It’s amazing how old this argument is. Concentrate wealth at the top and call it prosperity; ask government to make life more secure for ordinary people and suddenly it becomes “class warfare” or socialism.
A healthy economy shouldn’t require everyone else to wait for something to trickle down.
Money again becomes the driver of our politics. In what is the fever dream of the centrist oligarch-funded Third Way and MAGA cultists, Hakeem Jeffries’ repudiation of Medicare for All and the Democratic Socialists of America will likely wind up in the history books as one of the stupidest political moves of this century. On August 16, 2026, in an interview with Kristin Welker on Meet the Press, Jeffries was asked whether he would support DSA candidates, given their 7 primary wins against centrist and establishment-backed opponents. House Minority Leader Jeffries said, after reciting a laundry list of fringe DSA extremist policies, using language from Trump’s talking points about the “communist” DSA, that:
“I don’t support the DSA agenda, as has been articulated by the DSA itself. Now, you’re going to have individual members who have been elected in Democratic primaries and if they are elected in the general in November, will be part of the House Democratic Caucus. It’s going to be a broad caucus. There will be progressives. There will be New Dems. There will be Blue Dogs.”
What I’m excited about are the candidates who are running to flip seats in November, to deliver us a majority that pushes back against Donald Trump’s extremism and moves the country in the right direction.”
I can see the chyrons on Fox and the MAGA PAC attack ads writing themselves as you read this. Jeffries is making a clear choice to fragment the opposition to Trump, rather than crafting a platform that aims for a common front by seeking agreement on shared goals across a big tent. He is alienating an entire wing of the opposition, one that incorporates the aspirational values of younger voters. It is political malpractice on a mammoth scale.
Not all candidates who are progressive, or who follow the principles of democratic socialism, are members of the DSA. In the Welker interview, there is also a clip of Rahm Emanuel saying that the DSA is a “separate party” and “we’ll see you in November.” In fact, the DSA is not a separate political party; it is a nonprofit activist group that has worked within the Democratic Party. Its website is https://www.dsausa.org/.
Emmanuel must know that, insider that he is, so the party establishment is pissed off enough at the DSA to be willing to sacrifice truth. I am a lifelong Democrat, and I am disgusted with party leadership.
Given the lack of support from the DNC and establishment leadership for candidates with DSA affiliations in the off-year elections, and the dismissive assumption that, if elected, those candidates will fall in line as unnamed soldiers in the party's service, Jeffries may face a leadership challenge in January.
Just how extreme are the DSA positions, and how far away are they from establishment Democratic ones? Heather Cox Richardson has memorably described the DSA policies as to the right of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Republican platform in the 1950’s. Trump has labeled them as "communist," claiming the DSA wants to control the means of industrial production in America, while the Trump regime itself has obtained large stakes in corporations tied to semiconductors, critical minerals, and strategic industries including Intel (10%), MP Materials (about 15%), Lithium Americas (10%), Trilogy Metals (10%), and a special “golden share” arrangement with U.S. Steel
There is a lot of overlap between the policies advocated by establishment Democrats and the DSA's suggestions, with plenty of room to reach consensus on goals for each policy area, especially given the imperative of a united front against the Trump regime. This is not the time for purity tests and circular firing squads, but that seems to be a fight that Jeffries is trying to pick. Perhaps the most generous interpretation of Jeffries’ foolhardiness is that he has drunk the Trump Kool-Aid: that compromise is a dirty word, code for weakness. Jeffries has lost sight of his responsibility to find the best solutions for the American people. It is especially wrong-headed when Trump will likely still hold veto power over any reform legislation after the midterms. The optimal solutions in these policy areas will need to be flexible and will likely require radical adjustments based on the country’s economic and financial situation, debt load, interest rates, and growth and labor conditions when Trump is finally out of office. There is time to negotiate equitable policy compromises across the coalition opposing Trump over the next two years, but only if the Democratic establishment stops generating self-inflicted wounds.
Jonathan Alter made a persuasive argument in his recent Substack post for “common sense” as what the electorate wants to see return to government. But what can be called “common sense” will ultimately depend on what is doable given the fiscal constraints we will face in 2029. Welker also interviewed Ro Khanna on Meet the Press, and he, too, spoke of common sense and offered specific proposals that clearly bridged the gap between central and progressive policies. Jeffries should be sure to read Alter’s piece and listen to Khanna’s responses to Welker’s questions. The contrast with his own clueless, tone-deaf performance was startling.
The answer to the question of why there is so much antagonism between the Democratic establishment and the DSA is answered in Robert Reich’s screed entitled “The Moronic Bullshit of the “Third Way”: There’s no “middle” between neofascist corporatism and democracy.” The Third Way was one of several groups that were working on a new Democratic Party platform that excoriates DSA positions. It is a long tale of a document reflecting the policy wishlist of its wealthy board, with the moral that oligarchic interests come before party and people whether the uber-rich are blue or red.
Our older politicians seem to be scared of the younger generation. It's truly bizarre that bright, fresh ideas are being cast aside for "more of the same".
How can we best support change when our own side is fighting against it, Georgia?
Write Jeffries, and all of the Democratic leadership from your local town candidates through your members of Congress, and tell them to stop the self-destructive behavior. We can't withhold our votes in the midterms because defeating Trump is the highest priority, but we can send the message that we will not tolerate Jeffries and Schumer in leadership positions in the new Congress. If our representatives vote for them, we will be looking at alternatives to THEM in 2030.
I believe that the ultimate solution is to push for ranked-choice voting as the most effective way of moving party leadership in the direction of the most popular policies without the risk of splitting the vote and allowing the MAGA cultists to win with a plurality.
This is yet another bugaboo rallying cry du jour that really doesn't pass much of a sniff test. Worse still, it echoes all the goofy 'Democrats in Disarray' 'Democrats engaged in bitch fights' 'Democrats bringing themselves down' articles that now appear virtually every day in the New York Times without fail.
The smartest people in the Democratic Party are those *not* trying to label our own growing pains as "progressive" v. "establishment", whatever that even means. Bernie Sanders, that sort of semi-socialist who hasn't sponsored serious legislation in the Senate for decades, has *always* voted for Chuck Schumer as either Senate Minority or Majority leader -- always. Schumer's not much of a communicator, but he has played minority cards at times both deftly and with skill, stopping certain Republican schemes dead in their tracks, while letting others take the credit for his efforts, even voting against him if they needed to.
In Wisconsin, two worthy candidates recently tumbled together -- the one who won wasn't any less "progressive" than the one who lost. In Michigan, El-Sayed's losing opponent joined hands with virtually every Democratic leader in the state, including Pete Buttigieg (who lives in Traverse City with his husband and kids). There wasn't even a hint of score-settling or the promising of some weird vendetta involving "vengeance" and "getting back" at "establishment" Democrats. For what unites us all is vastly more important than what divides us, claims to the contrary notwithstanding.
The real struggles aren't the shrieking, exaggerated labels involving 'young v. old, socialist v. moderate, us v. them,' they're between a party successfully re-emerging, energizing new constituencies and disaffected Republicans versus one composed of dying, dazed cultists clinging to a misery-go-round for dear life. That's the struggle tens of millions of us are interested in.
While Pete Buttigieg lives here in Traverse City, he is often on the road all across these still United States, speaking (and listening) at community forums about what WE want for our country. And what we want is corruption out and democracy back in.
ICTT, even though you say that Sanders "hasn't sponsored serious legislation... for decades," you have to give the man credit for mentoring and promoting young progressive candidates in the Democratic Party. And the concept of Medicare for All - perceived by many Democrats as radical not all that long ago - was originally part of his agenda, and has become much more mainstream.
Ellen, the New Deal was to have included universal health care. The AMA hired two political operatives to stymie it. They went on to support many R causes. See Jill LaPore's These Truths, her history of the US.
There are plenty of us who admire Bernie Sanders as an advocate for progressive causes, over many years, regardless of whether he sponsored many bills.
Bernie Sanders is a populist. While that term is more acceptable today, it’s still a shabby political philosophy that pits one group of people agaist another.
Donald Trump is a populist. While he pits his base against immigrants, reporters, scientists, judges, etc., Bernie pits “millionaires and billionaires” against the virtuous common worker. Pits the “powerful and the privileged” against that same saintly worker.
It’s an old trick, framing your followers against another group, but hardly one of the ideals of our country.
FDR was president in tougher times, and with a wealthy class that personally hated him. Yet he didn’t rally the voters against them as villains and enemies as does Bernie. He passed laws and a tax code to make them finance his improvements to the country and to prevent great wealth from becoming great political power.
Trump boasted that he could bring prices down from the first day of his second presidency. He's the prince of empty boasts (as well as the prince of liars). The Golden Age he keeps promising is always just around the corner. That doesn't make him a communist, but he does have distinctly corporatist tendencies (like taking government shares in private companies) that could be mistaken for socialism.
well, Jeffries is definitely NOT helping. I wonder if his and Schumer's dislike of the Democratic Socialists is rooted in the DSA refusal to kow-tow to Netenyahu. Schumer said a year or so ago that his most important job is to support Israel. Both are heavy users of AIPAC money.
ICCT--thanks for your comment. I told myself I was going to stay off the comments here for awhile, but the allure is so strong! so I read Georgia's. And immediately felt despair and thought "you KNOW this isn't good for you right now!!"
Your comment helped mitigate that emotion. Appreciate that, and with that, I'm logging off.
Miselle, I am truly sorry if I made you feel despair. It was not my intent. It is my belief that we can’t defeat the authoritarian forces in America today unless we look squarely at what is broken, and that includes what is blue and broken as well as what is red.
It is also my belief that we can and will win, but there are still hidden obstacles ahead. We have to shine a bright light on them and look for the cracks we can leverage to clear them from our path. It’s exhausting and daunting, and impossible to do without taking time out. Take care of yourself first and foremost.
Thank you always. You explain issues so rationally and succinctly, you enhance my understanding immeasurably in multiple areas along the political/economic spectrum. And you deliver your message so calmly,
I feel reassured and hopeful that we may ultimately win through.
Thank you for the compliment. We will win, but we have to be clear-eyed about what we have to overcome. Jeffries’ fomenting division was disheartening, but I thought Ro Khanna’s remarks were right on target—showing that unity was possible with compromise in the positive sense of the word—in balancing equities.
The bottom line for me is that the policies the opposition will enact to recover after Trump will be limited by the economic mess we will have to get ourselves out of. The expansive plans of the more progressive wing of the opposition won’t be fiscally achievable for a decade or more. So the first steps will be the same no matter where you are on the ideological spectrum—to stop the bleeding and repair the safety net for the most vulnerable.
SO WHY DOES ANYBODY NEED TO FIGHT NOW? Unless, of course, you are still protecting the interests of the oligarchs over those of the people.
The reason that I changed my registration from Democrat to Independent/ unaffiliated is precisely because of Schumer and Jeffries. I am progressive and identify more with AOC and the younger candidates who identify with Democratic Socialism. I am contributing directly to candidates who are espousing a progressive platform. I will not give one dime to the Democratic Party Establishment.
To differentiate between DSA insults to centrists and centrists insults to DSA is a wasted exercise. It's all so self-defeating. There's room in this tent for centrists and progressives alike. Dems must unite.
There is a longer version of my argument at the link below, which includes a table comparing the centrist and DSA policy positions. What is truly mind-boggling to me is how similar the positions are. In practice, where you wind up in implementation of them will depend on the state of the economy, how much tax revenue you can raise, and the amount of debt service you need to cover. People also seem to forget that legislation can be amended to expand programs over time.
If I were in charge, as the accountability, anti-corruption, and election protection and reform work was underway, I would prioritize restoring programs for the most vulnerable—kids. SNAP, Head Start, and school lunches would be first up, and I would add revenue-neutral programs like Andy Kim’s MediKids proposal. Then I would move on to fair minimum wage laws based on the cost of living in the states and take the cap off FICA wages. That would increase the net flow of money into the Social Security Trust Fund and draw companies to expand in poorer areas of the country. Medicare for All will require more time to implement, so I would reinstate the ACA subsidies while that work is being done.
These worker-friendly policies shouldn’t be controversial to anyone under a big blue tent. They have another purpose as well: they would demonstrate legislative competence and restore trust in the political system.
Thanks for that--it is hopeful. But it is also depressing to someone like me who fought in the first wave of women "firsts" in the early '70's to see how slow the progress has been, and how disheartening the backsliding on issues like bodily autonomy is now.
No! Jeffries and Schumer have always wanted Medicare for All and everything that is real "socialism"!
We need to do what every other citizen of every other democracy that has had universal healthcare for decades already did: engage in real, respectful debates with everyone who's not voting or who is voting for a Republican, so that we convince them to vote for a Democrat (and not just in 2026 and 2028, but for years to come).
In a democracy, that is the ONLY way to become able to make regular progress. US progressives treat democracy as a spectator sport and limit "activism" to complaining and telling politicians what they want.
When will people finally realize that a demo-cracy is a government ("kratein") of the people ("demos", in ancient Greek) and therefore it's WE who need to do the job.... ???
Has it occurred to you that it’s state law and not federal statute that controls the manner of voting? You would need to push that through 50 state legislators and the legislative bodies of DC, the territories and possessions.
While the figure has improved, the youngest qualified voters are the percentile least likely to vote. Yet the young are often passionate. Maybe they would vote more often if established party insiders authentically took them more seriously.
It would help if they saw the leadership of both camps shake hands and agree to play nice for the benefit of all, and were taught about the need to face the enemies of all. That happened in several of the primaries where incumbents lost.
And then we had Jeffries and Schumer blow up the bridges with their petulant loser routines.
I read a comment on the Post yesterday: "Young and crazy never goes away."
Followed, presumably by "Hur! Hur! Hur!"
The young are enthusiastic, energetic and innovative, And - sometimes crazy. Sometimes a hand is needed to steady them - but ALWAYS ears are needed to listen to them. Hundreds of wonderful discoveries across the entire spectrum of human life had been made by people under the age of thirty - and often they were mocked for their ideas solely because the were "young and crazy."
David Hogg comes to mind, I watched an interview with him the other day (I'm sure there are many so I won't cite) but his organization is worth a look: https://leaderswedeserve.com/.
Milady, I'm an Apple guy, have been since 1989. Despite Tim Cook's being a disgusting lickspittle, I am still loyal to the company created by one of my heroes, Steve Jobs. Your comment reminded me of a statement he made that was eventually memorialized in his company's TV commercial, debuted on September 28,1997.
