Rick Perlstein, 
 
Many have been concerned that Texas Governor Greg Abbott might inundate the DNC with migrant buses. But, the people of Chicago may have already called Abbott’s bluff. 

 
https://americanprospect.bluelena.io/index.php?action=social&chash=f75526659f31040afeb61cb7133e4e6d.2860&s=f3196cb603d6d11dedcd326ed6daf0e3

Some of the Old Debates in the Left
Paul Buhle 
 
Social Democacy: Flickering Candle or Blazing Son. Raymond Barglow. Privately Published. Berkeley, 2024. No price given. 39pp
 
Luther Vs. Müntzer:  Nicht der Kopf Verlieren. By Johannes Saurer and Ulrike Albers. Evangelisch Miedenhaus: Stuttgart, 2017. No price given. 28pp 
 
Two definitely odd and fascinating books, fun to look at and fun to read (in the second case, definitely better if you can read German).
 
Ray Bargelow,  a fellow comrade (with yours truly, among 70,000 others) in Democratic Socialists of America, offers a text plus old photos and political art of various types, to offer a popular view of the question that Rosa Luxemburg titled in her famous pamphlet, Reform or Revolution?
 
Luxemburg (honored recently in her own full length comic, Red Rosa, edited by myself, written and drawn by Kate Evans) argued that a true radical movement had to free itself of existing institutions so the proletariat could make its own way. Eduard Bernstein insisted, on the contrary, that working through the existing order, step by step, offered the only real way forward.
 
By the time we get to p.5, the reprint of “The Strike,” a beautiful full-page, later nineteenth century painting by a German immigrant working the US, takes us far from Germany but probably someplace in Germanic Wisconsin. Never mind the details, we get the idea of class struggle.
 
The following pages describe the rise of the German Social Democratic Party near the end of the nineteenth century and explains how the institutions around the SDP offered working people a world of politics and culture. (Germans in the US, but also a dozen the European immigrant groups, did the same, with results that lasted into the second generation). The “Erfurt Program of 1891” spelled out  the socialist plan or vision. We learn that British socialists were on a similar path, with the Independent Labour Party determinedly eclectic and influential on Bernstein himself, then living in the UK.
 
Bargelow then usefully (if very quickly: it’s a small book) passes on to ponder the Jewishness of Luxemburg, a  Polish Jew living in Germany, and her counterparts. He reminds us that his own grandfather came from Dresden and “served proudly in the Kaiser’s Army.” (p.16).
 
Serving, that is to say, in the Great War (as it was called, when not called “The War to End All Wars”), initially popular, with the press whipping up popular opinion, and then steadily less popular. German Socialists divided sharply on what to do. Luxemburg argued that the War grew out of a struggle for empire, that is to say, empire over the vast global South, its people and its resources. Bernstein favored colonization, Luxemburg bitterly opposed colonlization on economic and racial lines. The German Social Democrats including Bernstein voted “credits,” that is to say a war budget, to the government. Luxemburg opposed the war and was jailed.
 
The German government that emerged with defeat soon encompassed the SDP, while an uprising of Luxemburg’s party led to an urban commune (young Herbert Marcuse was one of the participants) that was soon crushed, herself murdered. Communists would later accuse German socialists of being, in an extended way, a party to her assassination (along with Karl Liebknecht, her famous political comrade). It was a charge difficult to refute.
 
We push onward past Naziism to something close to the present, and in Bargelow’s vision, Bernstein, still in the SDP, is locking arms with the ecological if militantly hawkish Green Party. Luxemburg’s ghost curses the compromises, the militarism and the continuing role of the ruling class.
 
The following several pages tell a similar, roughly parallel story of neighboring Austria, where Friedrich Adler led a similar social democratic party, most notably creating an urban cooperative network of neighorhoods and progressive schools. All this ended with the 1938 Anschluss. So did Austria itself, re-emerging at the war’s end.
 
Bargelow goes on to offer us a page on Walter Benjamin, a page on the hopes for the future, and a page on his own family’s story,  an Austrian tale with charming photos ending in Berkeley, California.
 
I like it and I hope others will find their way to this booklet. If something is missing, it must be Rosa Luxemburg’s dire warning. Capitalism’s conquest of the Global South would extend its deadly life, and threaten everything, all civilization, all life on earth Thus “Socialism or Barbarism,”  as she put it, which is to say more or less where we are now.
 
Luther Vs Müntzer was created for the five hundred year anniversary of the Refomation. I stumbled across it in a bookshop in Wartburg, across two streets from the “Luther Church” with a pig on the roof signalling the unwanted, hated Jews, whose organized dehumanization reminds us more than a little of the treatment of Palestinians just now.
 
Read more.

