Uphill Both Ways
As much as I’m a proponent of taking over the Democratic Party apparatus to drag the party to the left, this article illustrates how difficult it is to pull this off. I’m not discouraged, but it’s important to learn what we can from other failed efforts, particularly in a place like Germany that has more robust social democratic roots than the U.S.
From the article:
“This vicious cycle has already seen the SPD’s electoral average almost halved since the turn of the millennium. But unlike during Angela Merkel’s tenure, Merz’s CDU is gravitating not toward the political center, but toward the Right. If recent history is any guide, this dynamic will likely further fragment the SPD’s already unraveling base and make it harder to form stable governments, whether with the CDU or any other constellation of parties.”
Jacobin: Saskia Esken Failed to Change Germany’s Social Democrats
While We’re on the Subject of Uphill Climbs
Nathan Robinson brought this to my attention. The Nation Magazine endorsed Zohran Mamdani for NYC mayor because he has demonstrated an ability to build momentum that appeals specifically to urban sentiments. Only three weeks left to see if he can pull off a massive upset in the city so nice they named it twice. (The double endorsement is due to ranked choice voting.)
From the article:
“Building on his bases—his Astoria district, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the city’s South Asian community—Mamdani has summoned a generation of otherwise disillusioned young activists back to battle. But anyone tempted to dismiss him as a latter-day ‘Bernie bro,’ or his supporters as simply ‘cool kids,’ should take a look at the map of his donors, which shows that his appeal already reaches from Riverdale and the South Bronx to Bay Ridge and Sunset Park—and even into New Dorp and Great Kills on Staten Island. It may not yet add up to a movement, but it already has the ingredients of a new urban politics.”
The Nation: The Nation Endorses Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander in the New York City Democratic Primary
Now what?
“Legalistic noncompliance.” I’ve been searching for the term to describe the giant “fuck you” Trump is giving the justice system. This was always one of the great questions of the Trump era…What if he just says no? Outside of military intervention, which is how other countries typically handle this sort of thing, it’s growing increasingly unclear whether or not our institutions are indeed strong enough to withstand a dictatorial presidency. Since Litman is also our book recommendation this week, it seems appropriate to pull her section of this article.
From the article:
“Leah Litman and Daniel Deacon, both University of Michigan Law professors, have described how the administration has hidden its refusal to obey judges behind a veil of legal argumentation. ‘The administration uses the language of the law as cover to claim that it is complying with court orders when in fact it is not,’ they write in the Atlantic, summarizing a forthcoming paper on the phenomenon. ‘We call this legalistic noncompliance, a term intended to capture how the administration has deployed an array of specious legal arguments to conceal what is actually pervasive defiance of judicial oversight. It is a powerful strategy, as it obscures the substance of what the administration is doing with the soothing language of the law.’”
Mother Jones: The Trump Administration Is Already Ignoring the Supreme Court
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