“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
Ditto on loyalty to Apple. I don't think Jobs was a very likable guy, but he should be canonized for giving us ITunes (though I gather he wasn't really its creator, just its channel to us). Which, sadly, Cook's Apple is trying to take from us.
Donna, both my heroes were flawed men. Indeed, Jobs was a tyrant with an extreme shortage of patience. But his intolerance of anything less than perfection brought us products that "just work." It should also be noted that his intolerance was motivated by The End User. Which means that Apple products can be modified to suit the work habits of the user.
Compare that approach with Microsoft, which operates on the assumption that "the user is too stupid to know how things work, so we will hide everything from them and make them beg an 'expert' to fix their problem."
My other hero, Frank Lloyd Wright, was a deeply flawed man, with equal perfectionist characteristics and who had problems with marital fidelity. But he was an architectural genius who wanted his work to blend with the Earth, not destroy it. His residential work was intended to bring families together, not sequester them into private suites.
How many times do candidates or parties lose elections because "nobody will listen to us" -- often to disastrous results (remember any of that in the past several years???)
Money has to be taken out of politics and Citizens United has to be overturned. Rank choice voting would be ideal.
I support progressives and understand younger voters need not just to be motivated to vote, they need a voice and a seat at the table.
In defense of Jeffries, despite abhorring his single payer comments on meet the press, he has supported single payer healthcare in the past. His comments are obviously a calculus not to lose less progressive voters. What I will say is the Dems are always cutting deals that accept a bite of the apple instead of the whole apple and too many are selling their souls doing so.
I don’t disagree philosophically and effectively with progressives but a hell of a lot of people have insurance under Obamacare than would have if McCain didn’t thumbs down Trump’s attempt to kill it.
Let’s not tear the tent apart. Persuasion is more effective than force. Keep the arc of history bending forward. It’s time to invite anyone into the fold that that is ready to change the machinations that have placed an inordinate amount of wealth and power into so few hands.
I wondered a lot about whether Jeffries was trying to calm centrists with his remarks, but I don't think that's what he was doing. If that was the case, I think he would have sounded more like Ro Khanna, with examples of bridging between the different proposals on a few key topics but leaning more towards the centrist side. He could have used his earlier support for Medicare for all to say his recent lack of support was due to technical issues in the legislation that could be resolved, and he would reach out to its supporters. In other words, he could have finessed the answer in the name of unity and then actually done that. He came across in the interview with Welker as really pissed to me. No olive branch, not even an olive twig.
He also lost his signature preacher cadence and most of this hand emphasis moves.
I don't think these are fresh ideas, really, Bernie has been on them for decades and before that things like universal healthcare have been in the works for over a hundred years. I think maybe the people are just tired of being bled to death and lied to, and this new bunch hasn't been bought yet.
Kari you are right on point. this is exactly what needs to be done. Democrats are notorious for shooting ourselves in the foot, focusing entirely on just one genre and then wondering afterwards what happened. They need to listen to "everyone" not just a select few. This is an important election and your last statement couldn't be more true.
Some of the established democrats, Schumer et. al, are part of the problem. Did you know, Leaders We Deserve were the top contributors to zohran Mamdani’s campaign? LWD split from the DNC and support progressives who want to support people.
Yeah, what's called "leftist" in America is seen in Europe as conservative-right. Leftist politics in Europe would in America be regarded as "radical lunatic leftist"...
Exactly. That distortion in how we label the political spectrum is something I’ve written about too. What gets called “left” or even “radical” in the United States is often much closer to the political mainstream elsewhere, while our supposed “center” has moved steadily to the right.
LOL, Mike! Just another time Donald was wrong. Will Rogers had it right when he quipped, "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat."
Many years ago I wrote, "In people, things or ideas, the greatest strength is also the greatest weakness."
The Democratic Party is the perfect example. The party's "Big Tent" is a great strength, in that it coalesces a wide disparity of viewpoints. It's also a great weakness, in that these folks cling to their pet issues and candidates, thereby sacrificing victory ... "on principle."
Where is the Democrats' shadow cabinet, crafting our version of P2025 for what comes after Trump? (crickets)
I've often heard you talk about how it's not possible for us to go back to the times before Trump, nor should we want to. I've often heard you talk about how we are not alone, which is a comfort to someone living in a "red" state.
I agree with your ideas. But you are just one man. Influential as you are, you can do only so much as one man.
Trump's demolition efforts haven't been effective because he's so powerful. He's weak and cowardly. He's wrought so much havoc because he was handed a roadmap on Day One of his second term, and he hired the creators of that roadmap to implement it.
Where is the Democrat's response to Project 2025? Where is the shadow cabinet that should be formulating plans to build that new order you often speak about? We need that shadow cabinet. We need to know who the members are, so we have a banner to march behind.
It's not the DNC. They couldn't organize their way out of a wet paper bag. As you often say, Pete, "we need something new. Something better."
You're out there changing minds, so find us a group of architects to design what comes next.
To me there is a world of difference between concepts of "middle" and "balanced" Middle is just a point, but balance is active and dynamic and that gets complicated, especially involving living things. The broad and interconnected array of unique sets of balance that makes sentient life even possible on earth demonstrates something far more complicated than finding the most palatable temperature for porridge. Out of range extremes can destroy the very web of balance we depend on. Hot enough for you? That's a preview. Yet sometimes restoring balance is no small matter, and takes every bit as much as it takes, with the right tools for the right job. Do you see what I am getting at? It seems to me that our slide toward fascism has occurred over several decades, and has been partially enabled by invoking blunt-edge "centrism". The problem what is the center of what, especially when when one of the boundaries is drifting away.
It is certainly not "communism" or some alien idea, to propose taxation of great wealth a good deal more than subsistence income. HCR has written many times about how Old School Republicans came up with a graduated federal income tax to pay for the Civil War. Historic taxes on great wealth and corporations was far more in the Eisenhower era, and the economy did not collapse. The concept of regulatory consumer protection goes back at least as far a Teddy Roosevelt (a Republican) and was popular in the 1950's, when the middle class was rapidly growing. Faithfully paraphrase a lot of the thoughts of Lincoln today and the "GOP" would brand them "communist" today, as would as a number of Democrats.
Whatever. I think many would agree that many things are now well out of wack. and relying exclusively on the same range of thinking that brought us to this point to solve them would seem more than worthy of reexamination.
It is absolutely this. What is the center of the party? Not the same as the center of the country…which I believe is still to the left of the ground Democratic Party leadership has staked out. Heather’s analysis of the issues makes that abundantly clear.
Jeffries has only a smidge more charisma than JD Vance. He is not compelling or inspiring in any way and to turn his back on the young, energetic and smart DSA candidates is just plain stupid.
The principal problem of the Democratic Socialists is that they are really very lousy word smiths. There is no Socialism in Democratic Socialism. But there is Capitalism, as in Pragmatic Capitalism. Words matter. Democratic Capitalism would be a more apt name for them. It's what the Scandinavian countries practice.
I can live with "Socially Responsible Capitalism." It's never easy, but we were working on it for most of the 20th Century, and then came the coordinated smear campaign. We broke up monopolies and were conned into letting them reassemble. What did we get for our trouble?
Reagan mentor Milton Friedman made a thesis of:
"The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits. "
And of course big business loved it; but a corporation is ultimately a passive set of rules; a license; and a license does not drive a car or run a company. "Corporation" is meaningless without a one or more persons, doing things that affect our societies, for the better and worse. AND, if those people and their choices have no responsibilities to society other than to grab as much as possible for themselves, who the hell does? Friedman's dictum is a formula for a sociopath.
Democracy is not a dirty word. Starting with Reagan and the Koch Bros., as well as The Heritage Foundation, it has been turned into a "dirty" word. And for some, capitalism has the same connotation, something evil and exploitative. Pragmatic capitalism is a neutral term. It's a system of fair taxes so that the necessities that an advanced society has can be paid for. But, without a doubt, our government is now in the hands of thugs and it got there because the thugs were smart enough to con some very ignorant people. They've been conned since at least Ronald Reagan and are clueless as to why they're in the financial hole that they're in.
I don't like the word "capitalism" either, which I think is another one of those vaguely applied words that people use to mean differing things. I prefer to speak of "free enterprise", with the caveat that I mean "free" like 'free" in a "free society", which is not one with no rules but one with universal rights and protections that presume responsibility. Some like to pretend that rules should only apply to those with less money. Lawsuits, evictions, trade secrets, patents, etc. are the core of American justice, yet worker and consumer protection is "communism" and meddles in an otherwise prefect system. During "Great Recession" I read in the financial press that not paying bonuses to bankrupt bankers would destabilize our whole economy bit that contracts with union workers should be logically discarded. The reader may notice a pattern.
The little I have seen of Scandinavian countries indicated widespread relative prosperity and very robust private enterprise. Also, more "people-friendly" cities. These things are not inimical. I recall the Koch Bros funded Cosplay Tea Party that seemed to sell the idea that America was founded on "No Taxation", but pointedly adrift from "Without Representation". And who is it that is meant to be represented? Why, it's us! ALL of us. Even, come to think about it, social minorities and women. E Pluribus Unum. That's even on our money.
Ahh, that’s the ticket. Have you ever considered that those Scandinavian countries you so admire are a tenth our population, with a homogeneous population that has no ethnic tensions, no former slaves whose descendants have been preyed upon, isolated, incarcerated and used by bigots? That they live in countries that are free in large part because they exist under and incredibly expensive but necessary security umbrella that we provide? That they began their universal healthcare from the void of their WWII ruin, and thus had the advantage of starting from scratch? While we have a hodgepodge of private, public, and employer-funded insurance that will consume at least one presidency to convert to taxpayer funded? That the reason that neither Bernie nor any of his compatriots will talk about that is that the average tax bill will increase by about $8,000.
But sure, let’s just fix all that and have a perfect Scandinavian life
According to The Hill Sen. John Fetterman who has bucked his party in recent years, warned against socialism’s rise in the Democratic Party in the wake of democratic socialists and insurgent progressives winning primaries.
Georgia, I must keep reminding myself that a third of a Democrat is better than none at all.
Although Pittsburgh, Harrisburg and Philadelphia are populated by people with progressive minds, the rest of the state is populated by backward, mountain folk. Anyone with a "D" after their name has to hug the conservative borderline just to get elected.
I understand what you are saying. But I think it would be a lot easier to reach those conservatives if we didn’t have to wade through the sea of PAC-fueled propaganda.
It ought to be a national scandal that a third of Americans struggle to access primary healthcare, especially since you spend nearly twice as much as any other G7 nation on healthcare. Even your billionaires and millionaires are less healthy than their European counterparts. You rank 62nd in terms of life expectancy, lower than any other G7 nation.
I would add but one item to your already thorough analysis, Georgia: the probability Jeffries is reassuring his owners the "Democratic" [sic] Party will continue its primary post-JFK function as the "Republican" [sic] ChristoNazi/Neoconfederate Party's Fifth Column.
People must learn to stay informed and become immune to scare tactics; their lives depend on it.
After the GOP "works over" the electorate about socialism and communism, "centrist" Democrats move to finish the job. It's such an easy sell. Once we have been moved so far to the right moving back to the real center becomes extreme.
This is about us. I am beginning to have my doubts about democracy working ever if we cannot have an informed electorate and get gamed... as HCR says, has been happening. We have the tools now for everyone to engage, to inform themselves.
Gaming the system is pervasive..... I grew up in NYC ( like Trump) and this was not unusual. In fact it was something to brag about. He took it national, revived it.
I too grew up in New York City as a contemporary of Trump. Used to drive past has Daddy’s lily white apartment complexes on my way to college in Brooklyn.
My grandparents and family settled in NY- Brooklyn, The Bronx, at the beginning of the last century, "yearning to breathe free" coming from Eastern Europe. I am older than Trump, but not by much. I went to Hunter College in Manhattan, grateful for no tuition. That's progressive I guess.
Trump was coming up, testing things out in NYC. Making a splash on Fifth Av. He skimmed the surface (vacuous, a smart-ass as now) and achieved a certain success. The rest was faking it. Not that he knew where he was going ultimately. He improvised which is easy when you don't let anything get to you (at least on the surface). This builds... the direction of it. He knew and still knows or thinks he knows, that everyone has a price; everyone is corruptible as he is himself. That's winning. The rest of us ( the whopping majority) are trash or to be trashed after they are of no use. Trump had a criminal mind from the get go; how to game the system- a New York thing- like many. A sport. He could.He just took it national... riding right over his failures using the same methods, perfecting the con.
I always say this is about us. We are vulnerable. And with many people like Trump (look at his followers and support system, the slowness of the polls) I don't know how we have a democracy, a liberal democracy, equality for all. It *will* take time. more than I have probably, but at the same time we have to move faster. I hate to see us learning more painfully the hard way.
It's not that easy... . Oversimplification by progressives is one of the main plagues US democracy suffers from.
With only two political parties (and a third, left-wing party would only make things worse for anyone who's pro-democracy), the Democratic Party is in the very difficult situation where it needs to represent a majority of the American people in each state and district, even though citizens no longer truly debate politics among themselves and education levels are very low, so millions and millions of people have totally false ideas about the state of the country and proven solutions (such as Medicare for all and obviously "socialism").
Under such circumstances, the Democratic Party is OBLIGED to TALK in ways that appeal to the majority, because that is the only way to control DC, and without that control, no progress whatsoever is possible. So as long as a majority has a falsely negative image of the very word "socialism", it HAS to officially separate itself from it, precisely because in a democracy, the job of a political party IS to represent the people.
Time and again, THE main weakness of the US turns out to be the fact that self-declared progressive de facto REJECT democracy, mostly out of lack of political literacy (= understanding how any democracy works).
Too many progressives are actually asking the DNC to govern as fascists, so to just ignore the democratic process and unilaterally impose what polls show a majority wants. That skips the crucial step that all other citizens around the world HAVE to engage in BEFORE a democracy can work, namely debating politics with each other until we have convinced a majority to actively want and vote for Medicare for All (for instance).
It's this horribly low political literacy of the left that systematically undermines progress.
Example: the 2010 election. Democrats were about to lay the foundation for universal healthcare (= something ALL Democratic politicians have ever wanted, when it comes to their own, personal opinion), and after Obama had campaigned for an entire year, all over the country (as president), for adding a public option to the bill (= what would turn Obamacare, over time, into universal healthcare), for the first time ever polls showed that a majority of the American people now supported it. That gave Democrats the leverage needed to do what they'd always wanted: get universal healthcare done. In the end, however, an Independent Senator, who was one of the main candidates for Vice-President for... the Republicans (McCain), and who had the 60th vote needed to pass a public option, turned against it.
