American leftists are constantly wrestling with the question of how to relate to the Democratic Party. The history of the UK Labour Party’s formation through a break with the Liberals a century ago is full of lessons for socialists today.
The politics of taxes, spending, and deficits are more congenial to the Left than they have been in years — but there are still some clouds on the horizon. Here's a guide to where things stand on the Biden budget proposal.
We’ve learned recently that Senator Joe Manchin is wielding enormous power in US politics right now. But he can be defeated — if Democrats vote down the must-pass COVID-19 bill until it includes an increase in the minimum wage.
The story of Senator Kyrsten Sinema — a former Green Party–aligned activist who happily rejected a minimum wage hike recently and is now one the most right-wing Democrats in the Senate — is about how a desperate thirst for power can debase even the most idealistic progressive.
After all the disruptions of the past year, the threat of ecological breakdown still hangs over us. The US left is in a stronger position than it’s known for decades: now it needs to strengthen its internationalism and mobilize for effective climate action.
And those are exactly the people we need to save the planet.
Noam Chomsky talks to Jacobin about why the US withdrawal from Afghanistan won’t change US imperialism, the many war crimes of George W. Bush, and why he still believes in average people’s ability to push back against the war machine.
Kyrsten Sinema has received some of the most Big Pharma money of any Democrat in the Senate — and a pharma-backed dark money group started running ads for her just before she threatened to take down Democrats’ drug pricing plan.
Determined to undermine the US pandemic response, the Right is opposing vaccine mandates on the grounds that they’re an authoritarian power grab. Don’t be fooled: up until a few months ago, they backed every civil liberties–shredding measure under the sun.
By demanding new tax breaks for the rich, Democrats are helping Republicans portray them as hypocritical elitists just before a midterm election.
Democrats are going beyond refusing to give Americans an affirmative reason to vote for them: in sabotaging their own purported agenda around Biden’s Build Back Better bill, they seem to be trying to lose to the authoritarians in the GOP they claim to oppose.
Rightward Republican Party radicalization is well-positioned for continuing political success, even as it promises to bring political and economic instability for the country and the world with it.
Today is the 19th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. It was a catastrophic, illegal, murderous war — and Joe Biden was one its most important cheerleaders.
By making big promises and then steadfastly refusing to deliver on them, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party’s power brokers are helping Republicans convince the country that government and politics can’t make life better for average people.
In the wake of revelations that Clarence Thomas and his wife, Virginia, are deeply enmeshed in far-right networks, we shouldn’t shore up the Supreme Court’s legitimacy. We should attack the Court's undemocratic foundations.
Mass shootings are only the latest horrific chapter in the US’s long history of gun violence, which stretches from prerevolutionary slave patrols to our ongoing trade in military technology. Confronting this bloodlust will require more than just gun control.
Uber is in trouble after a leak demonstrating the extent of its pay-to-play activities. But in America, you don’t need a trove of leaked texts or emails to prove the corrosive effects of lobbying. The proof is right out in the open, and Uber is hardly alone.
J. B. Pritzker is a billionaire Democrat who hasn’t even signed on to Medicare for All. But the Illinois governor has captured the imaginations of some progressives simply by doing what most Democrats won’t: running on popular ideas and following through.
In exchange for his support of the Inflation Reduction Act, Joe Manchin demanded major giveaways to the oil industry. He got them, making his big donors in fossil fuel companies quite happy.