​

 
Paul Garver
The Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) helped organize the pro-Palestinian encampments on several university campuses.  DSA elected officials in several cities across the country continue to advocate pro-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) resolutions on Palestine.
The final push to pressure Biden to drop out of the Presidential race did not come from the Party’s Left, but from major Democratic donors, and from Centrist Democrats terrified that their own reelection campaigns in ‘purple’ districts were endangered with Biden at the head of the ticket.  Sanders and AOC, along with most of the Squad, have been focused on trying to persuade any Democratic candidate (now officially to be Kamala Harris) to campaign on a more forthrightly pro working-class and progressive platform, including cutting off unconditional military aid to Israel.
Not surprisingly, DSA elected officials at the national level have been targeted for defeat by pro-Israel lobbyists. Crippled by drastic redistricting to remove most of his African-American constituency, Jamaal Bowman lost his seat in a congressional district outside New York City to an opponent heavily funded by the American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC).  Bowman has also been the target of negative campaigning from ultra-left sectarians within national DSA, who regarded him as insufficiently pro-Palestinian, though New York City DSA did endorse and canvass for him. 
On August 6, another incumbent Squad DSA member, Cori Bush, a working class African-American nurse and Black Lives Matter activist, narrowly lost in a Democratic primary in St. Louis to an opponent heavily funded by more than $8 million by the United Democracy Project, associated with AIPAC.  Despite strong fundraising from the Justice Democrats, phone banking by the national Working Families Party, and the united canvassing and phone banking organized by local and national DSA, she could not overcome massive negative campaigning against her that never mentioned her strong support for Palestinian rights, the real reason for AIPAC recruiting and supporting her opponent.
​
However, DSA played an important role in helping to organize the campaign to persuade Kamala Harris to select Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her vice-presidential running mate.  Young activists from DSA launched a negative social media campaign of their own against the selection of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, primarily because of his denunciation of the pro-Palestinian campus encampments and positions favoring private charter schools.   Shapiro had been supported by much of the Democratic Party establishment and mass media, and had been considered the front-runner because it was thought that his candidacy would help the Democrats win the battleground state of Pennsylvania.  But Tim Walz already seems to be an excellent unifying choice for the Democratic Party.  He has been an effective governor, winning major gains for working class people in Minnesota despite a very slender legislative majority.  Walz also “speaks American,” in a way that should be accessible to alienated white male dudes, particularly in rural areas of the Midwest, who are not necessarily prone to vote for women of color.
The first reactions from the young DSA media activists to Harris’s choice of Walz as a running mate were quite positive. [(https://x.com/NoGenocideJosh/status/1820928441539088520?t=B3tpDPYWj8imL7O_88_5cA&s=03]. For those whose major issue is Israel/Palestine, they will of continue to demand a clear and effective break by the Biden/Harris administration from the genocidal and aggressive policies of Netanyahu.  This will be the major focus of the inside and outside protests at the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The 30 Uncommitted delegates have already decided to vote “Present,” all that is allowed by the DNC rules, but each of them separately chose to nominate a child, woman or man who were killed by the Israeli offensive in Gaza.  https://t.co/b7ckx3BcTS
DSA will support the large Palestinian diaspora communities in the USA in what are hoped to be large non-violent demonstrations in Chicago outside the Convention.
 
 

Contact the Harris campaign.   kamalaharris.com

​The Right to Vote
 
Yesterday marked the 59th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, the law that finally guaranteed the right to vote for millions of people who had wrongfully been denied their ability to participate in democracy.
And yet the law has been under attack since 2013, when the Supreme Court gutted its key provisions. Since 2020, there have been more than 1,000 voter suppression bills filed and promulgated throughout this country – mainly in the American South.
While Black people are the targets of much of this voter suppression, it’s important to remember that voter suppression impacts a broad array of people – from women and students to immigrants and poor white people. We all have something to lose when we lose the right to vote.
It is the right to vote, after all, that gives us the power to change this country. It is not a coincidence that our political leaders have for too long ignored the needs of the over 135 million Americans who are poor and low-income. They say that poor people don’t vote. But when we ask poor and low-wage voters why they don’t go to the polls at the same rate as other groups, they tell us that it’s because nobody talks to them. 
On the 59th anniversary of the VRA, we started our nationwide voter outreach effort that aims to educate and mobilize 15 million poor and low-wage infrequent voters. 
The goal is to encourage these voters to support candidates who are committed to a Third Reconstruction Agenda that aims to eliminate poverty as the fourth-leading cause of death in the United States. 
Poor and low-wage voters are the sleeping giant of this election – this powerful voting block can shift election outcomes in every so-called swing state. By waking this sleeping giant, we can ensure that those in power center the needs of poor and low-wage people in this country.
 
Also see. ​https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/aft-endorsement-of-kamala-harris-for-president

​ And the U.S. Left ?
Marc Cooper , from his substack. 
I HAVE to say something about Venezuela. Too much of the American Left along with a few groupuscles in Latin America are the only people in the world still believing that the Maduro Dictatorship in Venezuela is actually an anti-imperialist beacon of socialist solidarity and prosperity.
In fact, it is a hell hole from which a full quarter of the population — some 8 million— have fled. And having run into some of the 700,000 who are now in Chile, these are poor people who were plain hungry and tired of the Chavista-Maduro bullshit.
Maduro has created a new class of wealthy government lackeys, parasites, and favored loyalists who are swimming in money — and not exactly short on cocaine (google Maduro’s wife and family for that one). As Chavez dubbed his regime Bolivarian, the new rich are called the Boliburgueses.
Since the election a week ago Sunday, hundreds of thousands of protesters have come into the streets denouncing the obvious fraud perpetrated. Around 20 have been shot dead. Among the various election observers, many from progressive Latin American organizations, the Carter center, the international press, and the opposition itself, it appears that Maduro actually lost by a margin as big as 2 to 1 but simply declared victory.  The AP has concluded he really lost. Duh. So has everybody else. Well, almost everybody. There are still American progressives like acrobats in pain, contorting themselves to justify one of the most fixed elections in recent history.
Much of the American Left cannot articulate a strong critique of regimes like Venezuela or Cuba for that matter, and currently not even Russia, because there is a large percentage of American lefties who are wittingly or otherwise, are what we Old Leftists call “campists.”
They believe in their hearts that only the US has imperialist or military agency and that any country in the world, regardless of its regime, is to be supported if it is “anti-imperialist” which in the end translates as anti-American. So… for these campists, yeah, Iran and China and even Russia and certainly Venezuela, are seen ONLY as victims of US imperialism with absolutely NO regard for the living conditions of the respective populations. Nor is any independent agency ever assigned to these “anti-imperialist” states because whatever they do, whatever evil they perpetrate on their own people or others, is rotuinely justified by these campists as legitimate resistance to.. multiple choice: a)the cia b) the state department c) NATO, D) and generally, US Imperialism. 
And while leftists are properly quick to point out all the anti-democratic aspects of American elections they are usually dead silent on these sort of chronic human rights violations imposed by various dictatorships — so long as they call themselves socialist (they are not) or, simply engage in phony anti-Imperialist rhetoric. The case study for the latter is Nicaragua where the dictatorial Ortega family has buried both the Sandinista Revolution and basic democracy and in the name of Sandino has imposed a ruthless pro-capitalist dictatorship with socialist rhetoric. I guess that is the China model. Savage capitalist dictatorship with enormous inequality all in the name of Chinese socialism. I mean, how do these reptiles get through a party convention without cracking up in laughter (but dont ask Code Pink about Chinese democracy because China is a victim of US Imperialism — and also a pretty direct funder of Code Pink!
This chronic inability to liberate themselves from these Stalinist impulses, their ability to apologize for brutally anti-democratic dictatorships so long as they are a thorn in the American side. render this sort of American leftist politically inert at best — radioactive at worst.
---------         ----------------            -----------------
 
