"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.

Let's Dance

"That's what birthed punk rock. Not anarchy but ennui. The energy had to go somewhere. It went into a fast, urgent 'One, two, three, four…'"

Jonathan Eig at AudioPhix marks the fiftieth anniversary of Ramones.

And Simon Price at The Quietus discusses the Ramones' impact in Britain.

The Left Wing of the Possible?

"In recent polls, about 40 percent of Americans say they have a 'positive image' of socialism. A clear majority of people under 30 feel that way. But for most of them the term evokes what Mamdani and other social democrats who have actually managed to win elections try to achieve: a more secure life in a society that narrows class differences without preventing some individuals from becoming rich as long as they create products or services that ordinary people value. Four decades ago, the great social-democratic author Irving Howe described those 'socialists' who managed to gain influence in capitalist countries: 'They engage themselves with the needs of the moment, struggling for betterment in matters large and small, reforms major and modest: They do not sit and wait for the millennium.'"

At The New Republic, Michael Kazin says that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is "not a democratic socialist but a social democrat."

But Ruy Teixeira at The Liberal Patriot offers caution about "The Future of the Left in the 21st Century."

Sweet Neo Cons

"Today, roughly 70 percent of Americans say they don't believe in the American dream. That loss of faith is like a giant bomb detonated in the middle of our society, robbing us of our central, unifying vision. Absent that shared vision of possibility, people revert to a tribal, us-versus-them morality. If the ghosts of the original neocons have anything to tell us about specific policy choices, it's that we need to do what we can to expand social mobility and restore faith in the American dream."

David Brooks at The Atlantic argues that "[t]he neocons were right."

While Chris Ryan at Tangentially Speaking asks, "Just How Cynical is David Brooks?"

"Three Ms Are Key: Messaging, Medium and Movement"

"Mamdani may not win the Democratic nomination. Even if he does, Cuomo will stand as an independent candidate, although the socialist challenger may do this, too. His campaign's weaknesses reflect those of the wider US left: too little inroads among Black and older voters, as well as those with little online political engagement. But Mamdani's against-the-odds success underlines why the far-right surge doesn't have to weaken the left–far from it."

Owen Jones at The Guardian discusses the rise of Zohran Mamdani in New York City politics.

Holly Otterbein at Politco gets Bernie Sanders's reaction to Mamdani's success.

And Anita Chabria wonders at the Los Angeles Times about what the NYC primary means for the Democratic Party.

"A Farce Masquerading as Serious Political Theater"

"The media's conundrum was obvious: How to cover a candidate who inflates the truth when he isn't inventing it out of whole cloth, a candidate who promises salvation but offers no pathway to reach it, a candidate who takes special delight in trolling his opponents rather than engaging with them on substance? 'Take him seriously but not literally,' seemed to be the order of the day. Or literally but not seriously. Or sometimes seriously and sometimes literally. Or both. Or neither. Or something."

Michael Ian Black at The Daily Beast marks ten years since Donald Trump announced his candidacy for US president.

"Blame Jane Jacobs"

"Federal guidelines can make the environment more amenable, but the solutions by and large cannot come from central planning; states and cities and towns will need to reform their rules and processes to allow the housing supply to grow where people want to build. The goal of policy makers, in any case, shouldn't be to move Americans to any particular place, or to any particular style of living. They should instead aim to make it easier for Americans to move wherever they would like—to make it equally easy to build wherever Americans' hopes and desires alight."

At The Atlantic, Yoni Appelbaum asks, "Who Killed American Mobility?"

And Derek Thompson points to similar problems in Britain.

How High Is the Water Mama?

"However legitimate the trio's outrage may have been, it failed to channel anger into effective art. De La Soul Is Dead took a bulldozer to the debut's glorious garden. De La Soul's lightness of touch was muscled aside in favor of churlish criticism of hip-hop's new turn toward vulgarity, which for the trio was a kind of minstrelsy. But instead of flowing above the fray, De La Soul fell into the petty snipery of the scene—the big dis, the character assassination. 3 Feet High's Day-Glo grin had twisted into a dyspeptic scowl. The group had given up the high ground, ceded the terms of the debate to its rivals. It was Dre and Snoop's world now, and De La Soul had sunk into it."

Marc Weingarten at The Atlantic discusses Marcus J. Moore's book about De La Soul, High and Rising.

"The Defendant Is Too Popular?"

"I've been known to dabble in satire, but I'm deadly serious here, just as I was last June when I recommended that Trump serve six months at Rikers (which is where New York State sends felons tried in New York City and sentenced to less than one year). Now, of course, the United States government can no longer spare Trump for six months. But it can still spare him for one week. Rikers was good enough for Trump's former chief financial adviser Alan Weisselberg, age 77, who last spring booked himself three months there after perjuring himself on Trump's behalf (in an unrelated civil fraud case, now under appeal, in which Trump was fined $355 million). Rikers should be good enough for Trump, too."

Timothy Noah at The New Republic writes: "Jail Trump for One Week."

"This Is What Justice Looks Like"

"But whatever comes next, people who are committed to the rule of law should be satisfied that while we may not get the outcome we prefer, or think is correct, the system worked as designed."

At The Bulwark, Jonathan V. Last reacts to Donald Trump's fraud trial in New York.

And he reacts to the verdict.