So what did progressives do next? Help Obama convince more people to add it to the bill in 2011? No. The Huffington Post began to write big headlines saying that "Obama is no longer into us," and progressives refused to vote for Democrats in the midterms. So we had to wait an entire decade until we finally gave Democrats control over DC again (although not full control), in 2020. By then, "we the people" had given them enough votes to expand Obamacare subsidies, but STILL not to add a public option.
So what do progressives do today, when all the turning against the only ones who want what we want is now resulting in the installation of fascism?
Still the same ignorant turning against Democrats.
In a democracy, we have the government we deserve...
So well stated! I was unaware of Jeffries' blindness to true Democratic principles until I saw the interview with Kristen Welker. He's a true mealy-mouthed politician, hardly the leader we need in Congress. At the least, he should be proposing solutions that meet the basic desires of all sides of the Democratic coalition--such as Medicare by-in for all.
I think you should watch an interview with the co-chairperson of the DSA, where she gives the Republicans all the nice quotes they need to do their redbaiting. She gives them even more than Hong did.
The older Democratic leaders are no different than Republicans. They don’t want to lose their jobs, their power, their perks, or their inflated self worth!
I'm just curious as to what happened to the "big tent" of which democrats had always bragged. Aside from Hakeem Jeffries irritating monotone voice when trying to rally the troops to donate, he has demonstrated a rather narrow cadre in which democrats are expected to either join and/or commit. I agree that all of us should be "excited" for democrats to "flip seats;" however, there are well too many of us who want to see democratic principles go the way of Abdul El-Sayed and/or Bernie Sanders. Rham Emmanuel has every right to give his opinion; however, his unconstrained immersion into Zionist principles is anything but democratic. He may espouse democratic ideals which are far more favorable than what someone like Trump espouses, but at the heart of his philosophy is a Zionist mentality that promotes more division rather than inclusion. I know this is just me, but I have a very hard time trusting any US government official who was at one time part of the IDF.
I checked out Emanuel’s connection to the IDF because I hadn’t heard about it before. It was in Wikipedia and had been referenced in the Jerusalem Post. Emanuel took part in a two-week civilian volunteer holiday during the 1991 Gulf War, helping to repair truck brakes in one of Israel's northern bases. This was right before he joined Clinton’s campaign when he was 32. Many American Jews have gone to Israel to do volunteer work, but more usually in college or high school
Here’s a link to a lengthy recent article from the Jerusalem Post from July on his interest in running for president in 2028 and his views on Israel: pro-Israel, very anti-Netanyahu, anti-settler and the treatment of Gazans, very pro-two-state solution. So he is espousing the liberal American Jewish consensus on Israel/Palestine policy, somewhere in the middle between the centrist AIPAC-centric pro-”Israel right or wrong” policy and the DSA pro-Palestinian policy.
He will be one of many opposition candidates staking out their own unique mix of policy stands ahead of 2028. He’s just testing the waters earlier than most.
Georgia, thank you for this clarification. Although my statement was accurate, it turns out to be less damaging than I thought. I'm happy to hear that Emanuel shifted, somewhat one can say, regarding his vehement support for Israel. I would expect his early support for Israel to be full throated as his father was in the Irgun. I can't blame Emanuel for that; his Zionist leanings early on clearly were influenced by his father. I suppose anyone taking a good look at someone like Netahyahu would eventually have to see the writing on the wall. Although I still have doubts, this makes me feel a little better about Rahm Emanuel.
Alger’s comment sounds like it was written by a Third Way consultant. He typically took phrases out of context & used as sound bites by the right to hammer Progressives as radicals instead of helping his readers understand what was really said. Typical consultant demagoguery.
I think of the flow of money in an economy as something like the flow of irrigation water in a territory. Ideally you want it to be sustainable and serve a wide array of needs.
Thank you, Heather. Your piece today is especially effective because you did what you do best: use history to illuminate the present without forcing the comparison. Excellent and fascinating.
By revisiting the Klondike Gold Rush and the economic turmoil of the 1890s, you show how inequality can push ordinary people toward desperate hopes of individual escape rather than collective solutions. Workers and farmers were struggling while wealth and political power became increasingly concentrated. Even the rhetoric sounds familiar, with efforts to help working people dismissed as socialism or class warfare.
The irony of the Gold Rush strengthens the point. Thousands chased sudden wealth, but relatively few found it. Often, the more reliable fortunes went to those selling supplies and services to the people doing the chasing.
You then bring the story back to something more important: cooperation, friendship, loyalty, and our dependence on one another.
That is what makes the piece so good. You are not simply recounting history. You are quietly asking what kind of society we want.
The larger lesson seems clear: a healthy democracy cannot depend on millions of people trying to beat an unfair system individually. It depends on building a society where ordinary people have a fair chance to prosper together.
You make that point with restraint, trusting the history, and your readers, to recognize the parallels.
She's also preparing us for what she believes is the next progressive era yet to come.
The juxtaposition of McKinley and Trump is no mere koinkidink. In his diseased brain, Trump fancies himself at the apex of a golden age, as did McKinley, surrounded by robber barons of old. Like McKinley, Trump is sure tariffs are the best thing around since sliced bread and crunchy peanut butter (pretending the last 100 years of ghastly, beggar-thy-neighbor trade wars, which most historians believe led directly to World War I helps, too). McKinley was also surrounded by slobbering sycophants who tried to name the highest peak in the Americas for him. Like McKinley, who waged "splendid little wars" in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Cuba, Trump's whites-only social Darwinism is founded on the principle that little brown people were born to serve America.
The list is endless. But the Progressive Movement followed that era, with its direct election of Senators, establishment of the FDA, eventual abandonment of the gold standard, respect for labor, laws protecting workers, children, establishing the 8-hour workday. Many of us look ahead and see that rising disgust surrounding the old that always seems necessary for something new to make itself both present and more permanent.
That is the larger historical pattern Richardson seems to be pointing toward. Gilded Age excess eventually produced a reform movement because concentrated wealth, corruption, and inequality became politically intolerable. The hopeful question now is whether today’s backlash can produce another durable era of democratic reform.
Back to the Yukon for a moment. Robert Service had a brilliant knack for making words sing. HCR posted: The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold….”
And this brought Jack London's famous short story, "To Build a Fire," to mind. How lucky we are to have had such masters of literature.
You are s-o-o-o-o-o right, Anne. Future American history specialists will definitely write about HCR's contribution. No one really compares to her. She seized a medium and took off like a rocket ship, keeping millions of us informed about current events.
Or require a working class to suffer poverty and lack of healthcare while "wealthy Americans in the Gilded Age enjoyed exclusive pastimes like yachting, polo, grand society balls, and summering at elite resorts in Newport, Rhode Island, or the Adirondacks. They also traveled to Europe on luxury ocean liners and collected fine art." AI
I'm convinced that we have laws and regulations (or lack thereof) that hurt the poor and working class folks in our country because most of the (older?) lawmakers have never had to feel hunger or sleep in cars or choose between food and medicine for even one day in their lives.
Thank you. I've been thinking a lot about the disparity between the very wealthy and the poor and working class folks that has persisted in this country, especially how skillfully those in power get us to vote against our own best interests.
Agree....When I'm feeling so down on where this country currently stands, Heather always comes through with a post that reminds me it's been an ongoing fight in this country. In an odd sort of way gives me hope that we will prevail.
Trickle down, a dog and fire hydrant, the rich want no limits to their greed, wealth and rapaciousness! Greed is good! Just ask JD! The new Catholic Conservative Jesus…the axe throwing warrior wins the day, “I love the smell of testosterone in the morning.”
We are so much better than this! So first step, stop digging…well-regulated markets are good, healthcare is good, minimum wages are good.
Trickle-down economics…you are their hydrant. We don’t have to be!
Yes, and AI is not the new gold…bankruptcy on the horizon. There is no there there in the ‘miracle’ way it has been marketed…remember data mining?
History - we are condemned to repeat it, we are condemned to ignore it and we are condemned never to learn from it. History is just not pesky, dusty documents in museums and archives. We thought that because of reason we could understand more about the world and use reason to shape the world and use it more efficiently. Instead humans find themselves perpetually in a state of war, state of constant violence, greed, power and now we are in a place where we have to give up freedom to an ultimate ruler. We have learned that if there are no facts then the dictator is right. Our minds and body have been colonized by trump et al. But history shows that those trends have always been present - I think we are like Sysiphus - condemned to be exploited, etc. We need to look to the past to understand how we got to today............But that's a tough lift for those low energy, low information citizens....
A tiny bit of wealth may trickle down, but first, the wealthy enjoy the gush of money they squeeze out of ordinary citizens. And somehow, we allow this to repeat indefinitely.
Yes, indeed. Still as NYT reports the people at the very bottom lacking political power could be left out. SNAP and Medicaid are for these people but lack stability of SS and Medicare. We must make sure they will also become a corner stone of democracy.
FYI: using the government to make life more secure for ordinary people rather than to make sure that wealth is concentrated at the top IS called SOCIALISM, and to get there, we absolutely need CLASS WARFARE.
It's the fact that Americans try to achieve what Europe achieved all while turning these words into taboos that not only made progress here so much slower, but has now also created a CLASS of ultra-wealthiest insane people who truly believe that fascism is better than democracy. And we gave them full control over DC.
Perhaps it's time to finally start that class warfare... ? How many millions more need to die before you'll be willing to call it what Europe called it for more than a century now?
One of first poems that usually comes to mind that captures what was/is really important, it wasn’t the gold but the allure of the northern wilderness…. A favorite…
Thanks! The last four lines really resonate with me. I have those feelings for the four corners states, especially the western slope of Colorado and southern Utah and northern Arizona. For me, and many others, these areas are sacred places, — mountains and canyons — and I despair at the lack of respect by this maladministration concerning Bears ears, the Escalante and surrounding areas. The spirits of the Ancient ones are seemingly alive in these areas — the peace and wonder are palpably real.
I just read a long cover article in the Christian Science Monitor about the Escalante area. I came away inspired by the people who are resisting the WH and the local politicians. The resisters know both their heart and the facts. I'm hopeful, too, after reading.
you can support the people trying to protect Bears Ears by donating to SUWA, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. They will need $ to fightvthus in the courts. This Canadian loves that area and support them. We have to protect the culture, the artifacts
This is also a direct, and vetted Native-led nonprofit representing the five sovereign tribes—the Hopi, Navajo, Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, and Zuni—who hold ancestral ties to the land. They manage the legal, cultural, and spiritual defense of the monument. Direct support can be sent via the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition Donation Page.
Having just retraced some of the passage from Skagway via narrow gauge rail to Fraser (and that was by far the less dangerous, less steep, though longer route) with my partner this past June, you get an up close perspective of the determination of those stampeders and the hardships they faced.
Once you got across White Pass in 1898, long before a railroad was ever built (with your one ton of provisions required by Canadian law), you had to build a boat (no stores for parts) and sail up the Tagish Lake through what is today First Nations country to get to Whitehorse, which soon became a bustling city of thousands. Out of about 100,000 stampeders though, fewer than 100 actually managed to find and stake claims anywhere near the original Bonanza Creek and got gold 'out of them thar hills.' Most returned penniless, some stayed to build a life in the remote wilderness, many died.
My favorite stories from the Gold Rush involve women. One historian said 'many of those stampeders became true-grit entrepreneurs right to their cores; all of the women did.' One woman arrived in the muddy pit known as Skagway, Alaska, fully intending to prospect herself, but took one look at the miserable conditions, dirty, hungry stampeders and roadless town and opened up a little pie shop there instead, charging the miners an arm and a leg for her apple pies. She ended up making a fortune -- one of the few who did -- thus "mining the miners" as the history books say. She never panned for gold a day in her life.
In Dawson City, Hotel Belinda is named for another entrepreneur, who hired men to carry her 1,000-pound provisions up the far steeper Chilkoot Pass, where horses flung themselves off the mountain to end their own misery. Yet her men got bribed by somebody else to ditch her stuff in the snow, and carry his instead. Belinda found out about it, and hired some wranglers to beat the living crap out of them, then showed up on the mountain pass herself on horseback with a shotgun. "Boys," she said, "it's like this. You find my provisions and carry them across the pass, or you meet your maker today. What's it gonna be?"
Dawson City is charming and beautiful as the midnight sun approaches in June, surrounded indeed by "forests where silence has lease" where "beauty thrills me with wonder." And yes, Hawkins Cheezies are way better than American Cheetos because they're made with REAL cheddar. Still, glad we were there in June, and not December.
One of my favorite biographies, "Wolf: The Lives of Jack London" by James L. Haley, includes a gripping account of the struggles of London's party to take the Chilkoot Pass to the Alaskan gold fields. The biography also gives a realistic picture of the struggles of working class people like London during that time period. Most people remember him only for his novels about the north country, but his life was a mirror for the economic times.
My husband and I spent six weeks in Quebec this summer - most of it in Montreal, but the last 2 weeks we rented a car and drove east to Lac Saint-Jean and then Saguenay-Fjord National Park. Swam in that beautiful, cold, brackish river one day. Saw about 15 beluga whales in the river another day. As you wrote, getting out of the U.S. political climate and into polite and friendly communities was a relief.
ICCT, while a cruise is not the best way to visit that area of the world, I did that with my Aunt Liz while we were both recovering from our chemotherapy treatments (me for breast cancer, and her for ovarian cancer). It was in September, and we took the train from Skagway up to Whitehorse, and saw some of the touristy sights there. Sometime later, my wife and I went to the Klondike museum in Seattle, WA, which was absolutely fascinating.
ICTT went in end of June in 2016 was awestruck by the beauty and music of the winds. Good stories were shared, not really a beer drinker and don’t recall the brand but it tasted so much better. A place that gives peace. Someday hope to return.
OK, Readers, we have another one of Professor Richardson's "Best Evers".A nd, thank you TJ for launching us off in the right direction:
"I’ll fight—and you bet it’s no sham-fight."
*****************************************
SUWA Defending Utah's Wild Lands Since 1983
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) is the only non-partisan, non-profit organization working full time to defend Utah’s redrock wilderness. SUWA's power comes from people like you & from across the nation who want to protect this irreplaceable heritage for all Americans.