Many of us will remember Marc Cooper from his informed writings on Chile at the time of the coup, and during the dictatorship.

(https://thecoopscoop.substack.com/p/coop-scoop-do-progressives-really(https://thecoopscoop.substack.com/p/coop-scoop-do-progressives-really))
 
The AP Results.
https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-maduro-machado-biden-gonzalez-a625eb01979bc9cf5570d03242f198b1
 
The response of governments of Brazil, Argentina, Peru and more.

, opens new tab
CARACAS, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Brazil announced a diplomatic agreement on Monday that will allow it to represent the interests of Argentina and Peru in Caracas, after Venezuela severed ties with the two nations following its contested presidential vote.
Brazil's government, like Colombia and Mexico, has called for the release of full voting results following Venezuela's July 28 election. But Venezuela's electoral authorities have so far failed to do so while the country's electoral authority has proclaimed that President Nicolas Maduro won reelection to a third term.
Presidential Elections of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela — Joint Statement by Brazil, Colombia and MexicoThe governments of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico congratulate and express our solidarity with the Venezuelan people, who turned out in large numbers to vote on July 28 to determine their own future.
We are closely following the vote counting process and we call on the Venezuelan electoral authorities to move forward quickly and publicly to disclose the data broken down by polling station.
Disputes over the electoral process must be resolved through institutional means. The fundamental principle of popular sovereignty must be respected through the impartial verification of the results.
In this context, we call on political and social actors to exercise maximum caution and restraint in their demonstrations and public events, in order to avoid an escalation of violent episodes.
Maintaining social peace and protecting human lives must be the chief concerns at this time.
Let this be an opportunity to express, once again, our absolute respect for the sovereign will of the Venezuelan people. We reiterate our willingness to support efforts to engage in dialogue and seek agreements that benefit the Venezuelan people.
Republished and translated from the government of Brazil

 
Washington Post. Maduro Lost the Election
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/08/04/maduro-gonzalez-election-actas-analysis/
 
 

 
​
We have a new category on our Defeat MAGA/Fight for Democracy platform.
The category is Project 2025. 
 
There is an AFL-CIO analysis and an analysis by a group Democracy Forwardamong others. 
 
Democracy Forward guide to Project 2025. https://democracyforward.org/the-peoples-guide-to-project-2025/
 
Our project: Defeat MAGA / Fight for Democracy: 
Action Opportunities. 
 
To organize and advance our work, we have created a platform, a google docs site to learn from each other and share activist opportunities including Block and Build, battleground states and districts, left coalition efforts and more. The google site is for the recording of opportunities for political participation; phone banks, canvasing, donations, union contacts, links to important documents (such as Project 2025).  
 
Here is the link to the Google site.
 
Organizing North Star members
 
If you have items, events, projects that you recommend for posting go here. 
 
Recommend add items
 
Also, buttons have been added  to the site where you can recommend adding additional opportunities to engage and participate.
 
We hope you will participate. Please go to the site and see the opportunities to engage and participate.  If you know of campaigns to defeat fascism and elect a progressive majority, use the link above to share your information. 
 For example, there may be a critical swing district race you are working in. Please share the contact information and how to get involved. 
 
Our immediate tasks.
 At this time, key primary steps are to unite with others and build the campaigns to defeat the Trump/MAGA/ anti democratic forces.
 Defeating MAGA candidates up and down the ballot in November.
 
Supporting the re-election of members of the Squad. 

Powering Cori Bush to victory, 

 Beating back the current wave of misogynist and anti-immigrant demagogy and laying the basis for serious positive reform under a new administration.
 
The exit of  President Biden from the race has not changed our fundamental goals.
​https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/north-star-statement-on-the-biden-transition-july-23-2024
​What hasn’t changed is our primary task: the defeat of Donald Trump and the fascist threat he represents in 2024, embodied in the Project 2025 document.  Success in defeating this threat demands solidarity among all forces opposed to Trump’s election.  DSA should place itself squarely in the ranks of the gathering pro-democracy front and discard the ultra-left positions voiced in the NPC’s initial pronouncement on President Biden’s withdrawal from candidacy.
The North Star Caucus Steering Committee stands ready to unite with all DSA members who recognize this historic opportunity to unite with the pro-democracy forces.  We are committed to electing progressives and defeating reactionary measures at all levels of government on November 5th.

All are invited to participate. Thank you for your participation.  
The Steering Committee of the North Star Caucus. 
 
