Bernie Sanders Held the Line in Last Night’s South Carolina Debate
Bernie Sanders’s command of the agenda was on display again last night in South Carolina, as his challengers exhausted themselves trying to make their stale centrism seem compelling.
20417 Article(s) by: William G. Martin
William G. Martin teaches at SUNY-Binghamton and is co-author of After Prisons? Freedom, Decarceration, and Justice Disinvestment (2016) and a founding member of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier; he covers local justice matters at www.justtalk.blog
The Dumbest Version of Free Speech Activism
A new “Free Speech Union” established by right-wing trolls in Britain is just the latest self-promotion gambit by those who insist on their inalienable right to spew hate while remaining exempt from criticism.
Despite Their Union Leaders’ Arguments Against Medicare for All, Nevada’s Culinary Workers Chose Bernie
Leaders of Nevada’s Culinary Union Local 226 said Bernie Sanders would take away the union’s healthcare plan. The union’s members caucused for him anyway.
“We’re All Working Here, and Bernie Supports All of Us”
The resounding victory for Bernie Sanders at both the caucuses on the Las Vegas strip and the entire state of Nevada should put the “Bernie Bro” myth to bed once and for all. At the Strip caucuses, the vast majority of voters were people of color, many of whom were immigrants — and they voted decisively for Sanders.
Bernie Sanders’s Universal Childcare Plan Would Be Life Changing for Millions of Parents
Bernie Sanders’s new plan for universal childcare would not only offer a life-changing service for millions of parents. It would mark a historic victory in the struggle against racial and class segregation.
Bernie Sanders Was Right About Cuba
Bernie Sanders was right to applaud Cuba’s literacy programs even as he criticized the country’s undemocratic political system. He has nothing to apologize for.
Chris Matthews Is Just Another Crybully
I hope MSNBC keeps Chris Matthews on the air for the rest of the campaign. While he might convince some with his paranoia, he’s far more likely to expose himself for the crybully he really is. And what he’s really protecting.
Painting All Workers as “Social Conservatives” Is Middle-Class Elitism
Since Labour’s election defeat, pundits have accused the party of being out of step with working people’s social conservatism. But the “Blue Labour” obsession with Christian morality and national pride offers a caricature of the working class — and ignores the ability of socialist politics to unite people across cultural divides.
Australian Labor Is Becoming the Party for Coal
The fires are barely out, and a new right-wing faction in the Labor Party is organizing to protect the coal industry. It didn’t take long for party leader Anthony Albanese to cave.
Our American Zion
The racism and red-baiting of Bari Weiss’s latest book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism, isn’t an accident. It reflects her deep conflation of her own Judaism with American exceptionalism and the US global empire.
Free Public Childcare and Pre-K Is Popular and Affordable
Good news: the vast majority of Americans support a policy to have the government provide free public childcare for all children too young to attend school. And now Bernie Sanders is on board with the idea.
A Jewish Communist’s Revolution Against Fascism
Eugenio Curiel was a leader of the Italian Resistance against Nazism, before he was murdered by fascists on February 24, 1945. He insisted that the Resistance wasn’t just about deposing Benito Mussolini — it was about putting the masses at the center of a new democracy.
Michael Bloomberg Should Have Never Been Allowed to Run This Campaign
Michael Bloomberg is spending orders of magnitude more on his presidential campaign than any other candidate in US history. The Left must push for campaign finance reforms that can stop billionaires like him from buying their way onto the political stage.
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.
The Populist Pundits
Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti’s The Populist’s Guide to 2020 offers a powerful rebuke to liberal elitism and ruling class neglect. But only one of its authors has the solutions it will take to remake our unequal society.
Joe Biden Helped Pull the Democrats to the Right
Ronald Reagan successfully dismantled the New Deal order and pulled liberals rightward. Reagan transformed the Democratic Party — and he was aided by Democrats like Joe Biden.
The Robots Are Not Coming for All of Our Jobs
There’s lots of breathless talk these days about robots replacing all of our jobs. But if you look at the data, there’s little indication that’s actually going to happen.
From the United States to a Socialist Germany That Never Was
The Westemigranten were communists who fled Nazism for the United States, only to resettle in East Germany after 1945. Their biographies are a monument to the hopes of the twentieth-century communist movement — and how they were disappointed by the reality of the postwar Eastern Bloc.
After the Nevada Blowout, It’s Bernie’s Party Now
Bernie Sanders’s decisive victory in Nevada today shows that he has a working-class base committed to fundamentally transforming our radically unequal political and economic system. He’s on his way to not just the nomination, but the White House.
The Making of Joe Biden’s Conservative Democratic Politics
Joe Biden’s early years in politics established a pattern he would follow for the rest of his career: champion progressive values at select times to select audiences while on the whole running away from any association with such values.