Meagan Day is a senior editor at Jacobin.
If Joe Biden managed to pull off a victory despite his lackluster campaign, it’s in part because the electorate felt the urgent need for a president who would focus on the coronavirus crisis instead of railing against a series of cultural bogeymen. No wonder: most people care more about their material conditions than the partisan culture wars.
Nothing is certain yet, but we may be gearing up for what amounts to a Biden-McConnell coalition government. The Left will be up against a split government composed of two parties bent on pushing austerity and war.
Labor organizer and strategist Jane McAlevey saw the disaster of the 2000 Florida recount close up. This time, she says, the labor movement will be crucial in the fight to “force the Democratic Party to do something that we don’t think that they’re going to do on their own.”
There’s a real danger that the Right will steal the election by halting the vote count. But US elections can be stolen in more prosaic ways — like the Electoral College. If there’s a discrepancy between the Electoral College and the popular vote, the Left should make it clear that the result is illegitimate.
The Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma falls into the common trap of conflating the far left and far right, grouping both under the umbrella of “extremism.” In reality, the politics advanced by the socialist left represents a countervailing force to right-wing conspiracism and reaction.
Americans want a universal public health plan, but the idea has no champion in this presidential election. Instead, we have Donald Trump’s scorched-earth campaign against the ACA, and Joe Biden moving further and further away from even a universally available public option.
The politically complacent ’90s produced a surprisingly large number of mainstream American rom-coms about fighting the Man. You’ve Got Mail gave us a new fantasy, fully neoliberalized: What if the Man is Mr Right?
Workers at Meow Wolf, the multimedia immersive arts and entertainment company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, are voting today on whether to unionize. The Meow Wolf Workers Collective says they’re trying to keep pace with the growth of what was once a loose artist collective and is now a multimillion-dollar business.
One in four rural households have been unable to get the medical care they need during the coronavirus pandemic. Rural Americans have been struggling to obtain and afford care like never before, and Donald Trump could end up paying the price in November.
Political scientist Katherine J. Cramer has studied the changing political attitudes of rural Wisconsinites — a group that helped put Donald Trump in the White House. “Rural resentment” may not get much attention, but it’s a real and powerful force in US politics.
There was no gender pay gap among Wisconsin teachers until Scott Walker’s brutal assault on the state’s public sector unions almost a decade ago. Now women teachers are earning less than men. It’s yet more proof: unions empower women.
Newly leaked documents show that ExxonMobil is planning a major increase in oil production, despite warnings from scientists about calamitous climate effects and the company’s own promises. We can’t keep relying on oil companies to regulate themselves — they need to be brought under democratic control.
The president made a big show of stepping in to help struggling Americans when Congress failed them. But his executive orders have failed, too. Trump claims to back the working class, but he has abandoned them at every turn.
We’re working longer hours than in decades. But we don’t have to. We deserve a more democratic economy in which we have the free time to develop our talents, hang out with friends and family, and do whatever else we please.
In last night’s debate, Donald Trump failed to condemn white supremacists — even telling the Proud Boys to “stand by” — then refused to promise he would encourage his supporters to refrain from political violence in November. His rhetoric is growing more and more dangerous.
In both his campaigns, Trump has run ads aimed at killing black voters’ enthusiasm for the Democratic nominee and lowering their turnout. The strategy is craven, but the ads exploit real disillusionment. Without a sharp break from their history of failing black constituents, Democrats will remain vulnerable to such opportunistic gambits in the future.
A deep commitment to democracy is at the heart of the socialist project. Anticommunists have historically claimed they oppose states like the Soviet Union out of a concern for democracy. But those anticommunists’ real project has nothing to do with democracy — and everything to do with smashing the Left.
On Jacobin’s tenth anniversary, staff writer Meagan Day reflects on ten Jacobin articles that heavily influenced the way she thinks about politics.
For decades, austerity-minded politicians have bashed universal programs by concern trolling about the danger that a handful of rich people would get them. The urgency of the pandemic is helping people realize just how inconsequential this hang-up is compared to the advantages of universal benefits.
San Antonio teacher Luke Amphlett says his administration punished him for organizing against an unsafe school reopening plan. But a campaign led by teachers, students, and community supporters drew on bonds of solidarity developed through years of organizing — and quickly got Amphlett back to work.