Must read: The Left ascendant

"With his primary election victory last week, Illinois Congressman Dan Lipinski -- a Blue Dog and cultural conservative -- won the first major 2018 battle between the Democratic Party's establishment and progressive wings. But don't be confused about what it means. The war is already over, and the establishment lost.

"Even though only two states have actually voted so far this primary election season -- Texas, a red-state redoubt, and Illinois, a blue-state stronghold -- the battle for supremacy this primary season is all but complete. In state after state, the left is proving to be the animating force in Democratic primaries, producing a surge of candidates who are forcefully driving the party toward a more liberal orientation on nearly every issue.

"These candidates are running on an agenda that moves the party beyond its recent comfort zone and toward single-payer health care, stricter gun control, a $15 minimum wage, more expansive LGBT rights and greater protections for immigrants. In the surest sign of the reoriented issue landscape, they're joined by some of the most prominent prospects in the 2020 Democratic presidential field -- Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris among them -- who are embracing the same agenda."

The rest of the story:
Forget about Conor Lamb and Dan Lipinski. The progressive wing has already beaten the establishment in 2018: How the Bernie Wing Won the Democratic Primaries by Charlie Mahtesuian (Politico).

The duopoly is a flop

The Republican Party is a reactionary enterprise, with a few die-hard old-school conservatives -- a minority within a minority -- waiting around to die. The Democratic Party is a center-right operation, with its own minority -- progressives, powerless and frustrated -- with no place else to go. The Right and Center have their bases covered. We need a party of the Left, and we need it bad.

Must Read

"For example, the idea that wealth is privately produced and then appropriated by a quasi-illegitimate state, through taxation, is easy to succumb to if one has not been exposed first to Marx’s poignant argument that precisely the opposite applies: wealth is collectively produced and then privately appropriated through social relations of production and property rights that rely, for their reproduction, almost exclusively on false consciousness."

Before he entered politics, Yanis Varoufakis, the iconoclastic Greek finance minister at the centre of the latest eurozone standoff, wrote this searing account of European capitalism and how the left can learn from Marx’s mistakes: How I became an erratic Marxist by Yanis Varoufakis (Guardian).

Sen. Sanders and the Democrats

Centrist Democrats would like nothing better than to have independent socialist U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries.

But the effect of drafting the Vermont senator into the Democratic competition would be to neutralize him.

If he runs, Sen. Sanders will be forced to pledge allegiance to the party's eventual nominee and we will enter the fall of 2016 with the strongest voice on the left either silenced or looking like a hypocrite by shilling for Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo or some other servant of the corporate elite.

The way to maximize Sander's influence is to give all-out support for a run as an independent so that in the fall of 2016 in the debates and in the media he can continue to educate the public on alternatives to the status quo and to reveal that the emperor's surrogates have no clothes.

Bernie Sanders will never be the Democratic nominee.

But he can play an important and honorable role in building support for progressive policies in state and local elections, in congressional contests, and for a serious try for the White House from the left in the future by someone else. All a Democratic primary challenge by Sen. Sanders will achieve this round is to help the presidential Democrats maintain the illusion that they are an instrument of change.

2012: Lets have a real debate in the California U.S. Senate race

The June 6, 2012 primary offers the voters of California a unique opportunity to stand against business as usual in Washington: with 24 candidates on the ballot for United States Senate, six of them Democrats, it's possible, at least in theory, that a unity candidate could win second place and the chance to debate centrist Diane Feinstein face-to-face in the run-off in November. Marsha Feinland of the Peace & Freedom Party would fill this role perfectly: she is articulate, personable, dedicated, and right (that is to say, Left) on the issues. It would be illuminating if, before she heads back to Washington to act in our name, our senior senator was required to explain her positions on such matters as international trade, military adventurism, immigration, homeland security and the bankster crime wave (she's for aggressively prosecuting Julian Assange for espionage, for example, but much less enthusiastic about putting financial crooks in jail), to say nothing of addressing unresolved allegations of corruption stemming from her days on a military appropriations subcommittee.With Democrats and Republicans divvying up the primary ballots, it might not take very high numbers to grab second place; it would certainly make for a livelier debate in the general election to have a representative of the 99% sharing the stage with Sen. Feinstein rather than another one-percenter like herself from the GOP.

Project VoteSmart's summary of Dianne Feinstein's key votes.

R.I.P.: Irwin Silber

There was a time, not so long ago really, when the Left actually made a difference, not only politically, by fielding an army of citizens passionately determined to make the lives of ordinary people better and by providing the intellectual foundation and institutional muscle behind progressive change, but also by helping to shape popular culture. The passing of folk music champion Irwin Silber this week gives us a chance to look back on an era when a group of avowed lefties like The Weavers, for example, could be stars.

Here's an interview with Silber from 2002.

Lester "Red" Rodney (1911-2009)

"It didn't make SportsCenter, but one of history's most influential sportswriters died this week at the age of 98. His name was Lester Rodney. Lester was one of the first people to write about a young Negro League prospect named Jackie Robinson. He was the last living journalist to cover the famous 1938 fight at Yankee Stadium between 'The Brown Bomber' Joe Louis and Hitler favorite, Max Schmeling. He crusaded against baseball's color line when almost every other journalist pretended it didn't exist. He edited a political sports page that engaged his audience in how to fight for a more just sports world. His writing, which could describe the beauty of a well-turned double play in one sentence and blast injustice in the next, is still bracing and ahead of its time. He should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Instead he was largely erased from the books."

The rest of the story: More Than a Sportswriter: Lester "Red" Rodney: 1911-2009 by Dave Zirin (Huffington Post 2009-12-23)

Reading list: Interview with Lester Rodney (Political Affairs magazine)
Press Box Red: The Story of Lester Rodney, the Communist Who Helped Break the Color Line in American Sports by Irwin Silber (Temple University Press 2003)