted.

**See update at the bottom of this review and watch Planet of the Humans on our site!** About halfway through *Planet of the Humans,*filmmaker Jeff Gibbs narrates the following: “We humans are poised for a fall from an unimaginable height.

I keep thinking of the movie Network lately, as I watch the Democratic Party’s current demonstration of its ability to absorb every well-intentioned social movement in our society and spit it back out in a corrupted and meaningless form.

Chris Hayes is one of the more honest and insightful MSNBC commentators, which is akin to saying Bobby Baccalieri is one of the kinder, gentler members of the Sopranos crew. Bobby ‘Bacala,’ as he was called, had never personally whacked anyone until well into the show’s final season (and even when he was called upon to do so by an increasingly sociopathic Tony, he was hesitant to go through with it), but he was nonetheless a willing profiteer in a criminal enterprise.

Rumblings have been afoot in recent days that Jesse Ventura, former radio host, Navy SEAL, pro wrestler, sports commentator, and governor of Minnesota, is considering a run for the presidency. This is hardly the first time he’s sparked such rumors.

**The following memo was written to the Bernie Sanders campaign in September 2019 at their request.** From: Anis Shivani To: Heather Gautney, Nina Turner Subject: The Campaign Has a Warren Problem

I was down in New Orleans back in May, and I took a swamp tour with a fella who was right out of central casting for a Cajun character, and he knew it, and he played it up pretty good.

Forcing the March 17 primaries in Florida, Arizona and Illinois to go forward, despite reports of exceedingly low turnout throughout the day (which miraculously and quite expectedly turned into higher turnouts than 2016 in both Florida and Arizona by the time the final reporting came in), was the last straw.

Of course, now that the Democratic presidential primary has all but officially come to a close, we’re in that familiar phase of the campaign cycle when the discussion turns to how everyone is going to vote in November, if at all.

I’ve been a registered Democrat for my entire adult life, like my parents before me, and their parents before them (although my grandfather was of the “Nixon is just the one who got caught,” school of thought on Watergate.

In the summer of 2019, there was much debate among progressives as to who to support in the Democratic presidential primary. At the time, Elizabeth Warren was surging in the polls, and many took the position that she, while perhaps not as committed to the cause as Bernie Sanders, was the best horse to back, because she had what at the time seemed like a more viable path to the nomination.

From the moment I saw the first video ad of her long-shot primary challenge for New York’s 14th Congressional District in 2018, I knew that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was the real deal.

Personally, I believe in democracy. I believe that given accurate information and the necessary education to process it, a majority of people will correctly discern their own best interests and vote accordingly.

From the beginning of the 2020 Democratic primary season, I could tell what it was all going to be about. It was clear from day one that this would be a contest amongst a crowded field of over two dozen candidates to convince the Democratic electorate not of whose vision of the future was most compelling, or whose policy set was most appealing, but of who stood the best chance of defeating Donald Trump in November.

There have been a lot of explanations offered for the unlikely victory of Donald Trump in 2016. Russia, racists, James Comey, economic distress, sexism, voter suppression, and the missteps of the Clinton campaign, have been the most common.

In 2016, I was more or less Bernie or Bust. I registered as a Democrat for the first time in my life in order to vote for Bernie Sanders in the closed primary state of New York.

It was early 2016. Hillary Clinton was a virtual lock for the Democratic nomination, and Donald Trump was leading a crowded field of Republicans all vying for the opportunity to take her on.

James Carville - there’s a name you haven’t heard in a while, and for good reason - is looking pretty upset these days. Over the weekend, Voxpublished an interview with Carville in which he bemoaned the current state of the Democratic Party, most especially, the continued momentum of Bernie Sanders, who has now achieved bona fide frontrunner status as the favorite to win the nomination.

If you’re reading this article, you’re probably at least a little bit of a politics junkie, so I’m going to assume you don’t need to have the caucuses explained to you.

There’s a great scene in Oliver Stone’s classic Viet Nam War movie, Platoon, where a black soldier questions Charlie Sheen’s protagonist on how a college educated white boy ended up in Nam.

