Left Jabs

  I n the run-up to last Tuesday’s election, it was hard to avoid the overpaid pundits repeating the oldest and laziest clichés in the pundit handbook: “Democrats need to move to the center.” “Democrats are out of touch with voters.” “Democrats can’t just talk about Trump and expect to win.” As it turns out, they don’t, they’re not, and they most definitely can, respectively. But while the election blew those clichés to bits, the “Democrats-in-disarray” story remains a staple of modern journalism. In the week since the election the same pundits, not content to have been wrong before it, have moved on to stories with headlines like “ Mamdani’s Victory Is Less Significant Than You Think” and “Election Wins Tuesday Won’t Ease a Divided Democratic Party’s Troubles.” One of the more obvious purveyors of this slop has been, no surprise, the New York Times , which is trying desperately to gin up a Democrat-versus-Democrat narrative to carry them into the next ele...

  I was sitting on my porch, in what has traditionally been a working-class suburb of Detroit. I was handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, some of whom were dressed as the Grim Reaper. I couldn’t help thinking how appropriate. How predictive of what could happen to many of their parents when the sun went down on Halloween, then dawned the next morning on the real horrors that Republicans have just inflicted on the American population. We’ve been waiting for that population to wake up and smell the fascism for forty years at least. But as of this week, the stink is unmistakable, and the wake-up call is grim indeed. As of this week, two simultaneous catastrophes — both man made and totally unnecessary — descend upon us, and the destruction being wrought by Republicans can no longer be shrugged off, even by Republicans. As of this week — barring some deal that is not now in sight — SNAP payments will be suspended, dooming many millions of people to serious ...