 
 
 
 

By Peter Dreier and Maurice Isserman
Los Angeles Times

A collection of fringe radical groups are calling for demonstrations in Chicago this August at the Democratic National Convention — a “March on the DNC” for Palestine. We study political movements, and we’ve participated in more than a few ourselves. We share the concerns of many Americans about Israel’s actions in Gaza, the need for an immediate cease-fire and the release of hostages and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel. But we’re not going to heed the call to protest in Chicago. We hope others will stay away as well.
Here’s why.
In a democracy, protest movements can play a vital role in reshaping the national debate on important issues. But they have to hone their message and choose when and how to make their case. There were major protests at all three Democratic conventions in the 1960s. Two of them eventually got the results they hoped for. One backfired.
In 1960, when John F. Kennedy was nominated in Los Angeles, civil rights protesters, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., carefully orchestrated a 5,000-person march and daily pickets at the convention demanding a strong pro-civil rights plank in the Democratic platform. It was a first at a convention, and Kennedy was cautiously supportive, though it took several more years of protests before he embraced the Civil Rights Act, which became law in 1964, the year after his assassination.
When Lyndon B. Johnson was nominated that same year in Atlantic City, civil rights activists, now driving for voting rights, supported the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegates in place of the all-white regular Mississippi delegation. They didn’t unseat the regulars, but their impact on delegates and public opinion was undeniable. A year later, with Johnson’s support, Congress passed the watershed Voting Rights Act.
The convention protests of 1960 and 1964 followed a sophisticated and pragmatic strategy of working within and without the party apparatus. The leaders crafted demands that appealed to the best in the American democratic tradition — equal rights for all. They delivered historic gains for African Americans.
In 1968, when Hubert Humphrey was nominated for president in Chicago, it was a different story. Protesters again showed up in the streets outside the convention, this time to demonstrate their opposition to the Vietnam War. That opposition was justified. Targeting that convention that year, and their wild rumpus approach, was not.
Due mostly to the brutal tactics employed by the Chicago police, the result was bloody chaos in the streets. Some protest organizers believed dramatic televised images of confrontations would strengthen their cause, winning the sympathy of the viewing public.
They were wrong. Polling revealed that most television viewers — 56%, according to a Gallup poll -- blamed the protesters, not the “police riot,” for the disturbances. Republican Richard Nixon, campaigning to restore “law and order,” defeated Humphrey that November. He prolonged the Vietnam War well into the next decade.
Antiwar protests ultimately helped shift public opinion away from the U.S. military intervention in Vietnam. They produced a new wave of liberal and progressive politicians. But the protests at the 1968 Democratic convention set back the cause.
Today, those who want to protest the war in Gaza need to think about how to further that goal. Will the cause of peace and Palestinian rights be helped or hindered by demonstrations at this year’s Democratic convention in Chicago?
More than 70 mostly small-membership organizations are endorsing the upcoming protests. The key organizers, the ones who will determine the message this protest conveys by its slogans and actions, are members of the ultra-leftist Party for Socialism and Liberation, and its front organization, the ANSWER coalition. This is the same group behind the demonstration that burned an American flag and defaced monuments in a “day of rage” as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress last week.
Conspicuously absent from the list of endorsing organizations are the politically savvy major labor unions, civil rights and environmental organizations, women’s rights and LGBTQ+ groups, and community organizing networks, such as PICO California, MoveOn or Indivisible.
Could it be that they recognize that in this election season, the primary goal has to be to defeat Donald Trump, and to help Democratic candidates win in the House and Senate? Perhaps they don’t want to lose voters to a perception that Democrats are the party of chaos in the streets or rabid anti-Americanism.
Many of the groups behind the Chicago protests are not simply pro-Palestine or anti-Israel. As the “March on the DNC” website puts it, they dismiss the Democratic Party as “a tool of billionaires and corporations.”
Even one of the larger groups endorsing the demonstration, Democratic Socialists of America, has adopted a politically self-defeating rationale for doing so. DSA’s Chicago chapter recently posted that making the “DNC a complete political disaster” — through disruption, confrontation and extremist rhetoric — is as important as ending all U.S. support for Israel.
In fact, many of these groups don’t believe in electoral politics as a vehicle for change. They are enamored of revolutionary fantasies. They seem to believe that Trump’s reelection can hasten the prospects for a fairy-tale end to capitalism.
In the meantime, they are indifferent to the threat that a second Trump administration poses to democracy, workers, the environment, immigrants, minorities, LGBTQ+ people, the poor, respect for science, voting rights, common decency and, yes, even to Palestinian rights. (Trump is a strong ally of Israel’s most conservative forces.)
If this year’s Chicago protests produce scenes of chaos in the streets and Democratic-leaning voters decide to abstain or choose a doomed third-party candidate — who will benefit? In a remarkable bit of political jujitsu, the Republicans, instigators of the Jan. 6 insurrection, are campaigning as the party of law and order.
Protests may achieve changes we want to see. But this time, it’s too risky. Instead of demonstrating against Democrats, we’re going to campaign and vote for them. You should too.
Peter Dreier teaches politics at Occidental College and is the author of several books including “We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style.” Maurice Isserman teaches history at Hamilton College; his books include “America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s.”
 

AFT: Endorsement of Kamala Harris for President
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By The American Federation of Teachers in Convention.  July 24, 2024.
WHEREAS, the AFT and our 1.8 million members are committed to making a difference in the lives of the students, patients and communities we serve by the work we do, the advocacy we pursue, and the real solutions we bring; and
WHEREAS, the AFT and our members make meaningful change through that work, and through organizing and activism; and
WHEREAS, the AFT and our members engage in politics not as a partisan tactic or destination, but as a means to turn our values and aspirations for a better life into a reality for all people; and
WHEREAS, the 2024 elections are a battle for what kind of country we seek to be: one of community, or one of chaos; one of hope, or one of fear; one of democracy, or one of autocracy; and the stakes are existential, with our freedoms, rights and democracy hinged on the outcome of the election; and

