Is Bernie Sanders a Single-Issue Candidate? Populism, Hillary Clinton, and the Balance of Class Forces

Hillary Clinton’s newest line of attack on Bernie Sanders exposes a flaw of populist politics, the ability to characterize a platform of simplistic Manichean problem and solution sets as reducible to a singular problem and solution, that is, to frame the campaign as being single issue. In an important sense this is an unfair characterization […]

The Bernie Sanders Mandate on the Eve of the Iowa Caucus

Tomorrow night, the Sanders “can you spare three dollars for a ‘political revolution’?” machine faces off against the Clinton “I’ll take you to dinner and give you a signed copy of my book” machine. Over the past six months I’ve critiqued both Clinton and Sanders, but the majority of my criticism has been directed at […]

Bernie Needs to Talk Austerity, and Podemos Can Show Him How

Bernie Sanders’ editorial in today’s New York Times is fairly representative of liberals’ general remarks on the Fed raising the federal funds rate. It notes the dangers of it causing a recession by making investment more expensive, and this just for the benefit of combating nearly non-existent inflation. Missing from his editorial and pieces like […]

The End of Kirchnerism in Argentina Suggests Lessons for the American Left and Bernie Sanders’ Leftist Populism

The American Left would do well to attend to today’s Argentine presidential elections. At a moment when the Global Left is making electoral strides in Portugal, Greece, Spain, and to a certain extent Britain with the election of Corbyn as opposition leader, the movement sees a recession in one of the ‘pink tide’ South American […]

It Matters that Bernie Sanders is Not Actually a “Democratic Socialist”

In a speech today Bernie Sanders articulated his vision of democratic socialism for the empire: “the wealthiest people and the largest corporations must pay their fair share of taxes”, that “democratic socialism means that we must create an economy that works for all, not just the very wealthy”. That these are the tenants of mainstream […]

Electoral Politics or Protest?

In the Fall issue of Dissent, Michael Kazin and David Marcus debate the extent to which the Left should participate in electoral politics, with Kazin arguing that Leftists should vote and canvas for Democrats, earning Democrats’ resolve for championing Leftist demands, and Marcus contending that the Left must eschew electoral politics and effect change through […]

Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, George Orwell and our “Greatest National Security Threat”

Asked what the greatest national security threat facing the United States is, Hillary Clinton gestured to nuclear weapons, implicating Iran, perhaps Pakistan (though the U.S. is quite cozy with Pakistan, with Obama set to sell eight F-16s to them shortly, despite their enabling and funding the Taliban), Martin O’Malley named nuclear Iran and climate change, and […]

How is Sanders a Socialist if he Cannot Push Clinton to the Left on Foreign Policy?

With Hillary Clinton expressing doubts about the Trans-Pacific Partnership after much delay, we see another instance where the Bernie Sanders campaign has pushed her to the left. It is a modest victory, of course, as she made no to commitments to pull the U.S. out of the deal, as Sanders has. But she has recently […]

One Year After Mike Brown was Murdered, Many White Progressives are Still Complacent with Institutional Racism

Three Hundred and Sixty Five days separate us from the day of the murder of Mike Brown, though we are not so separate now from that murder, and while, as a white male, I could never be justified in making assessments on improvements for Black folk over that time, I can say, and feel obligated […]

One Reason to Support Bernie Sanders for President

Neighbor, The media keeps us misinformed and distracted from political policies that profoundly affect our lives, while using opinion polls to control public opinion rather than measure it. Bernie Sanders is breaking through these structures of thought-control for one simple reason: he is describing the reality that Americans across the country are seeing – underemployment, […]