A few weeks ago, as we entered the year 2020, Bernie Sanders’ campaign was surging. Endorsements were pouring in, poll numbers were rising, and the betting markets were starting to respond accordingly, placing Sanders’ chances just 0.

If you’re a Sanders supporter, you’re probably furious with Elizabeth Warren right now. If, like me, you’re a Sanders supporter who’s been going out of their way to say nice things about Warren, you’re probably a little embarrassed too.

“You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both.

Ricky Gervais’ monologue at the Golden Globes this past Sunday is getting rave reviews, particularly from the right wing media. Greg Gutfeld, Fox News host and closest thing to a real comedian they could find to put on TV, called Gervais’ bit “a dream come true for anyone tired of Hollywood telling you how dumb and racist America is.

President Trump has used the word “fake” so often, he seems to think he invented it. In a 2017 interview with Mike Huckabee, he said, “I think one of the greatest of all terms I’ve come up with is *’*fake’.

Melissa Henneberger, a regular contributor to the KC Star, and the political editor for the Huffington Post, recently published an article in USA Today that explains the unfathomable in a way that no other pundit has managed to do: who the fuck are these people keeping Joe Biden at the top of the polls month after month?

Sci-fi writers have a long history of predicting future technologies and social transformations. From Jules Verne and H.G. Wells predicting the submarine and the tank, respectively, to Philip K. Dick describing CGI, and Isaac Asimov foreseeing the self-driving car 50 years before Tesla began experimenting with the idea, science fiction authors have an uncanny track record of nailing the future.

I love wine. My wife loves wine. The first vacation we ever took together was out to Portland, Oregon to visit her uncle, who took us wine tasting there. Then we rented a car and drove down to Napa for another two days of wine tasting before flying out of San Francisco back to New York.

Corporate media is a helluva drug. Its single-handedly kept Democrats chasing one Trump scandal after another for the past three years, without ever telling them how little actual “resistance” to Trump’s legislative agenda there’s been from the same Congress that’s impeaching him now.

So, it’s on. Democrats announced this past Tuesday morning that they are moving forward with the impeachment of Donald Trump on two counts: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The House Judiciary Committee approved these articles on Friday, and a final House vote on impeachment seems poised to take place next week.

No sooner had Donald Trump won the Presidency than centrists launched an all-out assault on every external force they could think of that would deflect responsibility away from themselves and their anointed candidate.

Most corporate media horse race coverage focuses in on traditional metrics; donations, money on hand, endorsements/institutional support, and polling of likely voters. It always worked before 2016, and in an industry where the Chinese adage, “The nail that sticks up, gets hammered down,” is the guiding editorial principal, careerist journos are slow to change their methods even in the face of overwhelming evidence that those methods are outdated and useless in the face of a rising populist wave.

Yesterday I returned home after two weeks on the road, clocking in 2,300 miles. My trip had one purpose: to chalk Bernie’s name at as many colleges as possible across California.

It was April, year of our Lord 2019. Spring had sprung. The birds were chirpin’, and the bees were buzzin’, and Joe Biden had just launched his presidential campaign. His announcement video was lauded by the mainstream press as he called for a restoration of the soul of America and assured the good people of this ultimately still-great country that the election of Donald Trump in 2016 was but an aberration, and that order would soon be restored, and that we’d undergo no final, irreversible fall from grace.

When this latest edition of the quadrennial shit show we call an American election first started, I was pulling for undiagnosed-sociopath Kamala Harris. Not to win, but to siphon off enough votes from Biden to allow either Sanders or Warren to emerge as the nominee.

I feel I should start by saying that, on the whole, I like Tulsi Gabbard. I first became familiar with her, as did many progressives, during the 2016 presidential primary, when she quit the DNC in order to endorse Bernie Sanders for president and to call to attention how the process was being rigged against him.

