Yelling at buildings is not enough

The resistance is gratifying and fun and maybe consciousness-raising, but real change will come from an aggressive and eventually victorious opposition.

In the fight over the omnibus spending bill, the Democrats didn't do too badly: no funding for the border wall; no penalty for sanctuary cities; no rollback of environmental programs; no gutting of consumer financial protections; plus funding for ACA subsidies, Planned Parenthood, miners’ health benefits, and Medicaid payments for Puerto Rico.

But both the reactionaries now in power and the neoliberals they replaced must be overcome in 2018 and 2020 if the republic is to be set back on the road toward economic and social justice from which it was deflected 40 years or so ago. It will do us no good to go back to the politics and policies that made the reactionaries' victory possible -- inevitable -- in the first place.

Comprehensive Government Funding Bill Released (U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations).