"Intense Politicisation, with Neither Institutional Roots nor Ambitions"

"'On the surface,' Jäger writes, 'the Black Lives Matter protests would seem to have little in common with the mob that stormed the Capitol in January 2021. Morally, they are worlds apart … Organisationally, however, these movements exhibit a striking set of similarities: fleeting in duration, they maintain no membership rolls and struggle to impose any real discipline on their adherents.' As a consequence, everything explodes and nothing changes; movements surge suddenly forward and yet no territory is taken. He quotes political theorist Paolo Gerbaudo’s evocative phrase 'bodies without organs'. Modern political movements, he writes, are 'concentrated and muscular, yet without an internal metabolism'."

Zoe Williams at The Guardian talks with Anton Jäger, author of Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences.

Now or Never

"Having staged a remarkably successful coup within Britain’s ruling Labour Party in response to outgoing leader Keir Starmer's chronic irresolution on virtually all issues, Burnham has calculated that he needs to appear decisive and pragmatic straight out of the box. The former Manchester mayor comes off as a gregarious, upbeat fellow with an admittedly nerdy overlay. If he's not exactly John F. Kennedy, he clearly outdoes Starmer on charisma (not a high bar). He begins with a considerable reservoir of goodwill, but whether improved vibes can correct the Labour government's toxic drift remains to be seen."

Andrew O'Hehir at Salon reacts to Andy Burnham becoming the latest UK prime minister.

As does Larry Elliot at The Guardian.

"The Reckoning Coming When the MAGA Sleeping Giant Awakens"

"A January New York Times and Siena poll found 65 percent of voters say a middle-class life is simply out of reach, and 77 percent say it’s harder to reach now than it was for their parents. That isn't a 'left' or 'right' number: that's my dad's vanished paycheck and benefits, expressed as despair, across the whole country.

Which is precisely why the morbidly rich oligarchs and their lickspittle politicians, and the billionaire-owned media, work so hard to keep us in these neat little categories and at each others' throats."

Thom Hartmann at Alternet writes that "[t]he instant working people stop asking 'who's the enemy who looks, prays, or loves differently than I do' and start asking 'who took my dad's paycheck,' the whole game is over."

"A Leftist Wave Is Cresting Across the Country"

"After the last month, Democratic leadership should be seriously taking stock of their position. The energy is on their left. The people are on their left. Democrats want fighters, and they want a politics rooted in the collective struggles of the masses, not decided in smoke-filled rooms. We still need moderate Democrats to win those pesky median voters, for now. But the party's leadership is deeply out of touch with its base."

Ben Davis at The Guardian considers the results of recent primary elections.

As does George Chidi.

"It Didn't Have to Be Like This"

"There is a sense of sadness here, of opportunities missed. America is the most powerful economic and cultural force on Earth, self-appointed global prefect and all-round democracy monitor. This is a place where liberty is cherished, where people throw around the word 'freedom' like it's a threat, an insult, a blood-stained battle-axe. And yet the US is also the only World Cup host to ban Fifa members from attending. So far the landscape it has dished up is barren and divisive, a depressingly angry version of football uniting the world."

At The Guardian, Barney Ronay says, "Welcome to Trump's World Cup."

"This Was Supposed to Be a Change Revolution, but Voters Clearly Said No to the Revolution"

"'I think the Democrats' prospects are very bright in 2026 given the California Republicans' dysfunctionality and a complete backlash against Donald Trump,' Adams said. 'But I have much bigger concerns about the California Democrats long term, because it seems to me they're setting a record for most consecutive years of failing to fix the state's problems while getting reelected anyway.'"

Jenny Jarvie at the Los Angeles Times reports reactions to the results of California's primary elections.

And Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect explains "How California Politics Became So Blah."

Broken Eggs Cannot Be Mended

"The American people broke something when they gave Trump a second chance in office. And there is no going back to the Union as it was. If Democrats hope to lead the nation to any kind of recovery, much less renewal, they must understand and internalize this fact of the matter."

Jamelle Bouie at The New York Times argues that "Democrats must have a plan for reconstruction—for building something new on the wreckage of what President Trump, MAGA and the Republican Party have wrought—not for restoration of what was."

"Any Billionaires Who Pay the Tax Will Earn It Back in Just a Few Months"

"Billionaires' taxes amount to zero. So long as they don't sell any of the shares that made them rich, they're not actually forced to pay taxes on the skyrocketing value of those shares. A 'wealth tax' worthy of the name would ensure they pay the same as the rest of us, around 40%. That would not prevent them from amassing fortunes. Their $1 million would still grow to $190 million over 20 years—which is colossal, just not as colossal as $3.3 billion."

Stephen Land at the Los Angeles Times explains "[w]hy billionaires shouldn't fuss over the wealth tax."

And Jonathan Last at The Bulwark writes, "As the saying goes: Capitalism is too important to be left to the capitalists."

"Lest We Forget the Horrors" Part II

"Now that Trump has returned to office, amid civil rights, humanitarian, economic, and constitutional crises, we felt it critical to make an inventory of this new round of horrors."

As with Donald Trump's first term, the editors of McSweeney's present "An Unending Catalog of Trump’s Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes."

Attention Politics

"'Politicians are recruited in lots of different ways, but let's say that now we have reached an era in which part of the recruitment process is based on their ability to engage with new social media platforms,' says Stuart Soroka, a professor in the departments of communication and political science at UCLA." 

While discussing the Los Angeles mayoral race, Lorraine Ali at the Los Angeles Times writes about "reality TV- and social media-made politicians who've moved into politics."

"Trump Has Met His Match in Pope Leo"

"It's surely no exaggeration to say that Trump embodies the very worst of us. He brims over with flaws–we used to call them sins–most people try to tame within themselves. Though the self-regard and vanity is beyond egregious, we've somehow grown used to it. This is the man who took a memorial to a young president gunned down in his prime, and slapped his own name on it: behold, the Trump-Kennedy Center. This is the man who plans to build a gold victory arch, an Arc de Trump, so gargantuan at 250ft tall that it will loom over Washington DC. This is the man who posted an image of himself as a Jesus-like figure"

At The Guardian, Jonathan Freedland writes that "the US president represents the polar opposite of Christianity."

"The Economic Mess We're in Is Entirely of Trump's Own Doing"

"It always sounds a bit earnest to deplore corruption, but one of the practical reasons for eschewing corruption is because at best it acts like an invisible tax on economic growth. At worst, it corrodes the economic engine to the point that it doesn't properly function any longer. Before Trump, the United States was a world leader in combatting corporate and political corruption abroad for the unapologetically realpolitik reason that American companies could win on a level playing field. Under Trump II, the DOJ has explicitly stopped enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and we're now in a grubby race to the bottom.

David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo writes that "[n]ot only are Trump's second term attacks on economic growth hard to reverse, let alone quickly, they're deeply wired into who he is and what he’s about."

"Pro-Worker, Pro-Family, Pro-America"

"We have no complaints and feel fortunate to have had a place to regularly publish our political and policy ideas since 2020. Hopefully, TLP's insights and arguments made some difference in the Democratic Party's strategic discourse and in wider political debates—or at least got people to look at matters in a different light and reconsider some of their positions."

John Halpin at The Liberal Patriot winds the site down, alongside articles from various writers:

Henry Olsen,

Michael Baharaeen,

Justin Vassallo,

Juan David Rojas, 

and Ruy Teixeira.

"He Refuses to 'Let Defeatism Have the Last Word'"

"Later, he said he wouldn't have found his way into philosophy and social theory if he hadn't experienced confronting the reality of Nazi crimes as a young man. He recalled that 'you saw suddenly that it was a politically criminal system in which you had lived'." 

At The Guardian, Donna Ferguson and Philip Oltermann report the death of Jürgen Habermas.

"Two Hundred and Fifty Years After the American Colonists Broke Free of Empire, It's Time for a British Declaration of Independence"

"Iran desperately needs a fresh start. The theocracy symbolised by its assassinated supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has long ago had its day. Many, probably most, Iranians yearn passionately for an open, freer, more prosperous, pluralist, pro-western society. But this destructive, un-thought-through US-Israeli regression into the worst excesses of imperialist vandalism crushes hopes of peaceful change–the only kind that lasts–and hastens a collapse into warring camps. What may emerge is not a reborn, friendly Iran but a fractured country held hostage by a more brutal, paranoid, ever-threatening hardline rump regime embroiled in endless conflict with its people and the west."

Simon Tisdall at The Guardian writes that "Britain's enemy now is Donald Trump."

And Martin Gelin discusses the conclusion by the Varieties of Democracy Institute at Gothenburg University "that the US is hurtling towards autocracy at a faster rate than Hungary and Turkey."

"We Continue to Live in the Wake of Mid- to Late-60s Developments"

"It's easy to look back at the Johnson administration, with the benefit of hindsight, and see little possibility for the revitalization of the New Deal coalition. But it's important to remember just what a moment of political sea change the mid-1960s was. With the exit of the Dixiecrats, the Democratic Party was in the midst of a profound transformation wherein its base did substantively shift. That [Bayard] Rustin saw an opening for the civil rights and organized labor coalition to take a driving seat within the party was not that fanciful, yet it was treated that way by a curious number of people on the Left then and still on the Left today. It's worth asking why that was and is. His critics on the Left are fine pillorying Rustin for his comments on anti-war protest tactics. But where are the similar condemnations of the New Left for sitting out the fight for the Freedom Budget for All Americans, arguably the last off-ramp from an imminent neoliberalism?"

Damage Magazine runs Benjamin Y. Fong's introduction to the new book Rustin's Challenge.

"They Sense That Behind Them Is the Same Old Democratic Party with the Same Old Elites and the Same Old Cultural Priorities"

"Working-class voters are acutely aware that the professional-dominated educated upper middle class who occupy positions of administrative and cultural power is overwhelmingly Democratic. For the working class, the professional upper middle class may not be the super-rich but they are elites just the same. These voters harbor deep resentment toward the cultural gatekeepers who they feel are telling them how to live their lives, even what to think and say, and incidentally are living a great deal more comfortably than they are."

Ruy Teixeira at The Liberal Patriot argues that Democratic candidates "need a strong dose of cultural populism" along with economic populism.

"So Why Is American Economic Confidence at Its Lowest Point in More Than a Decade?"

"The answer lies in a mix of economic reality and human psychology. On the reality side, Americans are not at all pleased with the high cost of living, particularly for the 'hard' goods and services in modern life, including housing, energy, health care, childcare, education, household goods, and things such as car payments, insurance, and maintenance. Even with decent wages and income and prospective tax cuts, working- and middle-class families do not feel particularly solid when they open their banking apps. A middle-class life that once seemed attainable and sustainable seems out of reach to many younger people and increasingly precarious for more established older Americans. Cheap televisions, ubiquitous phones, endless entertainment, and fast internet won't make up for people's inability to pay their health care premiums or save enough for a down payment on a home or retirement."

John Halpin at The Liberal Patriot argues that "the ideological faction or leader who figures out this economic reality first—and responds genuinely and empathetically to Americans' psychological worries about their finances—will be well positioned for success, at least temporarily."

"That's Not Just an Economic Issue. That's Stability Risk"

"The country is living in a K-shaped economy: two diverging roads, where outcomes for one group accelerate upward while outcomes for another flatten–or quietly deteriorate. The top half is compounding: stable employment, rising asset values, and the confidence that comes from having options. The bottom half is exposed: high sensitivity to inflation, fragile cash flow, rising credit stress, and a feeling that even doing everything 'right' isn't enough."

Josh Tanenbaum at Fortune warns of an America "where the top gets insulated enough to become careless, the bottom gets desperate enough to become combustible, and the middle loses belief that effort translates into progress."

"A Future Worthy of Our Children and Generations Yet to Come"

"In times of great crisis, the American people came together and chose democracy over authoritarianism, justice over greed, solidarity over division. They understood in the past–and we understand today–that when we stand together, no matter how much money and power the oligarchs have, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish."

Bernie Sanders at The Guardian argues that "[w]e can reverse America's decline."