The resolves.
RESOLVED, that for all these reasons and for our students, our patients, our families, our communities, our democracy and ourselves, the AFT endorses Kamala Harris for president in the November 2024 general election, subject to the ratification by the delegates to the 2024 AFT convention; and
RESOLVED, that the AFT and our state and local affiliates will recruit and engage members in a coordinated get-out-the-vote effort to ensure they and their families are registered to vote; are informed of the positions of Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump and other presidential candidates; and turn out on Election Day; and
RESOLVED, that the AFT and our affiliates will provide the necessary resources and undertake the necessary comprehensive get-out-the-vote programs to educate and organize allies and the general public about the issues and the candidates in the 2024 election; and
RESOLVED, that the AFT, in solidarity, will continue to work with and build a broad coalition effort with the AFL-CIO, other labor unions, and community partners in our collective effort to elect Kamala Harris as the next president of the United States.
​
WHEREAS, President Joe Biden will go down as one of the most consequential and meaningful presidents in our history. He has made people’s lives better and has been a champion of workers, families, unions and democracy; and

​
 Here is what DSA national leadership says.
 
https://www.dsausa.org/news/july2024_npc_newsletter/?

NORTH STAR STEERING COMMITTEE STATEMENT ON BIDEN AND WHERE WE GO FROM HERE

President Joe Biden’s decision not to seek re-election resets the dynamics of the 2024 Presidential election but does not change the basic task of socialists and progressives.  
The Biden administration made many positive contributions to the U.S., rebuilding from the economic decline of the Trump Administration, and providing more support for workers and their ability to organize than any administration in the past half century. We commend President Biden for rescuing the nation from Trump’s failure to provide an adequate and timely response to the Covid crisis.  We support Biden’s positive responses to the climate crisis and thank him for his service in difficult times. 
President Biden has also failed in significant ways.  His weak resistance to the brutal Israeli attack on the people of Gaza and continuing supply of military support to Israel is contrary to international law and must be denounced.  His immigration policies have been repressive and he has been unable to enact reforms on immigration and student debt collection due to Republican stonewalling.
What hasn’t changed is our primary task: the defeat of Donald Trump and the fascist threat he represents in 2024, embodied in the Project 2025 document.  Success in defeating this threat demands solidarity among all forces opposed to Trump’s election.  DSA should place itself squarely in the ranks of the gathering pro-democracy front and discard the ultra-left positions voiced in the NPC’s initial pronouncement on President Biden’s withdrawal from candidacy.
The North Star Caucus Steering Committee stands ready to unite with all DSA members who recognize this historic opportunity to unite with the pro-democracy forces.  We are committed to electing progressives and defeating reactionary measures at all levels of government on November 5th.

• Bill Barclay and Barbara Joye, co-chairs, Steering Committee, North Star Caucus for Socialism and Democracy

  
 

 

The Left must grasp the stakes and meet the moment
 

There is no hidden agenda for Donald Trump and his MAGA movement that has taken over the Republican Party. “Make America Great Again” openly leads the nation backward to what should have been a defeated political idea, that of the Confederacy. 
This New Confederacy promises unabashed white supremacy, disdain and hatred of those born in what they call the “shithole countries” of the global South, dictatorial presidential powers, repression of dissent, and the use of mob violence domestically and military adventurism internationally to enforce its political agenda. 
Trump started the year—even while facing civil and criminal trials involving more than 91 indictments—by releasing a comprehensive political program that he promises to immediately implement if elected president in November 2024. The centerpiece of his vision is a wish list of right-wing ethnic cleansing policies meant to secure and institutionalize white minority rule, with repercussions for the world, but especially for the people of Mexico and Latin America. Here are some of the horrific details.
​
Mass Deportations
Trump is calling for mass deportation of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, the great majority of whom are Mexican, but who also include Central Americans, Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians, Chinese, and Muslims. The New York Times on November 11th ran an article titled “Sweeping Raids, Giant Camps, and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plans.” The article provides a chilling description of the plan: “To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due process hearings.” He wants to build massive deportation camps to house the millions of immigrants and refugees they plan to remove from the US. Trump has publicly compared his plan to the infamous “Operation Wetback” of the Eisenhower administration, in which millions of Chicanos and Mexicanos, many of them US citizens, were rounded up and deported to Mexico. 
Most people don’t realize the horrendously broad impact of these policies, not only on those rounded up and shipped out, but on their families, their communities, on schools, local businesses, churches, and faith organizations, and unions with large numbers of immigrant worker members.
To help Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out sweeping raids, Trump plans to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states. He would pay for this terror project by using money from the massive US military budget, as he did during his first administration when Congress refused to fund his infamous border wall.
An End to Legal Immigration
Unlike during his first administration, Trump’s plan assumes broad judicial support from the reactionary Supreme Court majority that he appointed as well as from the hundreds of federal judges that he appointed during his administration.
The racist neo-fascist agenda includes ending the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program altogether. It also includes ending the Temporary Protected Status Program that provides refuge for hundreds of thousands of people fleeing systemic violence or natural disasters.

Please read the entire document. 
https://liberationroad.substack.com/p/a-maga-victory-in-2024-will-lead
This article was written by Bill Gallegos as part of Liberation Road’s “Adalante!” booklet series, in coordination with the Mexico Solidarity Project. A former member of the Brown Berets and a founder of the New Raza Left, Bill Gallegos has been an activist and theorist in the Chican@ Liberation Movement since the 1960s.
 