See, SUWA's Anniversary film & our bedrock Redrock heritage.
Thank you for putting the poem here. It's lovely, and I'm not usually a poetry fan. It does indeed illustrate what is really important. It's nice to have the gold and all, but experiencing the wilderness is what you remember.
You just took me back 55 years. I received Robert Service’s Collected Poems in 1972 and that poem remains my favorite. Thanks for the ride in the time machine.
Same here. Grandfather bought some poetry books in the late 60’s and early 70’s for me to read. He always said the mind needs to find the beauty as well as facts to move the world forward in a better way. It’s always about balance. They are all still on the bookshelf and often read to bring those memories to flood back…
Late 19th century history, yes, interesting -- but criminal Donald is yet alive and in office today.
Still bundling together so many more of the most colossally deficient characteristics, even including all from the late Gilded Age.
Where to start as we track him again now abrading another of the U.S.’s long-held alliances with yet another fellow democracy?
Most everyone commenting here knows South Korea has long been vital as several other key U.S. allies in the Far East, the Pacific area. But now the fat blundering knave in the White House feels obliged to trash that ally (dismissing scheduled joint military exercises) as he has trashed even longer-held allies in that region, in Europe, and elsewhere, too.
He's a fool, that criminal, that years-long fellow rapist of underage girls and young women, that infamous money launderer for dictators and oligarchs, pal to the world’s worst drug runners and arms dealers. Total goofus of a commander-in-chief.
He had no idea of what he was doing in Iran, no idea of the descending phases likely ensuing from war with the mullahs. The boastful, vainglorious, vengeful fool really has no idea, either, of what he’s doing now playing with South Korea.
Ego demands he play. Narcissism insists all parts of the world as more of his stages.
And we’ve tens of millions schooled only to drool over more yet more of his idiot sensationalism.
It’s a perfect time for China to attack Taiwan. We have no armadas now that the George Washington is steaming towards the strait. Wars are inevitable. The historical question is does China have legitimacy over Taiwan. No more than the US has over Puerto Rico. Different circumstances but not altogether dissimilar to our Monroe Doctrine. Dominating states will dominate. There should be a stampede to get high tech out of Taiwan. China has laid claim to the island nation and it’s inevitable an attack will be forthcoming.
Institutional Democrats: Corruption Of The Democratic Party
It's no secret that the Democratic Party has lost the American electorate(recent favorability 38%). This has ushered in the progressive left of the party represented by AOC and Sanders.
The success and popularity of Mamdani and El-Sayed under the Democratic tent has the centrist corporate wealthy donor class/institutional Democrats concerned about losing their platform and hence their influence and relevance in the political scene, particularly as it relates to the fascist led Israeli war.
For once the Democratic elite led by wealthy donors are losing to WE the People in a populist uprising which truly represents WE the People. For people like political consultants Neera Tandem, Zionist Simon Rosenberg, and James Carville along with pundits Joe Scarborough, Bill Mayer, and Fareed Zakaria, this uprising threatens not only relevance but $$$ to the networks they represent. This has caused corporate millionaires and billionaires to pony up $$$ to fight this populist wave with the Third Way creation.
But this is not something new as Wajhat Ali and Dave Sirota(bit.ly/3SgNaBI) point out in a recent dialogue worth watching. MSM is losing the political relevance due to their past authoritarian stance to independent media such as The Lever, This Will Hold, Meidas Touch, Aaron Parnas, Left Hook, Zeteo among others. For decades this Democratic centrist group has used the antisemitic cudgel to support the Israeli Palestinian oppression/war but with the fascist Israeli pulling the US into its war, the antisemitic ploy is no longer working. WE the People are speaking out and saying if you’re willing to bullshit me on this, you’re probably willing to on economy etc.
Spread the word....even MSNOW has been captured by the Institutional Democrats and provides them shelter. What happened to Ayman Mohyeldin and outspoken critic of the fascist Israeli government and its attempted genocide? His weekend show was canceled but Rampell and Hilton allowed to fill in as guest hosts. Mehdi Hasan an even more vocal critic of Israel was flat out fired and now runs substack channel Zeteo.
This underscores the $$$ influential power of the Institutional Democrats in MSM.
The oligarch owned corporate media is thrilled. The media is wildly racist, biased and just plain rude when "interviewing" DSA or Progressive candidates. They call Hassan Piker all kinds of names and now the Democrats are joining in.
What I have suspected for the past 10 years has come to pass. I knew in my gut there was a silent fox in the henhouse of American politics. We were being consumed by MAGA while the Democratic Party stood by seemingly helpless. Now as we have rolled closer to where we stand today, I realized the Democratic Party machine was complicit in where we are. I feel morbidly vindicated.
We are up against it. Now we have to battle on 2 fronts; MAGA and the centrist Democrats. The good news? The Progressive/DSA candidates are winning. El-Sayed said he has spoken to Obama who has been clear on wanting to see a younger Democratic Party. The DSA/Progressive movement is vital and we have some time to organize around the centrist Democrats' pushback.
And finally, people like Ossoff and El-Sayed are giving it right back to the outrageous things that are thrown at them. The Democrat machine was not being polite all these years. They were complicit.
The fascists in DC are, of course, thrilled as they follow Napoleon's advice:
“Quand l'ennemi fait un faux mouvement, il faut se garder de l'interrompre.”
“When the enemy is making a false movement, we must take good care not to interrupt him.”
I just came across this person today. She is Lisa Stone Martin and has a Substack called "No, Actually". Below is a piece of her commentary on Hakeem Jeffries' interview yesterday.
"“Hakeem Jeffries sat on Meet the Press this weekend and told the country he doesn’t support Medicare for All anymore. The same bill he co-sponsored from 2013 to 2021. Eight years of his name on it, removed the second the base started winning without his permission.
He said it plainly: he is not cosponsoring or supporting M4A. He also drew a line against the DSA and the primary wins piling up against the establishment he represents.
When leadership backslides on the thing voters say they care about most, the outlets that are supposed to hold the party accountable go quiet.
The Democrat establishment is mistaken. We’re not asking permission to want more than what failed leadership is willing to fight for. And they continually fail to learn this lesson: we are like Weeble Wobbles, we pop right back up every time they try to knock us down. Keep fighting, fam!”
The history lessons from Ms. Heather Cox Richardson are the golden treasures of our modern times. If only the idiots in the current administration would read them, we could have a worthy standing in the world that we ALL live in.
"Pro-business it the standard term for politicians who support concentration of wealth, but I have long thought that is an ambiguous term that hides a less-neutral epithet of "pro-monopoly" or pro-oligarchy. In some ways we are all in business in just about any legal way to earn a living, so, I am pro-business but also keenly in support of robust worker and consumer protection and regulatory barriers to business practices that erode the common good. It seems to me that a truly "Free Market" is like a free society, in which to secure human rights, governments are formed with equally distributed consent of the governed. A truly free market is one of wide-spread opportunity for all, not one in which massive conglomerates dominate markets and political possibilities. I read some years ago that genuine "small business" was statistically declining as a percent of total employment, yet all politicians claim to love small businesses (but don't necessarily act like they believe it). Not all businesses can be small. Cottage industry can't produce computer CPU chips. But our political environment certainly can do more to favor smaller businesses where they are practical, and to hold more large ones accountable when intentionally or not, they pose a problem to our general welfare as a society and a species.
A local man who grew up in this Trump small town, who became a lawyer then a judge, is well-respected - he is running for state office as a Democrat. His word is "pro-wealth." I'm very excited about his candidacy.
I love your post because I am a word nerd, and believe that simple messaging is crucial now.
I love the history lessons that shine as much light on current events as the past.
I am a huge fan of Jack London. His many short stories set in the Klondike gold rush are wonderful. “All Gold Canyon”, set in the California gold rush, is the most perfect short story I’ve ever read. (The Coen brothers made a short movie of it that missed the mark, in my opinion.) He also wrote stories about the struggles of working people. “The Iron Heel” describes a failed working class uprising in America. Jack London ran for mayor of Oakland, Ca. as a socialist. He lost.
All in all he lived an incredible life during incredible times and left a lasting literary legacy of the journey.
Professor Richardson -- The themes in your report for today really drove home the importance of studying history. The parallels between events in the late 1800s and current developments are eerily similar. It's as if many of today's politicians — especially the one in the White House — have learned nothing from history.
If nothing else it clearly points out the usual rightwing mantra that anything that enriches the “classes” and constrains the oligarchs is “communism”. They have sung this song forever, and the proof that they have been wrong every time is in reading history.
When AOC was elected the Repubs declared that she was a wild eyed socialist who would single handedly bring ruin to the country. Instead she has shown herself to be a level headed and wise legislator.
How many times do we have to go through this cycle of moving so far to the right that we end up with out and out thieves running the government before the rightwing learns the lessons of history that show that they are WRONG and always have been.
The details change, but it seems the same forces are always at odds in America. The saddest part is watching the same people fooled again and again by the same lies.
wise words from Bryant: "The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them."
If Heather's writing of the late Gilded Age, we could well recall the great book on that.
This is "The Mauve Decade," by Thomas Beer.
If Heather is writing of President McKinley, then we could well recall Thomas Beer's book on Mark Hanna, simply called "Hanna" -- the person who single-handedly got McKinley elected president.
Thomas Beer was the best-paid writer in America for many years -- and (a staple in "The Saturday Evening Post") one of the most popular. I recommend especially his stories about small-town Ohio from a bit more than 100 years ago, "Mrs. Egg and Other Americans." Published the year of my birth, 1947.
You really outdid yourself with today’s essay. I love learning from you! Of course I knew about the Yukon Gold Rush, my husband also can recite the poem, but you put it in perspective about what was happening in the country.
It looked like Dr. Richardson had a particularly good time writing this paper. Her description of the gold rush was great. It was a relief to read some of the same situations as we are experiencing today. My favorite was this one. "By 1894, desperate workers were demanding government relief programs, adding fuel to Republicans’ charges that workers were dangerous."
Unfortunately, the centrist Democratic Party machine now sounds like the Republicans. Schumer, Jeffries, Rahm Emanuel, and too many others are being less than welcoming of the rising portion of the Democratic Party; the Democratic Socialists, Progressives and the anti-Israeli terrorist State.
A gripping account of Yukon adventure that neatly wraps in the national American political turmoil as backdrop. Quite chilling how the "masses" of people always suffer as a result of top-level political decisions. This story clearly depicts that relationship.
It’s amazing how old this argument is. Concentrate wealth at the top and call it prosperity; ask government to make life more secure for ordinary people and suddenly it becomes “class warfare” or socialism.
A healthy economy shouldn’t require everyone else to wait for something to trickle down.
Money again becomes the driver of our politics. In what is the fever dream of the centrist oligarch-funded Third Way and MAGA cultists, Hakeem Jeffries’ repudiation of Medicare for All and the Democratic Socialists of America will likely wind up in the history books as one of the stupidest political moves of this century. On August 16, 2026, in an interview with Kristin Welker on Meet the Press, Jeffries was asked whether he would support DSA candidates, given their 7 primary wins against centrist and establishment-backed opponents. House Minority Leader Jeffries said, after reciting a laundry list of fringe DSA extremist policies, using language from Trump’s talking points about the “communist” DSA, that:
“I don’t support the DSA agenda, as has been articulated by the DSA itself. Now, you’re going to have individual members who have been elected in Democratic primaries and if they are elected in the general in November, will be part of the House Democratic Caucus. It’s going to be a broad caucus. There will be progressives. There will be New Dems. There will be Blue Dogs.”
What I’m excited about are the candidates who are running to flip seats in November, to deliver us a majority that pushes back against Donald Trump’s extremism and moves the country in the right direction.”
I can see the chyrons on Fox and the MAGA PAC attack ads writing themselves as you read this. Jeffries is making a clear choice to fragment the opposition to Trump, rather than crafting a platform that aims for a common front by seeking agreement on shared goals across a big tent. He is alienating an entire wing of the opposition, one that incorporates the aspirational values of younger voters. It is political malpractice on a mammoth scale.
Not all candidates who are progressive, or who follow the principles of democratic socialism, are members of the DSA. In the Welker interview, there is also a clip of Rahm Emanuel saying that the DSA is a “separate party” and “we’ll see you in November.” In fact, the DSA is not a separate political party; it is a nonprofit activist group that has worked within the Democratic Party. Its website is https://www.dsausa.org/.
Emmanuel must know that, insider that he is, so the party establishment is pissed off enough at the DSA to be willing to sacrifice truth. I am a lifelong Democrat, and I am disgusted with party leadership.
Given the lack of support from the DNC and establishment leadership for candidates with DSA affiliations in the off-year elections, and the dismissive assumption that, if elected, those candidates will fall in line as unnamed soldiers in the party's service, Jeffries may face a leadership challenge in January.
Just how extreme are the DSA positions, and how far away are they from establishment Democratic ones? Heather Cox Richardson has memorably described the DSA policies as to the right of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Republican platform in the 1950’s. Trump has labeled them as "communist," claiming the DSA wants to control the means of industrial production in America, while the Trump regime itself has obtained large stakes in corporations tied to semiconductors, critical minerals, and strategic industries including Intel (10%), MP Materials (about 15%), Lithium Americas (10%), Trilogy Metals (10%), and a special “golden share” arrangement with U.S. Steel
There is a lot of overlap between the policies advocated by establishment Democrats and the DSA's suggestions, with plenty of room to reach consensus on goals for each policy area, especially given the imperative of a united front against the Trump regime. This is not the time for purity tests and circular firing squads, but that seems to be a fight that Jeffries is trying to pick. Perhaps the most generous interpretation of Jeffries’ foolhardiness is that he has drunk the Trump Kool-Aid: that compromise is a dirty word, code for weakness. Jeffries has lost sight of his responsibility to find the best solutions for the American people. It is especially wrong-headed when Trump will likely still hold veto power over any reform legislation after the midterms. The optimal solutions in these policy areas will need to be flexible and will likely require radical adjustments based on the country’s economic and financial situation, debt load, interest rates, and growth and labor conditions when Trump is finally out of office. There is time to negotiate equitable policy compromises across the coalition opposing Trump over the next two years, but only if the Democratic establishment stops generating self-inflicted wounds.