You Don't Stop

"There's scant documentation of Cindy and Herc's parties to help discern the truth. Index cards promoting a few of them survive, but the widely replicated one purporting to plug the Aug. 11 event is now understood to be a reconstruction, not the genuine article. Rob Swift, a renowned DJ who has taught hip-hop at The New School in New York, has been collecting audio and video artifacts of early parties since he was a child. 'I have never seen a video or heard a recording of Herc employing this Merry Go Round technique,' he told me. 'There's no visual proof. There's no audio proof. It's just narratives. It's dogma.' Meanwhile, there's abundant evidence of Flash's work. Says Swift: 'Looping a break…the whole idea of using the turntable like a drummer uses the drum kit, that comes from Flash.' Not to mention that Flash's crew of MCs were among the first to create the more elaborate, tag-team rhyme routines that, along with Flash's turntablism, define the genre."

Dan Charnas at The Wall Street Journal asks, "Was Hip-Hop Really Invented 50 Years Ago?"

"The New New York"

"Simply put, it's time for California to accept reality. There will never be '50 Million Californians,' as demographers have predicted for decades. Instead, the population will stall out at about 40 million. Eventually, California will fall behind Texas as the nation's most populous state, just as New York fell behind California back in the '60s."

William Fulton at Slate tells Californians to "let Arizona, Nevada, and Texas try to build prosperity based on population growth."

"A Political Backlash Is Brewing"

"The combative resistance is a harsh turn for a group of leaders whom progressives hailed as an electoral success story. Rising homicide and violent crime rates have even Democrats in liberal cities calling for more law enforcement, not less—forcing prosecutors to defend their policies against their own allies. And traditional boosters on the left aren't rushing to their aid, with some saying they've soured on the officials they once backed."

Astead W. Herndon at The New York Times writes that "[w]ith violent crime rates rising and elections looming, progressive prosecutors are facing resistance to their plans to roll back stricter crime policies of the 1990s."

"Charged with Intensity"

"Gitlin remained politically involved after the '60s, but also clashed at times with fellow liberals. In the 1990s, he was critical of some of the academic debates over the literary canon and the predominance of male white writers. In his 1995 book 'The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars,' he alleged that the focus on what he and others called 'identity politics' was weakening the left overall, writing that while Republicans were gaining power in Washington, the left has been 'marching on the English department.'"

The Albany Times Union reports the death of Todd Gitlin.

And John Halpin at The Liberal Patriot looks back to Gitlin's 1995 book, The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wrecked by Culture Wars.

"The Implications That the Footage Didn't Appear for Racist Reasons Does Bother Him"

"The producers' statement goes against the film's own subtitle which is, '…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised.' It was not only televised in the abovementioned markets, but in at least 15 major markets across the United States, both the first and the second weekends. Lauro verifies this with copies of articles, interviews, reviews and previews from established newspapers in those states."

Lily Moayeri at Book & Film Globe clarifies the backstory of Summer of Soul.

"A Second Act"

"This is New York, a town where few pleasures are sweeter than sitting in a café or on a park bench with a cup of king-hell coffee and a sheaf of prose that sets the mind to musing—and also rubs off on your fingers."

R.C. Baker announces the return of the print edition of The Village Voice.

"A Much More Ambitious Vision of a Thriving Creative Sphere"

"Artists in the middle of the twentieth century flourished not because the economy was inherently favorable to them, but as a result of powerful economic winds and the groups that joined in an attempt to harness them. Together, creative class groups wielded the crowbar of politics in an attempt to pry some autonomy out of consumer capitalism."

Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein at The New Republic reviews Shannan Clark's The Making of the American Creative Class: New York’s Culture Workers and Twentieth-Century Consumer Capitalism.

The Hanging Judge

"When he started assembling the repertory institution Jazz at Lincoln Center in 1987, Wynton Marsalis was advocating for the primacy of the Black aesthetic at a time when the white, Stan Kenton-to-Gary Burton lineage dominated major organizations like the Berklee College of Music and the International Association of Jazz Educators. The music of Kenton and Burton has tremendous value, but their vast institutional sway and undue influence in jazz education is part of this discussion. We needed less North Texas State (Kenton's first pedagogical initiative) and more Duke Ellington in the mix, and Marsalis almost single-handedly corrected our course–although Marsalis himself would give Crouch a lot of the credit. Indeed, Crouch's long-running internal mandate to get Ellington seen as 'Artist of the Century' had finally paid off on a macro level, and the free high school program 'Essentially Ellington' is one of JALC's most noble achievements.      "Crouch and Marsalis also strove to bury the once-prevalent idea that Louis Armstrong was an Uncle Tom, and encouraged the Black working class to reclaim the jazz greats as crucial to their heritage. (Those ready to hate on Ken Burns's Jazz should keep that perspective in mind.)"

Ethan Iverson at NPR writes an obit for Stanley Crouch.

"Rest of Country Temporarily Feels Deep Affection for New York"

"I'm happy people think it was brave and bold and brilliant—I've been told it's those things. I feel like it was more that we were tapping into something so powerful that it was more about the hugeness of the event, which is what made it probably feel bolder and braver than it was. We were just doing what we did every week, and we had to do it to keep the lights on in the office."

Brian VanHooker at Mel presents "An Oral History of The Onion's 9/11 Issue."

"Encouragement to Irrational Optimism"

"These are the problem-solving strategies that Donald Trump brought to his marriages, six corporate bankruptcies, presidential campaign, and now, what increasingly appears to be a failed presidency. The consistent element in each of these has been to deny negative realities and keep moving. The casinos, the airline, the football league, Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, Trump University. . . all bear the same markings of hyper optimism and overpromise/underdeliver salesmanship."

Brent Orrell at The Bulwark discusses Norman Vincent Peale's influence on Donald Trump.

And at The Conversation, Kristin Kobes Du Mez explores why white Evangelical Protestants support Trump.