​
By Kurt Stand, July 2024, 
Inspired by a call to build a movement for a “resurrection of justice, love, truth,” as opposed to an “insurrection of injustice, lies, and hate,” a few thousand people assembled in Washington, DC, for  the Poor People’s Campaign Assembly on Saturday, June 24.  DSA members from Prince George’s County in Maryland were there, but it was clear that for many in this racially, socially, and age-diverse group, going to public protests was not a common occurrence. 
Whether they had been mobilized by their church or union, whether they simply heeded the call and showed up on their own, they were serious about being there. As I wandered through the crowd toward the end of the rally, I ran into a group of hospital workers excited to be there, some coal miners who had come up from West Virginia just to be present, and many who sat on the ground  listening (really listening) to the talks and nodding as they might in church.  
As at other Poor People's Campaign gatherings, the political message was not directed at institutions or organizations but at those who find themselves trapped in poverty, whose everyday existence is defined by the need to tread water to avoid drowning.   And the message delivered was clear: those living in poverty are the “swing vote,” the ones who in their numbers and their moral strength can ensure the defeat of Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans in the upcoming elections. 
As PPC Campaign co-chairs Bishop William Barber II and Rev. Liz Theoharis expressed in their opening remarks, the choice is not about personalities, as the media might have us believe. It is about focusing  on those issues the media, and most politicians, ignore: the realities of the grinding poverty that is the fourth leading cause of death in society. 
 Their opening addresses also drove home the point that change comes from the bottom up, and rather than be distracted by whether people are liberal or conservative, left or right, people have to focus on the needs of those in our society who endure housing insecurity, food insecurity, and job insecurity. Politicians must address the needs of those who live paycheck to paycheck. We cannot accept a politics that “accepts” homelessness, hunger, and violence as immutable realities.
Values
A resurrection is a rebirth, building “from the ashes of the old,” if you will.  And so the assembly called for “Moral Revival,” directly challenging Christian nationalism. Repairers of the Breach, the organization  Barber founded and leads, stands for centering the language of morality by building a movement united across lines of race, class, gender identity, sexuality, ethnicity, and faith in opposition to those who claim that the preeminent moral issues of our day are prayer in public schools, abortion, and property rights.  
The program of the assembly reflected those values.  Big-name speakers were not on the program, the aim of which was to give voice to the voiceless. The speeches were divided into three cohorts:  church leaders, unions, and impacted individuals. Each speaker had one-and-a half minutes, and the timing was strict; music would start playing the moment they reached the 90-second mark.  This allowed many voices to be heard and forced speakers to come to the point quickly.  
 In their own ways, each faith leader, regardless of affiliation, spoke to a sense of oneness: that we are each other’s keepers. This stands in opposition to any institutional religion corrupted by nationalism, racism, the idea that some countries or people are superior to others, and in opposition to church doctrines that proclaim that women should be subservient to men.  
By contrast, the language of universality used by the faith leaders was embodied in the political program of unity in support of social and economic justice, in support of peace and environmentalism.  And contrary to the uniformity demanded by religious nationalists, this kind of unity embraces individuality and the sense of identity (or perhaps, better put, the multiple identities) we all have.  This is an expression of the “Moral Fusion” that is central to the Poor People’s campaign and can be summed up in the biblical injunction “to do unto others as you would have done to you,” for our individual and collective needs are inextricable combined.
A secular expression of this is embodied in union solidarity.  And it is impossible to understand the significance of the assembly without recognizing that it was a “Poor People’s and Low Wage Workers” Assembly.  Numerous unionists were present – hospital workers from 1199 Service Employees; hospitality workers from UNITE-HERE; members of the Amalgamated Transport Workers who have been engaged in big fights in Northern Virginia and Washington, DC; members of the American Postal Workers Union; and government workers from federal (American Federation of Government Employees) and state, county and municipal (AFSCME) unions, and many others.  A union officer would speak, followed by a rank-and-file member.  Bound by the same time limitation as faith leaders, their comments focused on the importance of organization in lifting wages and the need to mobilize voters to protect those gains.  Rank-and-filers especially stressed the critical importance of the work they do.  Underlying their comments was the key point that raising those at the bottom benefits all working people and is the only pathway to equality.
Finally – and crucially – the people who suffer the most impact from poverty  spoke from direct experience. A woman from Philadelphia told about watching the apartment complex where she lived and raised her children bulldozed by a developer who decided he could make more money by displacing people from their homes, a disabled women from Miami described her feelings after being told that she should lower her expectations and drop out of her college program, a man from Wisconsin described what it felt like to be denied needed medical coverage even though he had health insurance – and so it went, on and on.  And the chant in response to each was, “We are the swing vote!”
Past to Future

Here is the Swing Vote for this election. 
 
Read more: Very valuable. 
Reposted from the DSA Religion and Socialism blog.  ReligiousSocialism.org 
 
https://www.religioussocialism.org/organizing_the_ignored_forgotten_and_suppressed_a_poor_people_s_movement_action_and_agenda

Also see: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEGB3NAxEh4&t=137s

For an understandable version of events, go to
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/us/politics/aoc-dsa-endorsement.html?
 Also; See Max Sawicky on this.  Link on side.
New York City DSA Continues Endorsement of AOC. July 11,2024. 
 
Recently, there's been some discussion about our chapter's endorsement of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in February. For clarity, AOC remains endorsed by NYC-DSA. Our chapter withdrew its request for national endorsement after the primary passed and the National Political Committee (NPC) honored this request.

 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULY3hl-JkNw&t=53s
 
 
Also see: 

Statement on AOC’s Endorsement Status
Jul 11 
Written By Socialist Majority Steering Committee
To be clear: Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez remains endorsed by NYC-DSA—as she has been every re-election year since 2018—and no national endorsement has been revoked. Claims to the contrary are wrong.
AOC has spent her career taking brave stances against the corporate establishment and the far right, despite the risks. More than nearly any other politician, she has used her material power to advance working-class liberation and the cause of democratic socialism. We haven’t agreed on every vote—but inside DSA, we don’t always agree with each other either. We still stand together. That’s why, when weighing in on re-endorsement, over 80% of NYC-DSA members and over 70% of national members were supportive.
 