Jonathan Alter made a persuasive argument in his recent Substack post for “common sense” as what the electorate wants to see return to government. But what can be called “common sense” will ultimately depend on what is doable given the fiscal constraints we will face in 2029. Welker also interviewed Ro Khanna on Meet the Press, and he, too, spoke of common sense and offered specific proposals that clearly bridged the gap between central and progressive policies. Jeffries should be sure to read Alter’s piece and listen to Khanna’s responses to Welker’s questions. The contrast with his own clueless, tone-deaf performance was startling.
The answer to the question of why there is so much antagonism between the Democratic establishment and the DSA is answered in Robert Reich’s screed entitled “The Moronic Bullshit of the “Third Way”: There’s no “middle” between neofascist corporatism and democracy.” The Third Way was one of several groups that were working on a new Democratic Party platform that excoriates DSA positions. It is a long tale of a document reflecting the policy wishlist of its wealthy board, with the moral that oligarchic interests come before party and people whether the uber-rich are blue or red.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/6032219-jeffries-rejects-dsa-agenda/
https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/transcripts/meet-press-august-16-2026-rcna592786
https://www.dsausa.org/
https://www.cfr.org/articles/washingtons-growing-portfolio-tracking-u-s-government-investments
https://oldgoats.substack.com/p/call-them-common-sense-democrats
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-moronic-bullshit-of-the-third
Our older politicians seem to be scared of the younger generation. It's truly bizarre that bright, fresh ideas are being cast aside for "more of the same".
How can we best support change when our own side is fighting against it, Georgia?
Write Jeffries, and all of the Democratic leadership from your local town candidates through your members of Congress, and tell them to stop the self-destructive behavior. We can't withhold our votes in the midterms because defeating Trump is the highest priority, but we can send the message that we will not tolerate Jeffries and Schumer in leadership positions in the new Congress. If our representatives vote for them, we will be looking at alternatives to THEM in 2030.
I believe that the ultimate solution is to push for ranked-choice voting as the most effective way of moving party leadership in the direction of the most popular policies without the risk of splitting the vote and allowing the MAGA cultists to win with a plurality.
This is yet another bugaboo rallying cry du jour that really doesn't pass much of a sniff test. Worse still, it echoes all the goofy 'Democrats in Disarray' 'Democrats engaged in bitch fights' 'Democrats bringing themselves down' articles that now appear virtually every day in the New York Times without fail.
The smartest people in the Democratic Party are those *not* trying to label our own growing pains as "progressive" v. "establishment", whatever that even means. Bernie Sanders, that sort of semi-socialist who hasn't sponsored serious legislation in the Senate for decades, has *always* voted for Chuck Schumer as either Senate Minority or Majority leader -- always. Schumer's not much of a communicator, but he has played minority cards at times both deftly and with skill, stopping certain Republican schemes dead in their tracks, while letting others take the credit for his efforts, even voting against him if they needed to.
In Wisconsin, two worthy candidates recently tumbled together -- the one who won wasn't any less "progressive" than the one who lost. In Michigan, El-Sayed's losing opponent joined hands with virtually every Democratic leader in the state, including Pete Buttigieg (who lives in Traverse City with his husband and kids). There wasn't even a hint of score-settling or the promising of some weird vendetta involving "vengeance" and "getting back" at "establishment" Democrats. For what unites us all is vastly more important than what divides us, claims to the contrary notwithstanding.
The real struggles aren't the shrieking, exaggerated labels involving 'young v. old, socialist v. moderate, us v. them,' they're between a party successfully re-emerging, energizing new constituencies and disaffected Republicans versus one composed of dying, dazed cultists clinging to a misery-go-round for dear life. That's the struggle tens of millions of us are interested in.
While Pete Buttigieg lives here in Traverse City, he is often on the road all across these still United States, speaking (and listening) at community forums about what WE want for our country. And what we want is corruption out and democracy back in.
https://youtube.com/live/qBaXo_JEQWs?is=CVzkfpmk3ZGb1Hn5
ICTT, even though you say that Sanders "hasn't sponsored serious legislation... for decades," you have to give the man credit for mentoring and promoting young progressive candidates in the Democratic Party. And the concept of Medicare for All - perceived by many Democrats as radical not all that long ago - was originally part of his agenda, and has become much more mainstream.
Civilized countries have Medicare For All.
Ellen, the New Deal was to have included universal health care. The AMA hired two political operatives to stymie it. They went on to support many R causes. See Jill LaPore's These Truths, her history of the US.
There are plenty of us who admire Bernie Sanders as an advocate for progressive causes, over many years, regardless of whether he sponsored many bills.
Bernie Sanders is a populist. While that term is more acceptable today, it’s still a shabby political philosophy that pits one group of people agaist another.
Donald Trump is a populist. While he pits his base against immigrants, reporters, scientists, judges, etc., Bernie pits “millionaires and billionaires” against the virtuous common worker. Pits the “powerful and the privileged” against that same saintly worker.
It’s an old trick, framing your followers against another group, but hardly one of the ideals of our country.
FDR was president in tougher times, and with a wealthy class that personally hated him. Yet he didn’t rally the voters against them as villains and enemies as does Bernie. He passed laws and a tax code to make them finance his improvements to the country and to prevent great wealth from becoming great political power.
Bernie and Trump are merely mirror images.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JWxZwZWWFmo
Trump boasted that he could bring prices down from the first day of his second presidency. He's the prince of empty boasts (as well as the prince of liars). The Golden Age he keeps promising is always just around the corner. That doesn't make him a communist, but he does have distinctly corporatist tendencies (like taking government shares in private companies) that could be mistaken for socialism.
well, Jeffries is definitely NOT helping. I wonder if his and Schumer's dislike of the Democratic Socialists is rooted in the DSA refusal to kow-tow to Netenyahu. Schumer said a year or so ago that his most important job is to support Israel. Both are heavy users of AIPAC money.
I look forward to the day when all PAC money is out of politics and policies have to be justified to constituents.
Schumer said no such thing.
Thank you, ICTT. I scrolled down through the "exaggerated labels" to read the informed comments you wrote.
ICCT--thanks for your comment. I told myself I was going to stay off the comments here for awhile, but the allure is so strong! so I read Georgia's. And immediately felt despair and thought "you KNOW this isn't good for you right now!!"
Your comment helped mitigate that emotion. Appreciate that, and with that, I'm logging off.
Miselle, I am truly sorry if I made you feel despair. It was not my intent. It is my belief that we can’t defeat the authoritarian forces in America today unless we look squarely at what is broken, and that includes what is blue and broken as well as what is red.
It is also my belief that we can and will win, but there are still hidden obstacles ahead. We have to shine a bright light on them and look for the cracks we can leverage to clear them from our path. It’s exhausting and daunting, and impossible to do without taking time out. Take care of yourself first and foremost.
VERY well said!
Great, great comment.
Dear Georgia,
Thank you always. You explain issues so rationally and succinctly, you enhance my understanding immeasurably in multiple areas along the political/economic spectrum. And you deliver your message so calmly,
I feel reassured and hopeful that we may ultimately win through.
Thank you for the compliment. We will win, but we have to be clear-eyed about what we have to overcome. Jeffries’ fomenting division was disheartening, but I thought Ro Khanna’s remarks were right on target—showing that unity was possible with compromise in the positive sense of the word—in balancing equities.
The bottom line for me is that the policies the opposition will enact to recover after Trump will be limited by the economic mess we will have to get ourselves out of. The expansive plans of the more progressive wing of the opposition won’t be fiscally achievable for a decade or more. So the first steps will be the same no matter where you are on the ideological spectrum—to stop the bleeding and repair the safety net for the most vulnerable.
SO WHY DOES ANYBODY NEED TO FIGHT NOW? Unless, of course, you are still protecting the interests of the oligarchs over those of the people.
What Christina Robinson said.
The reason that I changed my registration from Democrat to Independent/ unaffiliated is precisely because of Schumer and Jeffries. I am progressive and identify more with AOC and the younger candidates who identify with Democratic Socialism. I am contributing directly to candidates who are espousing a progressive platform. I will not give one dime to the Democratic Party Establishment.
You're not "clear-eyed". You turn against the very people who fight for you. What could be more irrational than that?
To differentiate between DSA insults to centrists and centrists insults to DSA is a wasted exercise. It's all so self-defeating. There's room in this tent for centrists and progressives alike. Dems must unite.
There is a longer version of my argument at the link below, which includes a table comparing the centrist and DSA policy positions. What is truly mind-boggling to me is how similar the positions are. In practice, where you wind up in implementation of them will depend on the state of the economy, how much tax revenue you can raise, and the amount of debt service you need to cover. People also seem to forget that legislation can be amended to expand programs over time.
If I were in charge, as the accountability, anti-corruption, and election protection and reform work was underway, I would prioritize restoring programs for the most vulnerable—kids. SNAP, Head Start, and school lunches would be first up, and I would add revenue-neutral programs like Andy Kim’s MediKids proposal. Then I would move on to fair minimum wage laws based on the cost of living in the states and take the cap off FICA wages. That would increase the net flow of money into the Social Security Trust Fund and draw companies to expand in poorer areas of the country. Medicare for All will require more time to implement, so I would reinstate the ACA subsidies while that work is being done.
These worker-friendly policies shouldn’t be controversial to anyone under a big blue tent. They have another purpose as well: they would demonstrate legislative competence and restore trust in the political system.
https://georgiafisanick.substack.com/p/jeffries-intransigence-will-blunt
Apropos voters, this 2024 story is the first truly good news for 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/15/upshot/election-young-women-liberal.html?unlocked_article_code=1.5FA.T4et.VvLerZ6jKNnM&smid=url-share
Thanks for that--it is hopeful. But it is also depressing to someone like me who fought in the first wave of women "firsts" in the early '70's to see how slow the progress has been, and how disheartening the backsliding on issues like bodily autonomy is now.
Amen.
No! Jeffries and Schumer have always wanted Medicare for All and everything that is real "socialism"!
We need to do what every other citizen of every other democracy that has had universal healthcare for decades already did: engage in real, respectful debates with everyone who's not voting or who is voting for a Republican, so that we convince them to vote for a Democrat (and not just in 2026 and 2028, but for years to come).
In a democracy, that is the ONLY way to become able to make regular progress. US progressives treat democracy as a spectator sport and limit "activism" to complaining and telling politicians what they want.
When will people finally realize that a demo-cracy is a government ("kratein") of the people ("demos", in ancient Greek) and therefore it's WE who need to do the job.... ???
Has it occurred to you that it’s state law and not federal statute that controls the manner of voting? You would need to push that through 50 state legislators and the legislative bodies of DC, the territories and possessions.
While the figure has improved, the youngest qualified voters are the percentile least likely to vote. Yet the young are often passionate. Maybe they would vote more often if established party insiders authentically took them more seriously.
Good point.
The very passionate young DSA people that I know personally hate the Democrats and would never vote for a Democrat. The youth are a mix.
It would help if they saw the leadership of both camps shake hands and agree to play nice for the benefit of all, and were taught about the need to face the enemies of all. That happened in several of the primaries where incumbents lost.
And then we had Jeffries and Schumer blow up the bridges with their petulant loser routines.
I read a comment on the Post yesterday: "Young and crazy never goes away."
Followed, presumably by "Hur! Hur! Hur!"
The young are enthusiastic, energetic and innovative, And - sometimes crazy. Sometimes a hand is needed to steady them - but ALWAYS ears are needed to listen to them. Hundreds of wonderful discoveries across the entire spectrum of human life had been made by people under the age of thirty - and often they were mocked for their ideas solely because the were "young and crazy."
David Hogg comes to mind, I watched an interview with him the other day (I'm sure there are many so I won't cite) but his organization is worth a look: https://leaderswedeserve.com/.
David Hogg.. who had one of the shortest runs at the DNC after Ken Martin got rid of him for daring to have ideas.
Milady, I'm an Apple guy, have been since 1989. Despite Tim Cook's being a disgusting lickspittle, I am still loyal to the company created by one of my heroes, Steve Jobs. Your comment reminded me of a statement he made that was eventually memorialized in his company's TV commercial, debuted on September 28,1997.
“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtftHaK9tYY
I like to think he is still right.
Even Wordsworth was a Revolutionary when young.
Ditto on loyalty to Apple. I don't think Jobs was a very likable guy, but he should be canonized for giving us ITunes (though I gather he wasn't really its creator, just its channel to us). Which, sadly, Cook's Apple is trying to take from us.
Donna, both my heroes were flawed men. Indeed, Jobs was a tyrant with an extreme shortage of patience. But his intolerance of anything less than perfection brought us products that "just work." It should also be noted that his intolerance was motivated by The End User. Which means that Apple products can be modified to suit the work habits of the user.
Compare that approach with Microsoft, which operates on the assumption that "the user is too stupid to know how things work, so we will hide everything from them and make them beg an 'expert' to fix their problem."
My other hero, Frank Lloyd Wright, was a deeply flawed man, with equal perfectionist characteristics and who had problems with marital fidelity. But he was an architectural genius who wanted his work to blend with the Earth, not destroy it. His residential work was intended to bring families together, not sequester them into private suites.
How many times do candidates or parties lose elections because "nobody will listen to us" -- often to disastrous results (remember any of that in the past several years???)
Money has to be taken out of politics and Citizens United has to be overturned. Rank choice voting would be ideal.
I support progressives and understand younger voters need not just to be motivated to vote, they need a voice and a seat at the table.
In defense of Jeffries, despite abhorring his single payer comments on meet the press, he has supported single payer healthcare in the past. His comments are obviously a calculus not to lose less progressive voters. What I will say is the Dems are always cutting deals that accept a bite of the apple instead of the whole apple and too many are selling their souls doing so.
I don’t disagree philosophically and effectively with progressives but a hell of a lot of people have insurance under Obamacare than would have if McCain didn’t thumbs down Trump’s attempt to kill it.
Let’s not tear the tent apart. Persuasion is more effective than force. Keep the arc of history bending forward. It’s time to invite anyone into the fold that that is ready to change the machinations that have placed an inordinate amount of wealth and power into so few hands.
I wondered a lot about whether Jeffries was trying to calm centrists with his remarks, but I don't think that's what he was doing. If that was the case, I think he would have sounded more like Ro Khanna, with examples of bridging between the different proposals on a few key topics but leaning more towards the centrist side. He could have used his earlier support for Medicare for all to say his recent lack of support was due to technical issues in the legislation that could be resolved, and he would reach out to its supporters. In other words, he could have finessed the answer in the name of unity and then actually done that. He came across in the interview with Welker as really pissed to me. No olive branch, not even an olive twig.
He also lost his signature preacher cadence and most of this hand emphasis moves.
