Centrists Were Wrong: Left-Wing Candidates Won
It’s hard to look at Tuesday’s election results and still take seriously the centrist attack line claiming that left-wing candidates aren’t electable. We won plenty of big races to be proud of.
521 Articles by: Branko Marcetic
Branko Marcetic is a Jacobin staff writer and the author of Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden.
After the Midterms, the Democrats Should Do Some Soul-Searching
Republicans wasted a plum opportunity last night. But Democrats may have squandered voter backlash to GOP extremism by lacking an economic message.
The Quiet Merger Between Online Platforms and the National Security State Continues
The Department of Homeland Security is helping to coordinate tech company censorship efforts according to recent reporting. The line between tech firms and the national security state is only getting blurrier.
Republicans Are Planning an All-Out Assault on the Working Class If They Win Next Week
Draconian spending cuts, attacks on labor organizing, stoking war with China, and speeding up climate disaster — these are just some of the things Republicans are planning if they win big on Tuesday.
Brazil’s Election Shows the Dangers of an Increasingly Far-Right Police
Lula’s election victory was nearly derailed by a Bolsonaro-supporting police effort to suppress the vote. It was only the most recent episode in which politicized police forces have intervened to thwart democracy — and the US is far from immune to the problem.
Today’s Hawkish Discourse Makes the Cuban Missile Crisis’s Nuclear Brinkmanship Seem Sane
In the 1962 US-Soviet nuclear showdown over Cuba, there was no shortage of voices calling for escalation or decrying “appeasement.” But there was always broad support for the kind of talks that ended up saving the world — something frighteningly absent today.
John Fetterman’s Post-Stroke Struggles Are Brave. They’re Also Irrelevant.
John Fetterman’s post-stroke impairment is temporary, it doesn’t affect his cognitive capacity, and plenty of sitting senators have suffered from much worse. So why is his condition getting more attention than his opponent’s sleazy history?
With Progressive Congress Members Pulling Their Ukraine Letter, Diplomacy Is Now a Four-Letter Word
War fever in Washington has reached such a pitch that even mild calls for cease-fire talks, as House progressives articulated in a now-retracted letter, are now beyond the pale. That’s dangerous at any time, let alone when nuclear tensions are high.
The January 6 Riot Was a Spectacular Failure of US Law Enforcement
The monumental security failure that led to the breach of the Capitol building on Jan. 6 has always been something of a mystery — and it still is. But one thing is clear: there is a disturbing level of support for right-wing extremism within US law enforcement.
Biden Has Fired the First Shot in a New Kind of Anti-China Cold War
The Biden administration just ratcheted up “strategic competition” with China with a round of export controls aimed at hobbling China’s semiconductor industry. But the move could end up blowing back on the US and its allies.
We’re Closer to a Nuclear Incident in Ukraine Than You Think
There’s a disconnect between Western leaders’ increasingly hawkish public discourse and the quiet consensus among their military experts that any armed encounter with Russia would likely end in a nuclear catastrophe.
Democrats Went All In on the January 6 Hearings. Voters Don’t Seem to Care.
Recent polls suggest that the Democrats’ sidelining of economic issues to go all in on the Capitol riot hasn’t borne fruit. While voters are most concerned about inflation, they think the party’s main priority is January 6, which barely registers.
The Worsening US-Saudi Split Could End the Brutal War in Yemen
A series of Saudi snubs against Joe Biden — including its latest move to cut world oil production — could finally accomplish what has been stubbornly hard up to now: ending the US backing of the Saudis’ brutal war against Yemen.
The World Survived the Cold War Because It Feared Nuclear War
Many thought that, with the end of the Cold War, the world had seen the last of big-power nuclear brinksmanship. But the Ukraine crisis has revealed that leaders have forgotten the lessons of that era.
The War in Ukraine Could Lead to Nuclear War
With his original war aims in shambles, a desperate Vladimir Putin is openly threatening nuclear warfare in Ukraine. The rhetoric of nuclear retaliation and escalation is a risk to the entire world, and, yes, you should be alarmed.
Left-Wing Journalist Katie Halper Has Been Fired for Calling Israel an Apartheid State
The Hill has fired Katie Halper from its morning show, Rising, for describing Israel’s policies as tantamount to apartheid. It’s a blatant act of censorship to silence a pro-Palestinian journalist.
The Federal Reserve Is Now the Biggest Threat to the Economy
The Fed has dropped all pretense of aiming for a “soft landing” as it ratchets up interest rates to fight inflation. It now openly admits it’s trying to create a recession in which millions of people will lose their jobs.
The Department of Homeland Security May Have Conspired With Ron DeSantis to Kidnap Migrants
Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s kidnapping of dozens of migrants as a political stunt is disturbing. More troubling is the help he seems to have gotten from the Department of Homeland Security, a pro-MAGA federal agency that’s been quietly amassing vast powers.
The COVID Pandemic Isn’t Over, But Biden’s New Deal–Size Ambitions Seem to Be
The pandemic, which continues to kill hundreds of Americans a day, is an argument for transforming US health care. But now Joe Biden is claiming the pandemic is over — signaling not just that he’s in denial but that he’s dropped any New Deal–size aspirations.
The US’s Taiwan Policy Could Provoke Another Dumb and Dangerous War
The Taiwan Policy Act has advanced through a Senate committee by a bipartisan vote. It’s the latest instance of the US chipping away at the “One China” policy. The result could be the very war the bill is meant to deter.