Also 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEGB3NAxEh4&t=137s
 
Understandable version of events.
New York City DSA Continues Endorsement of AOC. July 11,2024. 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULY3hl-JkNw&t=53s
 
Also see: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEGB3NAxEh4&t=137s
 
Understandable version of events.
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/us/politics/aoc-dsa-endorsement.html?searchResultPosition=1
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/us/politics/aoc-dsa-endorsement.html?
 
 

Timothy Snyder.
Those who wish to preserve the American constitutional republic should also recall the past.  A good start would be just to recall the five basic political lessons of 1933. Recalling history, we act for a future that can and will be much better.

As the United States hovers at the edge of fascism, the history of Germany can help.
To be sure, Americans have other histories to ponder, including their own.  Some American states, right now, are laboratories of authoritarian rule (and resistance).  The American 1860s and American 1930s reveal tactics authoritarians use, as well as the weaknesses of the American system, such as slavery and its legacy. At those times, though, Americans were lucky in their leadership.  Lincoln and Roosevelt were in office at the critical moments.  And so we lack the experience of the collapse of the republic.
We can certainly learn from contemporary authoritarian success, as in Russia and in Hungary, which I have written about elsewhere.  Yet the classic example of a major economic and cultural power collapsing into fascism remains Germany in 1933. The failure of the democratic experiment in Germany led to a world war as well as the Holocaust and other atrocities.
….The lessons from Germany that I present below are not at all new.  We have been trained by digital media to believe that only what happens right now matters.  But the people who intend to destroy the American constitutional republic have learned from the past.  One of the basic elements of Project 2025, for example, is what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung: transforming the civil service into a fascist nest.
Those who wish to preserve the American constitutional republic should also recall the past.  A good start would be just to recall the five basic political lessons of 1933.
1.  Voting matters.  Hitler came to power after an election which enabled his appointment as head of government.  It is much easier for fascists to begin from within than to begin from without.  Hitler’s earlier coup attempt failed.  But once he had legitimate power, inside the system as chancellor (prime minister), he could manipulate it from within.  In the American system, “voting” means not just going to the polls yourself, but making donations, phone-banking, and knocking on doors.  We are still, happily, at the stage when unglamorous actions can make the difference.
 
2.  Coalitions are necessary.  In 1932, in the crucial German election, the far left and the center left were separated.  The reasons for this were very specific: Stalin ordered the German communists to oppose the German social democrats, thereby helping Hitler to power.  To be sure, the American political spectrum is very different, as are the times.  Yet the general lesson does suggest itself: the left has to hold together with the center-left, and their energies have to be directed at the goal rather than at each other.
Read more: 
https://snyder.substack.com/p/how-to-stop-fascism

It's undeniable that some things have changed since the debate, but one thing hasn't: Our democracy is at stake so anyone who cares about thwarting fascism must do whatever they can to keep Donald Trump from winning the White House.
PETER DREIER
Jun 30, 2024Common Dreams

If you watched the debate between former President Donald Trump and incumbent President Joseph R. Biden last Thursday night and then tuned in to Biden’s appearance a little more than twelve hours later at a rally in North Carolina, you would have been shocked by the contrast. Biden, who has struggled with a stutter throughout his life, has never been a great speaker. But that speech, like his 2024 State of the Union address, was pretty good.
To put it bluntly, Biden seemed like himself. His affect was good. He wasn't stiff or disoriented. He was, of course, using a teleprompter at the rally, whereas at the debate he had to speak spontaneously. In North Carolina, he was speaking to a large enthusiastic crowd, compared to the empty room at the Atlanta debate. As with most politicians, the crowd lifted him up.
…
But are these pundits, columnists and editorial writers over-reacting? Do they reflect public opinion – or are they shaping it? Will the Democratic leadership—the big donors, as well as Biden and his family, be able to resist this wave of disapproval—even if they think it wiser to stay the course? 
Perhaps the pundits overestimate how much damage was done on Thursday night and do not give Biden’s voters enough credit for understanding how dishonest and deranged Trump is
….
But we’re not in normal times, this is not a normal election, Trump is not a normal candidate, and he has shaped the media environment to his purposes. The media has normalized Trump’s extremism.
To his credit, Biden did point out many of Trump’s lies. He also accused Trump of having “the morals of an alley cat,” a phrase we can expect to see reappear throughout the campaign. Unfortunately, however, the mainstream media have treated this contest not as if character mattered, but as an election between two old guys with different personalities and different views on policy issues.

Biden's accomplishments have improved the lives of most Americans. In contrast, Trump’s four years in office were filled with chaos and ineptitude.
 
This means that the media rarely report the substance of what each candidate has, and has not, accomplished; what they will and will not do; and whether these plans are realistic and responsive to what voters need. For example, despite overwhelming obstacles, Biden’s presidency has been a major success on a wide range of issues. He got stuff done. He paid attention to policy. Biden's accomplishments have improved the lives of most Americans. In contrast, Trump’s four years in office were filled with chaos and ineptitude. Despite having a Republican majority in both Houses, he couldn’t work with Congress to repeal Obamacare, one of the signature promises of his 2016 campaign.
….
So, let's be clear. Whomever the Democrats’ presidential candidate is, the election will be decided by between 5,000 to 50,000 people in each of the following seven battleground states: Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. These numbers include Democratic-leaning voters, particularly Black and Latino voters, and young voters (who may decide not to vote or who might cast ballots for RFK Jr, Jill Stein, or Cornel West as a "protest"); and independent swing voters, including some who reluctantly voted for Trump in 2016, and perhaps even 2020, but are fed up with him now. These are the voters any Democratic candidate must persuade and turnout at this point.
 
One thing hasn’t changed: Our democracy is at stake so anyone who cares about thwarting fascism needs to stop whining and do whatever they can to keep Donald Trump from winning the White House, regardless who is at the top of the Democratic ticket.
Read more. 

 https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/should-biden-step-aside
 
PETER DREIER
Peter Dreier is the E.P. Clapp distinguished professor of politics at Occidental College. 
 