Georgia Fisanick for president!
Keeping history moving forward is and has been my philosophy.
“A government of a mob, by the demagogue, for the shiftless and the disorderly and the criminal and the semi-criminal.”
Now THAT is a fine description of the MAGA mob and their lackeys and KoolAid makers.
Possibly those "older" (in many cases, elderly) politicians are scared because they are seeing the possibility of losing their power!
I don't think these are fresh ideas, really, Bernie has been on them for decades and before that things like universal healthcare have been in the works for over a hundred years. I think maybe the people are just tired of being bled to death and lied to, and this new bunch hasn't been bought yet.
The infighting of the Democratic Party could be the downfall of an easily won midterm election.
Get your act together people! Build coalitions, compromise, create platforms we can all rally around.
Once in power, have a clear plan to evaluate, rebuild, and improve life for We the People…all of us this time! 💙
Kari you are right on point. this is exactly what needs to be done. Democrats are notorious for shooting ourselves in the foot, focusing entirely on just one genre and then wondering afterwards what happened. They need to listen to "everyone" not just a select few. This is an important election and your last statement couldn't be more true.
Thanks, klutt! I just saw this from the Lincoln Project…simple message:
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1CaNAt2g6q/?mibextid=wwXIfr
He is seriously the most incompetent "politician" ever.
Some of the established democrats, Schumer et. al, are part of the problem. Did you know, Leaders We Deserve were the top contributors to zohran Mamdani’s campaign? LWD split from the DNC and support progressives who want to support people.
Absolutely!!! 💯. Well said Kari👍🏻
It’s always the same. The left is divided on their principles, whereas the right stands united in their hate. That’s why they are winning.
What is really upsetting is that the policies are not that different. I have a full post detailing the policy differences here
https://georgiafisanick.substack.com/p/jeffries-intransigence-will-blunt
Yeah, what's called "leftist" in America is seen in Europe as conservative-right. Leftist politics in Europe would in America be regarded as "radical lunatic leftist"...
Exactly. That distortion in how we label the political spectrum is something I’ve written about too. What gets called “left” or even “radical” in the United States is often much closer to the political mainstream elsewhere, while our supposed “center” has moved steadily to the right.
I wrote about that here: https://wehavefriendseverywhere.substack.com/p/the-center-is-the-old-right
You're absolutely right, Kelli: your 'center' has moved steadily towards the right.
Back in 2015 Trump said angrily “the problem with the democrats is that they all stick together”.
LOL, Mike! Just another time Donald was wrong. Will Rogers had it right when he quipped, "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat."
Many years ago I wrote, "In people, things or ideas, the greatest strength is also the greatest weakness."
The Democratic Party is the perfect example. The party's "Big Tent" is a great strength, in that it coalesces a wide disparity of viewpoints. It's also a great weakness, in that these folks cling to their pet issues and candidates, thereby sacrificing victory ... "on principle."
Where is the Democrats' shadow cabinet, crafting our version of P2025 for what comes after Trump? (crickets)
I whole-heartedly second the shadow cabinet idea!!!!! Thanks for taking up the cause. LOL
Georgia, I follow Pete Buttigieg on Substack and just received his latest post with video.
https://petebuttigieg.substack.com/p/dont-let-them-fool-you-you-are-not
This is my comment:
I've often heard you talk about how it's not possible for us to go back to the times before Trump, nor should we want to. I've often heard you talk about how we are not alone, which is a comfort to someone living in a "red" state.
I agree with your ideas. But you are just one man. Influential as you are, you can do only so much as one man.
Trump's demolition efforts haven't been effective because he's so powerful. He's weak and cowardly. He's wrought so much havoc because he was handed a roadmap on Day One of his second term, and he hired the creators of that roadmap to implement it.
Where is the Democrat's response to Project 2025? Where is the shadow cabinet that should be formulating plans to build that new order you often speak about? We need that shadow cabinet. We need to know who the members are, so we have a banner to march behind.
It's not the DNC. They couldn't organize their way out of a wet paper bag. As you often say, Pete, "we need something new. Something better."
You're out there changing minds, so find us a group of architects to design what comes next.
They should have kept doing that...
To me there is a world of difference between concepts of "middle" and "balanced" Middle is just a point, but balance is active and dynamic and that gets complicated, especially involving living things. The broad and interconnected array of unique sets of balance that makes sentient life even possible on earth demonstrates something far more complicated than finding the most palatable temperature for porridge. Out of range extremes can destroy the very web of balance we depend on. Hot enough for you? That's a preview. Yet sometimes restoring balance is no small matter, and takes every bit as much as it takes, with the right tools for the right job. Do you see what I am getting at? It seems to me that our slide toward fascism has occurred over several decades, and has been partially enabled by invoking blunt-edge "centrism". The problem what is the center of what, especially when when one of the boundaries is drifting away.
It is certainly not "communism" or some alien idea, to propose taxation of great wealth a good deal more than subsistence income. HCR has written many times about how Old School Republicans came up with a graduated federal income tax to pay for the Civil War. Historic taxes on great wealth and corporations was far more in the Eisenhower era, and the economy did not collapse. The concept of regulatory consumer protection goes back at least as far a Teddy Roosevelt (a Republican) and was popular in the 1950's, when the middle class was rapidly growing. Faithfully paraphrase a lot of the thoughts of Lincoln today and the "GOP" would brand them "communist" today, as would as a number of Democrats.
Whatever. I think many would agree that many things are now well out of wack. and relying exclusively on the same range of thinking that brought us to this point to solve them would seem more than worthy of reexamination.
I like your point "The problem is the center of what." as the boundaries are shifting.
It is absolutely this. What is the center of the party? Not the same as the center of the country…which I believe is still to the left of the ground Democratic Party leadership has staked out. Heather’s analysis of the issues makes that abundantly clear.
Jeffries has only a smidge more charisma than JD Vance. He is not compelling or inspiring in any way and to turn his back on the young, energetic and smart DSA candidates is just plain stupid.
I thought he held a lot of promise but I have been quite disappointed in his non-performance of late.
You've written precisely my sentiment.
The principal problem of the Democratic Socialists is that they are really very lousy word smiths. There is no Socialism in Democratic Socialism. But there is Capitalism, as in Pragmatic Capitalism. Words matter. Democratic Capitalism would be a more apt name for them. It's what the Scandinavian countries practice.
or social democracy, as used in Canada and MANY other developed, capitalist countries.
That may be even better than pragmatic capitalism. How about social democratic capitalism?
I can live with "Socially Responsible Capitalism." It's never easy, but we were working on it for most of the 20th Century, and then came the coordinated smear campaign. We broke up monopolies and were conned into letting them reassemble. What did we get for our trouble?
Reagan mentor Milton Friedman made a thesis of:
"The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits. "
And of course big business loved it; but a corporation is ultimately a passive set of rules; a license; and a license does not drive a car or run a company. "Corporation" is meaningless without a one or more persons, doing things that affect our societies, for the better and worse. AND, if those people and their choices have no responsibilities to society other than to grab as much as possible for themselves, who the hell does? Friedman's dictum is a formula for a sociopath.
Democracy is not a dirty word. Starting with Reagan and the Koch Bros., as well as The Heritage Foundation, it has been turned into a "dirty" word. And for some, capitalism has the same connotation, something evil and exploitative. Pragmatic capitalism is a neutral term. It's a system of fair taxes so that the necessities that an advanced society has can be paid for. But, without a doubt, our government is now in the hands of thugs and it got there because the thugs were smart enough to con some very ignorant people. They've been conned since at least Ronald Reagan and are clueless as to why they're in the financial hole that they're in.
I don't like the word "capitalism" either, which I think is another one of those vaguely applied words that people use to mean differing things. I prefer to speak of "free enterprise", with the caveat that I mean "free" like 'free" in a "free society", which is not one with no rules but one with universal rights and protections that presume responsibility. Some like to pretend that rules should only apply to those with less money. Lawsuits, evictions, trade secrets, patents, etc. are the core of American justice, yet worker and consumer protection is "communism" and meddles in an otherwise prefect system. During "Great Recession" I read in the financial press that not paying bonuses to bankrupt bankers would destabilize our whole economy bit that contracts with union workers should be logically discarded. The reader may notice a pattern.
The little I have seen of Scandinavian countries indicated widespread relative prosperity and very robust private enterprise. Also, more "people-friendly" cities. These things are not inimical. I recall the Koch Bros funded Cosplay Tea Party that seemed to sell the idea that America was founded on "No Taxation", but pointedly adrift from "Without Representation". And who is it that is meant to be represented? Why, it's us! ALL of us. Even, come to think about it, social minorities and women. E Pluribus Unum. That's even on our money.
Ahh, that’s the ticket. Have you ever considered that those Scandinavian countries you so admire are a tenth our population, with a homogeneous population that has no ethnic tensions, no former slaves whose descendants have been preyed upon, isolated, incarcerated and used by bigots? That they live in countries that are free in large part because they exist under and incredibly expensive but necessary security umbrella that we provide? That they began their universal healthcare from the void of their WWII ruin, and thus had the advantage of starting from scratch? While we have a hodgepodge of private, public, and employer-funded insurance that will consume at least one presidency to convert to taxpayer funded? That the reason that neither Bernie nor any of his compatriots will talk about that is that the average tax bill will increase by about $8,000.
But sure, let’s just fix all that and have a perfect Scandinavian life
According to The Hill Sen. John Fetterman who has bucked his party in recent years, warned against socialism’s rise in the Democratic Party in the wake of democratic socialists and insurgent progressives winning primaries.
Not surprised to hear that shoe drop…
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/6032418-fetterman-warns-socialism-rise/
Georgia, I must keep reminding myself that a third of a Democrat is better than none at all.
Although Pittsburgh, Harrisburg and Philadelphia are populated by people with progressive minds, the rest of the state is populated by backward, mountain folk. Anyone with a "D" after their name has to hug the conservative borderline just to get elected.
I understand what you are saying. But I think it would be a lot easier to reach those conservatives if we didn’t have to wade through the sea of PAC-fueled propaganda.
Absolutely! And if I ruled the world, PACs wouldn't exist. But I don't. They do. And here we are. 🫤
And so for COVID, but if we are wise we labor to reduce it.
And you wonder why all those non-Democrats absolutely loathe Democrats. Backward mountain folk?
Did you listen to Jon Stewart's recent podcast interview with Fetterman? It was all I could do not to scream at Fetterman's intransigence.
It ought to be a national scandal that a third of Americans struggle to access primary healthcare, especially since you spend nearly twice as much as any other G7 nation on healthcare. Even your billionaires and millionaires are less healthy than their European counterparts. You rank 62nd in terms of life expectancy, lower than any other G7 nation.
https://www.brown.edu/news/2025-04-02/wealth-mortality-gap
I would add but one item to your already thorough analysis, Georgia: the probability Jeffries is reassuring his owners the "Democratic" [sic] Party will continue its primary post-JFK function as the "Republican" [sic] ChristoNazi/Neoconfederate Party's Fifth Column.
Thank you Georgia... I went straight to Robert Reich's piece which should not be missed:
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-moronic-bullshit-of-the-third
Democrats shoot themselves..
People must learn to stay informed and become immune to scare tactics; their lives depend on it.
After the GOP "works over" the electorate about socialism and communism, "centrist" Democrats move to finish the job. It's such an easy sell. Once we have been moved so far to the right moving back to the real center becomes extreme.
This is about us. I am beginning to have my doubts about democracy working ever if we cannot have an informed electorate and get gamed... as HCR says, has been happening. We have the tools now for everyone to engage, to inform themselves.
Gaming the system is pervasive..... I grew up in NYC ( like Trump) and this was not unusual. In fact it was something to brag about. He took it national, revived it.
I too grew up in New York City as a contemporary of Trump. Used to drive past has Daddy’s lily white apartment complexes on my way to college in Brooklyn.
My grandparents and family settled in NY- Brooklyn, The Bronx, at the beginning of the last century, "yearning to breathe free" coming from Eastern Europe. I am older than Trump, but not by much. I went to Hunter College in Manhattan, grateful for no tuition. That's progressive I guess.
Trump was coming up, testing things out in NYC. Making a splash on Fifth Av. He skimmed the surface (vacuous, a smart-ass as now) and achieved a certain success. The rest was faking it. Not that he knew where he was going ultimately. He improvised which is easy when you don't let anything get to you (at least on the surface). This builds... the direction of it. He knew and still knows or thinks he knows, that everyone has a price; everyone is corruptible as he is himself. That's winning. The rest of us ( the whopping majority) are trash or to be trashed after they are of no use. Trump had a criminal mind from the get go; how to game the system- a New York thing- like many. A sport. He could.He just took it national... riding right over his failures using the same methods, perfecting the con.
I always say this is about us. We are vulnerable. And with many people like Trump (look at his followers and support system, the slowness of the polls) I don't know how we have a democracy, a liberal democracy, equality for all. It *will* take time. more than I have probably, but at the same time we have to move faster. I hate to see us learning more painfully the hard way.
I recommend the piece in the NewYorker about Roy Cohn. Let me know if you try and cannot get it.... https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/08/10/roy-cohn-profile#rid=3abece7c-e1f4-47c9-a5a6-9e9b01d18ff2&q=roy+cohn
Best Wishes
It's not that easy... . Oversimplification by progressives is one of the main plagues US democracy suffers from.
With only two political parties (and a third, left-wing party would only make things worse for anyone who's pro-democracy), the Democratic Party is in the very difficult situation where it needs to represent a majority of the American people in each state and district, even though citizens no longer truly debate politics among themselves and education levels are very low, so millions and millions of people have totally false ideas about the state of the country and proven solutions (such as Medicare for all and obviously "socialism").
Under such circumstances, the Democratic Party is OBLIGED to TALK in ways that appeal to the majority, because that is the only way to control DC, and without that control, no progress whatsoever is possible. So as long as a majority has a falsely negative image of the very word "socialism", it HAS to officially separate itself from it, precisely because in a democracy, the job of a political party IS to represent the people.
Time and again, THE main weakness of the US turns out to be the fact that self-declared progressive de facto REJECT democracy, mostly out of lack of political literacy (= understanding how any democracy works).
Too many progressives are actually asking the DNC to govern as fascists, so to just ignore the democratic process and unilaterally impose what polls show a majority wants. That skips the crucial step that all other citizens around the world HAVE to engage in BEFORE a democracy can work, namely debating politics with each other until we have convinced a majority to actively want and vote for Medicare for All (for instance).