Elizabeth Warren, in her escalating feud with Facebook, recently trolled the social media giant by deliberately posting a fake ad claiming that Mark Zuckerberg had formally endorsed Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

**This post contains some minor plot spoilers for the film Joker.** Lets face it, Batman has always been a superman. Not in the red cape, allergic-to-kryptonite sense, but in the Nietzschean, ubermensch sense.

Kamala Harris this week, in her ongoing quest to find just the right parade to jump out in front of, suddenly reversed her position on impeachment by coming out in favor of it, and, for good measure, defended Joe Biden, saying, “Leave Joe alone,” when asked about the propriety of the Vice President’s son serving on the board of a foreign energy company.

In 1995, political consultant Chris Lehane wrote an extensive memo which analyzed the conservative media, and, more specifically, its role in mainstreaming conspiracy theories related to, at the time, the first couple of the United States, Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Summer’s over, folks. And with the crisp air, falling leaves, football Sundays, and pumpkin spiced everything, comes the time for everyone to start getting serious about the 2020 Presidential primary. Contrary to CNN’s laughably, though predictably, biased analysis billing this a now two-person race between Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, the primary campaign is now a pretty close three way contest which, despite the corporate media’s best efforts, does include Bernie Sanders.

Being a Democrat, even a nominal one like myself, is a lot like being a Mets fan. While there are plenty of teams in baseball with a losing record, the Mets are unique in their preferred style of losing: from ahead.

First of all, it’s quite likely that Bernie Sanders actually won the rank and file vote for the Working Families Party endorsement. The party decides upon its presidential endorsement via a “weighted vote,” which is essentially a superdelegate model.

“We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

A recent Monmouth University poll showed Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren tied atop the 2020 Democratic field at 20 points apiece. Warren’s rise in the polls over the summer has prompted, and in some cases revived, a debate amongst progressives as to who exactly she is.

Bernie Sanders is the Jewish descendent of Polish immigrants who came to America to escape oppression and discrimination at home. The members of his family who stayed behind were wiped out in the Holocaust.

Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar recently held a press conference after being banned from entering Israel and the West Bank. In her opening statement, Omar stated that their intended trip had been planned in order to “highlight the human cost of the occupation” by speaking not just with Palestinians, but also “to meet directly with members of the Knesset and Israeli security along with Palestinian civil society groups.

I know, I know, I know. If you’re a pussy-hat wearing, Chardonnay-and-Xanax mixing, blue-no-matter-who preaching, “resistance” liberal, your hair is probably on fire right now because I sound “JUST LIKE TRUMP!

We once had a president who proposed a health care plan that was far more generous than Obamacare. It never came to pass because members of Congress opposed it. This same president also seriously considered a Guaranteed Basic Income and created an entirely new government agency focused on the environment.

The Republicans have already decided how to brand the Democrats for the 2020 election cycle: socialism, abortion, and open borders. This will be their line of attack no matter who the Democrats nominate for president.

Vladimir Lenin once said, “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” The term “controlled opposition” isn’t widely used, but when it is nowadays, it typically refers to the likes of Alex Jones.

Let’s start with the basics. All Beagles are dogs, but not all dogs are Beagles. All roses are flowers, but not all flowers are roses. Got it? Good. Now let’s apply this same principle to the fake-AOC-outrage-du-jour.

Sanders’ speech on democratic socialism is the thing revolutions are made of. “If there was ever a moment where we had to effectively analyze the competing political and social forces which define this historical period, this is that time.

If your social circle is similar to mine, you likely know which op-ed I’m referring to. In case you don’t, it’s the one by Farhad Manjoo dated June 5, entitled “I Want to Live in Elizabeth Warren’s America.

In her recent appearance on the “Primo Nutmeg” podcast, Jill Stein recounts her public appeal to Bernie Sanders in July of 2016. Her offer was a simple one. She invited Bernie to replace her at the top of the ticket, and run for president as the Green Party nominee.

Joe Biden has a lot going for him, or so we’re told. He’s got a compelling personal story. He’s got experience. He’s got blue-collar, working class, Rust Belt appeal. He’s got policy solutions for America’s most urgent problems – oh, wait, he hasn’t announced any of those yet.

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