43 Article(s) by: Matt Karp
Matt Karp is an associate professor of history at Princeton University and a Jacobin contributing editor.
Can Class Politics Win Again?
Krystal Ball, Vivek Chibber, and Matt Karp discuss how class politics stalled after the Bernie Sanders campaigns — and why a new political opening is finally emerging.
It’s Happening Again
And until Democrats can find a way to win back some large chunk of working-class voters, Donald Trump’s successors will be favored in the next presidential election too.
Has the Online Left Given Up?
How many of the fundamental 2010s problems — the ones that launched Occupy Wall Street and fueled Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns in the first place — have been addressed by today’s Democrats? None.
Scarsdale Is What We Thought It Was
Jamaal Bowman’s defeat is another reminder that left-wing politics cannot live or die in the rich suburbs.
Dealignment Is Real. We Can Help Reverse It.
Matt Karp on how a political movement beating the drum for working-class populism can restore fraying ties between blue-collar workers and the Left.
We Can’t Ignore Class Dealignment
Matt Karp on class dealignment and why the Left’s weakening connection to blue-collar workers isn’t a problem we can wish away.
Democrats May Have Won More Suburban Votes in the Midterms. That Doesn’t Bode Well.
If Democrats survived this week’s midterms because they increased their share of wealthier voters, it’s a bad omen for building a working-class coalition around left-wing politics. Something needs to change.
Nina Turner Showed That a Left Candidate Can Win Black Workers
Nina Turner’s primary loss this week stings, but a close look at the numbers makes clear her loss wasn’t the result of a bold left-wing candidate being unable to win over black workers. On the contrary: in black working-class districts, Turner performed well.
We Need Class Politics to End Our Second Gilded Age
We talk with historian Matt Karp about how ending our great age of inequality will take a renewed working-class politics.
No, Joe Biden Won’t Give Us Social Democracy
There were many good things in the stimulus package. But claims that Biden’s Democratic Party has embraced structural change are overblown: an injection of much-needed cash isn’t the same thing as empowering workers or creating a constituency for change.
The Politics of a Second Gilded Age
The mass inequality of America’s first Gilded Age thrived on identity-based partisanship, helping extinguish the fires of class rage. In 2021, we’re headed down the same path.
How Abraham Lincoln Fought the Supreme Court
It is not enough to question the decisions, the justices, or even the structure of the current court — we need to challenge, as Abraham Lincoln did, the foundation of its power to determine the law.
How Abraham Lincoln Fought the Supreme Court
It is not enough to question the decisions, the justices, or even the structure of the current court — we need to challenge, as Abraham Lincoln did, the foundation of its power to determine the law.
Bernie Sanders’s Five-Year War
How he lost and where we go from here.
How the Antislavery Movement Ignited a Political Revolution
The antislavery movement of the mid-nineteenth century fused moral appeals against the sin of slavery with demands that spoke to the material interests of ordinary Northerners. Matt Karp, author of “The Mass Politics of Antislavery,” explains how that movement led to emancipation — and what lessons it offers to those trying to forge a political revolution today.
Bernie Sanders Can Still Win the Nomination and the Presidency
There is no use in sugarcoating the scale of last night’s defeat. But there is still a pathway to victory for Bernie Sanders.
Decent, Responsible Moderates for Bernie Sanders
The United States is the only developed country in the world that does not guarantee all its citizens health insurance, family leave, childcare, and a college education. The Democratic Party elites opposing Bernie Sanders and these measures aren’t “moderates” — they’re conservatives.
Slavery Was Defeated Through Mass Politics
The overthrow of slavery in the United States wasn't a byproduct of capitalist development nor the triumph of an enlightened activist vanguard. It was a battle waged and won in the field of democratic mass politics — a battle that holds enormous lessons for radicals today.
Elizabeth Warren’s Electoral Track Record Is Incredibly Worrying
A new look at the 2018 midterms shows that while Bernie Sanders has already wonback “Obama-Trump” voters, Elizabeth Warren was decimated in exactly the kinds ofplaces Democrats need to win in 2020.