It's this horribly low political literacy of the left that systematically undermines progress.
Example: the 2010 election. Democrats were about to lay the foundation for universal healthcare (= something ALL Democratic politicians have ever wanted, when it comes to their own, personal opinion), and after Obama had campaigned for an entire year, all over the country (as president), for adding a public option to the bill (= what would turn Obamacare, over time, into universal healthcare), for the first time ever polls showed that a majority of the American people now supported it. That gave Democrats the leverage needed to do what they'd always wanted: get universal healthcare done. In the end, however, an Independent Senator, who was one of the main candidates for Vice-President for... the Republicans (McCain), and who had the 60th vote needed to pass a public option, turned against it.
So what did progressives do next? Help Obama convince more people to add it to the bill in 2011? No. The Huffington Post began to write big headlines saying that "Obama is no longer into us," and progressives refused to vote for Democrats in the midterms. So we had to wait an entire decade until we finally gave Democrats control over DC again (although not full control), in 2020. By then, "we the people" had given them enough votes to expand Obamacare subsidies, but STILL not to add a public option.
So what do progressives do today, when all the turning against the only ones who want what we want is now resulting in the installation of fascism?
Still the same ignorant turning against Democrats.
In a democracy, we have the government we deserve...
So well stated! I was unaware of Jeffries' blindness to true Democratic principles until I saw the interview with Kristen Welker. He's a true mealy-mouthed politician, hardly the leader we need in Congress. At the least, he should be proposing solutions that meet the basic desires of all sides of the Democratic coalition--such as Medicare by-in for all.
I think you should watch an interview with the co-chairperson of the DSA, where she gives the Republicans all the nice quotes they need to do their redbaiting. She gives them even more than Hong did.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=6RWsHLvBntg&is=5s29zTr13qu0IIWG
The older Democratic leaders are no different than Republicans. They don’t want to lose their jobs, their power, their perks, or their inflated self worth!
I'm just curious as to what happened to the "big tent" of which democrats had always bragged. Aside from Hakeem Jeffries irritating monotone voice when trying to rally the troops to donate, he has demonstrated a rather narrow cadre in which democrats are expected to either join and/or commit. I agree that all of us should be "excited" for democrats to "flip seats;" however, there are well too many of us who want to see democratic principles go the way of Abdul El-Sayed and/or Bernie Sanders. Rham Emmanuel has every right to give his opinion; however, his unconstrained immersion into Zionist principles is anything but democratic. He may espouse democratic ideals which are far more favorable than what someone like Trump espouses, but at the heart of his philosophy is a Zionist mentality that promotes more division rather than inclusion. I know this is just me, but I have a very hard time trusting any US government official who was at one time part of the IDF.
I checked out Emanuel’s connection to the IDF because I hadn’t heard about it before. It was in Wikipedia and had been referenced in the Jerusalem Post. Emanuel took part in a two-week civilian volunteer holiday during the 1991 Gulf War, helping to repair truck brakes in one of Israel's northern bases. This was right before he joined Clinton’s campaign when he was 32. Many American Jews have gone to Israel to do volunteer work, but more usually in college or high school
Here’s a link to a lengthy recent article from the Jerusalem Post from July on his interest in running for president in 2028 and his views on Israel: pro-Israel, very anti-Netanyahu, anti-settler and the treatment of Gazans, very pro-two-state solution. So he is espousing the liberal American Jewish consensus on Israel/Palestine policy, somewhere in the middle between the centrist AIPAC-centric pro-”Israel right or wrong” policy and the DSA pro-Palestinian policy.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/rahm-emanuel-democrats-support-israel-053953816.html
He will be one of many opposition candidates staking out their own unique mix of policy stands ahead of 2028. He’s just testing the waters earlier than most.
Georgia, thank you for this clarification. Although my statement was accurate, it turns out to be less damaging than I thought. I'm happy to hear that Emanuel shifted, somewhat one can say, regarding his vehement support for Israel. I would expect his early support for Israel to be full throated as his father was in the Irgun. I can't blame Emanuel for that; his Zionist leanings early on clearly were influenced by his father. I suppose anyone taking a good look at someone like Netahyahu would eventually have to see the writing on the wall. Although I still have doubts, this makes me feel a little better about Rahm Emanuel.
Alger’s comment sounds like it was written by a Third Way consultant. He typically took phrases out of context & used as sound bites by the right to hammer Progressives as radicals instead of helping his readers understand what was really said. Typical consultant demagoguery.
I think of the flow of money in an economy as something like the flow of irrigation water in a territory. Ideally you want it to be sustainable and serve a wide array of needs.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
C'est la vie... we never learn.
Ou pire ;-)
As in "let me water my lawn first and you can have what's left." Guess who's lawn is brown. Yet voters keep falling for it.
No satire today...
Thank you, Heather. Your piece today is especially effective because you did what you do best: use history to illuminate the present without forcing the comparison. Excellent and fascinating.
By revisiting the Klondike Gold Rush and the economic turmoil of the 1890s, you show how inequality can push ordinary people toward desperate hopes of individual escape rather than collective solutions. Workers and farmers were struggling while wealth and political power became increasingly concentrated. Even the rhetoric sounds familiar, with efforts to help working people dismissed as socialism or class warfare.
The irony of the Gold Rush strengthens the point. Thousands chased sudden wealth, but relatively few found it. Often, the more reliable fortunes went to those selling supplies and services to the people doing the chasing.
You then bring the story back to something more important: cooperation, friendship, loyalty, and our dependence on one another.
That is what makes the piece so good. You are not simply recounting history. You are quietly asking what kind of society we want.
The larger lesson seems clear: a healthy democracy cannot depend on millions of people trying to beat an unfair system individually. It depends on building a society where ordinary people have a fair chance to prosper together.
You make that point with restraint, trusting the history, and your readers, to recognize the parallels.
She's also preparing us for what she believes is the next progressive era yet to come.
The juxtaposition of McKinley and Trump is no mere koinkidink. In his diseased brain, Trump fancies himself at the apex of a golden age, as did McKinley, surrounded by robber barons of old. Like McKinley, Trump is sure tariffs are the best thing around since sliced bread and crunchy peanut butter (pretending the last 100 years of ghastly, beggar-thy-neighbor trade wars, which most historians believe led directly to World War I helps, too). McKinley was also surrounded by slobbering sycophants who tried to name the highest peak in the Americas for him. Like McKinley, who waged "splendid little wars" in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Cuba, Trump's whites-only social Darwinism is founded on the principle that little brown people were born to serve America.
The list is endless. But the Progressive Movement followed that era, with its direct election of Senators, establishment of the FDA, eventual abandonment of the gold standard, respect for labor, laws protecting workers, children, establishing the 8-hour workday. Many of us look ahead and see that rising disgust surrounding the old that always seems necessary for something new to make itself both present and more permanent.
That is the larger historical pattern Richardson seems to be pointing toward. Gilded Age excess eventually produced a reform movement because concentrated wealth, corruption, and inequality became politically intolerable. The hopeful question now is whether today’s backlash can produce another durable era of democratic reform.
Back to the Yukon for a moment. Robert Service had a brilliant knack for making words sing. HCR posted: The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold….”
And this brought Jack London's famous short story, "To Build a Fire," to mind. How lucky we are to have had such masters of literature.
And someone like HCR who talks about the masters, helps keep them alive. Yes, that last quote, "The Arctic trails ..."
It made me grin.
You are s-o-o-o-o-o right, Anne. Future American history specialists will definitely write about HCR's contribution. No one really compares to her. She seized a medium and took off like a rocket ship, keeping millions of us informed about current events.
"No one really compares to her." The absolute truth. I am reminded, again, to feel grateful!
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist."
Archbishop Helder Camara
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/25/food-stamps-children-trump
Or require a working class to suffer poverty and lack of healthcare while "wealthy Americans in the Gilded Age enjoyed exclusive pastimes like yachting, polo, grand society balls, and summering at elite resorts in Newport, Rhode Island, or the Adirondacks. They also traveled to Europe on luxury ocean liners and collected fine art." AI
I'm convinced that we have laws and regulations (or lack thereof) that hurt the poor and working class folks in our country because most of the (older?) lawmakers have never had to feel hunger or sleep in cars or choose between food and medicine for even one day in their lives.
I think this is an excellent synopsis, Terry. Thanks!
Thank you. I've been thinking a lot about the disparity between the very wealthy and the poor and working class folks that has persisted in this country, especially how skillfully those in power get us to vote against our own best interests.
Agree....When I'm feeling so down on where this country currently stands, Heather always comes through with a post that reminds me it's been an ongoing fight in this country. In an odd sort of way gives me hope that we will prevail.
Trickle down, a dog and fire hydrant, the rich want no limits to their greed, wealth and rapaciousness! Greed is good! Just ask JD! The new Catholic Conservative Jesus…the axe throwing warrior wins the day, “I love the smell of testosterone in the morning.”
We are so much better than this! So first step, stop digging…well-regulated markets are good, healthcare is good, minimum wages are good.
Trickle-down economics…you are their hydrant. We don’t have to be!
Yes, and AI is not the new gold…bankruptcy on the horizon. There is no there there in the ‘miracle’ way it has been marketed…remember data mining?
What’s worse is that it DOESN’T trickle down, really….
History - we are condemned to repeat it, we are condemned to ignore it and we are condemned never to learn from it. History is just not pesky, dusty documents in museums and archives. We thought that because of reason we could understand more about the world and use reason to shape the world and use it more efficiently. Instead humans find themselves perpetually in a state of war, state of constant violence, greed, power and now we are in a place where we have to give up freedom to an ultimate ruler. We have learned that if there are no facts then the dictator is right. Our minds and body have been colonized by trump et al. But history shows that those trends have always been present - I think we are like Sysiphus - condemned to be exploited, etc. We need to look to the past to understand how we got to today............But that's a tough lift for those low energy, low information citizens....
A tiny bit of wealth may trickle down, but first, the wealthy enjoy the gush of money they squeeze out of ordinary citizens. And somehow, we allow this to repeat indefinitely.
Yes, indeed. Still as NYT reports the people at the very bottom lacking political power could be left out. SNAP and Medicaid are for these people but lack stability of SS and Medicare. We must make sure they will also become a corner stone of democracy.
FYI: using the government to make life more secure for ordinary people rather than to make sure that wealth is concentrated at the top IS called SOCIALISM, and to get there, we absolutely need CLASS WARFARE.
It's the fact that Americans try to achieve what Europe achieved all while turning these words into taboos that not only made progress here so much slower, but has now also created a CLASS of ultra-wealthiest insane people who truly believe that fascism is better than democracy. And we gave them full control over DC.
Perhaps it's time to finally start that class warfare... ? How many millions more need to die before you'll be willing to call it what Europe called it for more than a century now?
Awesome, Kelli.
One of first poems that usually comes to mind that captures what was/is really important, it wasn’t the gold but the allure of the northern wilderness…. A favorite…
The Spell of the Yukon - Robert Service
I wanted the gold, and I sought it;
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy—I fought it;
I hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold, and I got it—
Came out with a fortune last fall,—
Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn’t all.
No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)
It’s the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it’s a fine land to shun;
Maybe; but there’s some as would trade it
For no land on earth—and I’m one.
You come to get rich (damned good reason);
You feel like an exile at first;
You hate it like hell for a season,
And then you are worse than the worst.
It grips you like some kinds of sinning;
It twists you from foe to a friend;
It seems it’s been since the beginning;
It seems it will be to the end.
I’ve stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow
That’s plumb-full of hush to the brim;
I’ve watched the big, husky sun wallow
In crimson and gold, and grow dim,
Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,
And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop;
And I’ve thought that I surely was dreaming,
With the peace o’ the world piled on top.
The summer—no sweeter was ever;
The sunshiny woods all athrill;
The grayling aleap in the river,
The bighorn asleep on the hill.
The strong life that never knows harness;
The wilds where the caribou call;
The freshness, the freedom, the farness—
O God! how I’m stuck on it all.
The winter! the brightness that blinds you,
The white land locked tight as a drum,
The cold fear that follows and finds you,
The silence that bludgeons you dumb.
The snows that are older than history,
The woods where the weird shadows slant;
The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,
I’ve bade ’em good-by—but I can’t.
There’s a land where the mountains are nameless,
And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back—and I will.
They’re making my money diminish;
I’m sick of the taste of champagne.
Thank God! when I’m skinned to a finish
I’ll pike to the Yukon again.
I’ll fight—and you bet it’s no sham-fight;
It’s hell!—but I’ve been there before;
And it’s better than this by a damsite—
So me for the Yukon once more.
There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting;
It’s luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting
So much as just finding the gold.
It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder,
It’s the forests where silence has lease;
It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.
Thanks! The last four lines really resonate with me. I have those feelings for the four corners states, especially the western slope of Colorado and southern Utah and northern Arizona. For me, and many others, these areas are sacred places, — mountains and canyons — and I despair at the lack of respect by this maladministration concerning Bears ears, the Escalante and surrounding areas. The spirits of the Ancient ones are seemingly alive in these areas — the peace and wonder are palpably real.
I just read a long cover article in the Christian Science Monitor about the Escalante area. I came away inspired by the people who are resisting the WH and the local politicians. The resisters know both their heart and the facts. I'm hopeful, too, after reading.
you can support the people trying to protect Bears Ears by donating to SUWA, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. They will need $ to fightvthus in the courts. This Canadian loves that area and support them. We have to protect the culture, the artifacts
Good point — Here’s the website for Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) accepting those donations if you can afford a few dollars to assist.
https://suwa.org/suwa-statement-on-trumps-illegal-reductions-of-grand-staircase-escalante-bears-ears-national-monuments-7-13-26/
This is also a direct, and vetted Native-led nonprofit representing the five sovereign tribes—the Hopi, Navajo, Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, and Zuni—who hold ancestral ties to the land. They manage the legal, cultural, and spiritual defense of the monument. Direct support can be sent via the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition Donation Page.
https://www.bearsearscoalition.org/donate/
thanks for adding the link!
Agreed, DanKinSD.
Having just retraced some of the passage from Skagway via narrow gauge rail to Fraser (and that was by far the less dangerous, less steep, though longer route) with my partner this past June, you get an up close perspective of the determination of those stampeders and the hardships they faced.
Once you got across White Pass in 1898, long before a railroad was ever built (with your one ton of provisions required by Canadian law), you had to build a boat (no stores for parts) and sail up the Tagish Lake through what is today First Nations country to get to Whitehorse, which soon became a bustling city of thousands. Out of about 100,000 stampeders though, fewer than 100 actually managed to find and stake claims anywhere near the original Bonanza Creek and got gold 'out of them thar hills.' Most returned penniless, some stayed to build a life in the remote wilderness, many died.
My favorite stories from the Gold Rush involve women. One historian said 'many of those stampeders became true-grit entrepreneurs right to their cores; all of the women did.' One woman arrived in the muddy pit known as Skagway, Alaska, fully intending to prospect herself, but took one look at the miserable conditions, dirty, hungry stampeders and roadless town and opened up a little pie shop there instead, charging the miners an arm and a leg for her apple pies. She ended up making a fortune -- one of the few who did -- thus "mining the miners" as the history books say. She never panned for gold a day in her life.
In Dawson City, Hotel Belinda is named for another entrepreneur, who hired men to carry her 1,000-pound provisions up the far steeper Chilkoot Pass, where horses flung themselves off the mountain to end their own misery. Yet her men got bribed by somebody else to ditch her stuff in the snow, and carry his instead. Belinda found out about it, and hired some wranglers to beat the living crap out of them, then showed up on the mountain pass herself on horseback with a shotgun. "Boys," she said, "it's like this. You find my provisions and carry them across the pass, or you meet your maker today. What's it gonna be?"
Dawson City is charming and beautiful as the midnight sun approaches in June, surrounded indeed by "forests where silence has lease" where "beauty thrills me with wonder." And yes, Hawkins Cheezies are way better than American Cheetos because they're made with REAL cheddar. Still, glad we were there in June, and not December.
https://sylvestercat.substack.com/p/the-full-mounty
One of my favorite biographies, "Wolf: The Lives of Jack London" by James L. Haley, includes a gripping account of the struggles of London's party to take the Chilkoot Pass to the Alaskan gold fields. The biography also gives a realistic picture of the struggles of working class people like London during that time period. Most people remember him only for his novels about the north country, but his life was a mirror for the economic times.
My husband and I spent six weeks in Quebec this summer - most of it in Montreal, but the last 2 weeks we rented a car and drove east to Lac Saint-Jean and then Saguenay-Fjord National Park. Swam in that beautiful, cold, brackish river one day. Saw about 15 beluga whales in the river another day. As you wrote, getting out of the U.S. political climate and into polite and friendly communities was a relief.
ICCT, while a cruise is not the best way to visit that area of the world, I did that with my Aunt Liz while we were both recovering from our chemotherapy treatments (me for breast cancer, and her for ovarian cancer). It was in September, and we took the train from Skagway up to Whitehorse, and saw some of the touristy sights there. Sometime later, my wife and I went to the Klondike museum in Seattle, WA, which was absolutely fascinating.
ICTT went in end of June in 2016 was awestruck by the beauty and music of the winds. Good stories were shared, not really a beer drinker and don’t recall the brand but it tasted so much better. A place that gives peace. Someday hope to return.
Thanks, Very interesting. When you're not angry, you have things to say
Thanks for your condescension. I simply don’t know what I’d do without it.
wow
Thank You, TJ.
OK, Readers, we have another one of Professor Richardson's "Best Evers".A nd, thank you TJ for launching us off in the right direction:
"I’ll fight—and you bet it’s no sham-fight."
*****************************************
SUWA Defending Utah's Wild Lands Since 1983
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) is the only non-partisan, non-profit organization working full time to defend Utah’s redrock wilderness. SUWA's power comes from people like you & from across the nation who want to protect this irreplaceable heritage for all Americans.
See, SUWA's Anniversary film & our bedrock Redrock heritage.
Thank you TJ! I really appreciate you writing that out!
Thank you for putting the poem here. It's lovely, and I'm not usually a poetry fan. It does indeed illustrate what is really important. It's nice to have the gold and all, but experiencing the wilderness is what you remember.
You just took me back 55 years. I received Robert Service’s Collected Poems in 1972 and that poem remains my favorite. Thanks for the ride in the time machine.
Same here. Grandfather bought some poetry books in the late 60’s and early 70’s for me to read. He always said the mind needs to find the beauty as well as facts to move the world forward in a better way. It’s always about balance. They are all still on the bookshelf and often read to bring those memories to flood back…
Late 19th century history, yes, interesting -- but criminal Donald is yet alive and in office today.
Still bundling together so many more of the most colossally deficient characteristics, even including all from the late Gilded Age.
Where to start as we track him again now abrading another of the U.S.’s long-held alliances with yet another fellow democracy?
Most everyone commenting here knows South Korea has long been vital as several other key U.S. allies in the Far East, the Pacific area. But now the fat blundering knave in the White House feels obliged to trash that ally (dismissing scheduled joint military exercises) as he has trashed even longer-held allies in that region, in Europe, and elsewhere, too.
He's a fool, that criminal, that years-long fellow rapist of underage girls and young women, that infamous money launderer for dictators and oligarchs, pal to the world’s worst drug runners and arms dealers. Total goofus of a commander-in-chief.
He had no idea of what he was doing in Iran, no idea of the descending phases likely ensuing from war with the mullahs. The boastful, vainglorious, vengeful fool really has no idea, either, of what he’s doing now playing with South Korea.
Ego demands he play. Narcissism insists all parts of the world as more of his stages.
And we’ve tens of millions schooled only to drool over more yet more of his idiot sensationalism.
It’s a perfect time for China to attack Taiwan. We have no armadas now that the George Washington is steaming towards the strait. Wars are inevitable. The historical question is does China have legitimacy over Taiwan. No more than the US has over Puerto Rico. Different circumstances but not altogether dissimilar to our Monroe Doctrine. Dominating states will dominate. There should be a stampede to get high tech out of Taiwan. China has laid claim to the island nation and it’s inevitable an attack will be forthcoming.
Also, Bill, fools criminal Donald and testosterone Pete have taken U.S. units from Japan.
Institutional Democrats: Corruption Of The Democratic Party
It's no secret that the Democratic Party has lost the American electorate(recent favorability 38%). This has ushered in the progressive left of the party represented by AOC and Sanders.
The success and popularity of Mamdani and El-Sayed under the Democratic tent has the centrist corporate wealthy donor class/institutional Democrats concerned about losing their platform and hence their influence and relevance in the political scene, particularly as it relates to the fascist led Israeli war.
For once the Democratic elite led by wealthy donors are losing to WE the People in a populist uprising which truly represents WE the People. For people like political consultants Neera Tandem, Zionist Simon Rosenberg, and James Carville along with pundits Joe Scarborough, Bill Mayer, and Fareed Zakaria, this uprising threatens not only relevance but $$$ to the networks they represent. This has caused corporate millionaires and billionaires to pony up $$$ to fight this populist wave with the Third Way creation.
But this is not something new as Wajhat Ali and Dave Sirota(bit.ly/3SgNaBI) point out in a recent dialogue worth watching. MSM is losing the political relevance due to their past authoritarian stance to independent media such as The Lever, This Will Hold, Meidas Touch, Aaron Parnas, Left Hook, Zeteo among others. For decades this Democratic centrist group has used the antisemitic cudgel to support the Israeli Palestinian oppression/war but with the fascist Israeli pulling the US into its war, the antisemitic ploy is no longer working. WE the People are speaking out and saying if you’re willing to bullshit me on this, you’re probably willing to on economy etc.
Excellent summary! Thank you very much.
Spread the word....even MSNOW has been captured by the Institutional Democrats and provides them shelter. What happened to Ayman Mohyeldin and outspoken critic of the fascist Israeli government and its attempted genocide? His weekend show was canceled but Rampell and Hilton allowed to fill in as guest hosts. Mehdi Hasan an even more vocal critic of Israel was flat out fired and now runs substack channel Zeteo.
This underscores the $$$ influential power of the Institutional Democrats in MSM.
The oligarch owned corporate media is thrilled. The media is wildly racist, biased and just plain rude when "interviewing" DSA or Progressive candidates. They call Hassan Piker all kinds of names and now the Democrats are joining in.
What I have suspected for the past 10 years has come to pass. I knew in my gut there was a silent fox in the henhouse of American politics. We were being consumed by MAGA while the Democratic Party stood by seemingly helpless. Now as we have rolled closer to where we stand today, I realized the Democratic Party machine was complicit in where we are. I feel morbidly vindicated.
We are up against it. Now we have to battle on 2 fronts; MAGA and the centrist Democrats. The good news? The Progressive/DSA candidates are winning. El-Sayed said he has spoken to Obama who has been clear on wanting to see a younger Democratic Party. The DSA/Progressive movement is vital and we have some time to organize around the centrist Democrats' pushback.
And finally, people like Ossoff and El-Sayed are giving it right back to the outrageous things that are thrown at them. The Democrat machine was not being polite all these years. They were complicit.
The fascists in DC are, of course, thrilled as they follow Napoleon's advice:
“Quand l'ennemi fait un faux mouvement, il faut se garder de l'interrompre.”
“When the enemy is making a false movement, we must take good care not to interrupt him.”
Well stated
I just came across this person today. She is Lisa Stone Martin and has a Substack called "No, Actually". Below is a piece of her commentary on Hakeem Jeffries' interview yesterday.
"“Hakeem Jeffries sat on Meet the Press this weekend and told the country he doesn’t support Medicare for All anymore. The same bill he co-sponsored from 2013 to 2021. Eight years of his name on it, removed the second the base started winning without his permission.
He said it plainly: he is not cosponsoring or supporting M4A. He also drew a line against the DSA and the primary wins piling up against the establishment he represents.
When leadership backslides on the thing voters say they care about most, the outlets that are supposed to hold the party accountable go quiet.
The Democrat establishment is mistaken. We’re not asking permission to want more than what failed leadership is willing to fight for. And they continually fail to learn this lesson: we are like Weeble Wobbles, we pop right back up every time they try to knock us down. Keep fighting, fam!”
Amen
The history lessons from Ms. Heather Cox Richardson are the golden treasures of our modern times. If only the idiots in the current administration would read them, we could have a worthy standing in the world that we ALL live in.
I'm afraid if they read them aloud, they would all just laugh at us -- the 99%.
"Pro-business it the standard term for politicians who support concentration of wealth, but I have long thought that is an ambiguous term that hides a less-neutral epithet of "pro-monopoly" or pro-oligarchy. In some ways we are all in business in just about any legal way to earn a living, so, I am pro-business but also keenly in support of robust worker and consumer protection and regulatory barriers to business practices that erode the common good. It seems to me that a truly "Free Market" is like a free society, in which to secure human rights, governments are formed with equally distributed consent of the governed. A truly free market is one of wide-spread opportunity for all, not one in which massive conglomerates dominate markets and political possibilities. I read some years ago that genuine "small business" was statistically declining as a percent of total employment, yet all politicians claim to love small businesses (but don't necessarily act like they believe it). Not all businesses can be small. Cottage industry can't produce computer CPU chips. But our political environment certainly can do more to favor smaller businesses where they are practical, and to hold more large ones accountable when intentionally or not, they pose a problem to our general welfare as a society and a species.
A local man who grew up in this Trump small town, who became a lawyer then a judge, is well-respected - he is running for state office as a Democrat. His word is "pro-wealth." I'm very excited about his candidacy.
I love your post because I am a word nerd, and believe that simple messaging is crucial now.
I love the history lessons that shine as much light on current events as the past.
I am a huge fan of Jack London. His many short stories set in the Klondike gold rush are wonderful. “All Gold Canyon”, set in the California gold rush, is the most perfect short story I’ve ever read. (The Coen brothers made a short movie of it that missed the mark, in my opinion.) He also wrote stories about the struggles of working people. “The Iron Heel” describes a failed working class uprising in America. Jack London ran for mayor of Oakland, Ca. as a socialist. He lost.
All in all he lived an incredible life during incredible times and left a lasting literary legacy of the journey.
Like I said, I’m a huge fan.
Professor Richardson -- The themes in your report for today really drove home the importance of studying history. The parallels between events in the late 1800s and current developments are eerily similar. It's as if many of today's politicians — especially the one in the White House — have learned nothing from history.
If nothing else it clearly points out the usual rightwing mantra that anything that enriches the “classes” and constrains the oligarchs is “communism”. They have sung this song forever, and the proof that they have been wrong every time is in reading history.
When AOC was elected the Repubs declared that she was a wild eyed socialist who would single handedly bring ruin to the country. Instead she has shown herself to be a level headed and wise legislator.
How many times do we have to go through this cycle of moving so far to the right that we end up with out and out thieves running the government before the rightwing learns the lessons of history that show that they are WRONG and always have been.
Preaching to the choir!
The details change, but it seems the same forces are always at odds in America. The saddest part is watching the same people fooled again and again by the same lies.
Aw, my dad used to recite that poem! ☺️
Rebecca, yes the speech is honey for the ears.
Imagine, my favorite historian using my favorite poet to make a political point that lays plain the day’s news. Thank you, Heather.
wise words from Bryant: "The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them."
If Heather's writing of the late Gilded Age, we could well recall the great book on that.
This is "The Mauve Decade," by Thomas Beer.
If Heather is writing of President McKinley, then we could well recall Thomas Beer's book on Mark Hanna, simply called "Hanna" -- the person who single-handedly got McKinley elected president.
Thomas Beer was the best-paid writer in America for many years -- and (a staple in "The Saturday Evening Post") one of the most popular. I recommend especially his stories about small-town Ohio from a bit more than 100 years ago, "Mrs. Egg and Other Americans." Published the year of my birth, 1947.
You really outdid yourself with today’s essay. I love learning from you! Of course I knew about the Yukon Gold Rush, my husband also can recite the poem, but you put it in perspective about what was happening in the country.
It looked like Dr. Richardson had a particularly good time writing this paper. Her description of the gold rush was great. It was a relief to read some of the same situations as we are experiencing today. My favorite was this one. "By 1894, desperate workers were demanding government relief programs, adding fuel to Republicans’ charges that workers were dangerous."
That one stuck, with me as well.
Unfortunately, the centrist Democratic Party machine now sounds like the Republicans. Schumer, Jeffries, Rahm Emanuel, and too many others are being less than welcoming of the rising portion of the Democratic Party; the Democratic Socialists, Progressives and the anti-Israeli terrorist State.
A gripping account of Yukon adventure that neatly wraps in the national American political turmoil as backdrop. Quite chilling how the "masses" of people always suffer as a result of top-level political decisions. This story clearly depicts that relationship.