 

BY LAWRENCE WITTNER
 
​
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/06/19/how-donald-trump-worked-to-destroy-americas-labor-unions/
 
Although Donald Trump has been eager to garner support from American labor unions for his re-election campaign, there are lots of reasons he’s not going to get it. Chief among them is his record in sabotaging the nation’s labor movement.
During his decades as a wealthy businessman, Trump clashed with unions repeatedly. And, upon becoming President, he appointed people much like himself―from corporate backgrounds and hostile toward workers―to head key government agencies and departments. Naturally, an avalanche of anti-union policies followed.
Under Trump, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)―the federal agency enforcing the nation’s fundamental labor law, the National Labor Relations Act―led the charge. Instead of following the intent of the 1935 legislation, which was to guarantee the right of workers to union representation, the Trump NLRB widened the basis for denying that right. According to the NLRB, the nearly two million Uber and Lyft drivers, as well as other workers in the gig economy, were not really workers, but independent contractors and, as such, not entitled to a union. The NLRB also proposed depriving graduate teaching assistants and other student employees at private universities of the right to organize unions and collectively bargain.
read more. Posted with permission of the author.
 

​National Poor People’s Campaign.  March on Washington and to the Polls. June 29, 2024. 

Which Side Are You On ?  Class politics. 
 
Mass Poor People’s Campaign and Low Wage Workers.

Poor People's & Low-Wage Workers' Assembly & Moral March on Washington, D.C. & to the Polls, Livestream Party for those unwilling or unable to travel to Washington DC for the event. Refreshments will be provided. Event is free and open to the public. The venue is St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, 910 NW 38th St, Lawton OK 73505. The date and time are June 29, 9 AM to 1 PM.
 
https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org
 
Also see Reverend Barber, Poverty, Class and Voting. – video.
 
https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/revbarber-poverty-class-and-voting

“The Good News in 2024—Poor People Are the New Swing Vote”
In a Washington Informer op-ed published last weekend, Bishop Barber notes that while the election season may look bleak, there’s reason to hope. “As a preacher, I learned a long time ago that you don’t get to the good news by looking away from problems; the good news is most often found right in the midst of trouble.” He points out that workers and their unions have had big wins and students and young people are flexing their organizing muscles. And he reminds us that when low-income people vote, they can swing an election.
Toward the end of the piece, he makes a startling observation: “Both Democrats and Republicans have ignored low-income voters for decades precisely because they are unlikely voters. But when the nonpartisan Poor People’s Campaign, which I serve as a co-chair, surveyed poor people to ask why they don’t vote, the number one reason they gave was, ‘No one speaks to us.’”

​Featuring Bernie Sanders, AOC,( Alexandria Ocasio Cortez,)  and many more. 
Billionaires can’t buy our elections. 
And, the ultra left should be sent home. 

UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory Concludes that Israeli Authorities and Hamas Are Both Responsible for War Crimes 
19 June 2024
States and companies must end arms transfers to Israel immediately or risk responsibility for human rights violations: UN experts
 
UN report: Israeli use of heavy bombs in Gaza raises serious concerns under the laws of war
 
UN experts condemn outrageous disregard for Palestinian civilians during Israel’s military operation in Nuseirat
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/world/middleeast/gaza-war-crimes-israel-hamas.html?
 
The U.N. Report on Israeli and Palestinian War Crimes: What We Know
The findings cite acts such as sexual violence and the deliberate killing or abducting of civilians by Hamas. They also accuse Israel of collective punishment and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/world/middleeast/gaza-war-crimes-israel-hamas.html?
 
​https://jacobin.com/2024/06/un-israel-palestine-crimes-humanity
​------         ------          -----           ---------
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said late Tuesday that Democratic and Republican leaders should withdraw their invitation for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak at a joint meeting of Congress next month after he released a video attacking the Biden administration for "withholding" weapons from Israel's military.
"This man should not be addressing Congress. He is a war criminal," Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote on social media. "And he certainly has no regard for U.S. law, which is explicitly designed to prevent U.S. weapons from facilitating human rights abuses."
"His invitation should be revoked," she added. "It should've never been sent in the first place."

 

​The Cause That Turned Idealists Into Authoritarian ZealotsThe history of American Communism shows that dogma and fervor are no substitute for popular support.
By Maurice Isserman
 
For more than a century, the American left has been pulled in two directions. The better one seeks revolutionary change through the democratic process, as the Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs did in the early 20th century. Emulating the abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, Debs tried to convince people of many political persuasions to expand the promise of equality embedded in the Declaration of Independence. The Socialist Party that he led got more than 1,000 members elected to public office, and he himself attracted 6 percent of the vote when he ran for president in 1912.
 
A competing vision arose during and after the First World War in Russia, a country that bore scant resemblance to Western democracies and had no tradition of government based on principles of equal rights. To overthrow Russia’s czar, Vladimir Lenin created a tightly organized and ideologically disciplined corps of “professional revolutionaries” who would dedicate “the whole of their lives” to the movement. Their success at destroying the old order in 1917 appealed to a contingent of American radicals who, in 1919, left the Socialist Party to form what would eventually be named the Communist Party USA. Like the original Bolsheviks in Russia, the CPUSA subordinated democratic ideals and individual conscience to the decisions made by a hierarchical party apparatus. That approach—which assumes that adherents’ fervor and discipline can compensate for a lack of popular support —has done little to create a more equitable society in the United States.
I am a lifelong democratic socialist. I was a founding member of the Democratic Socialists of America, a group established in 1982 in the spirit of Debs, Garrison, and Douglass. I am also the author of Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism, a new history of that movement from 1919 to 1991. I wrote the book as a cautionary tale. The Communist Party’s ignominious history—of taking instructions from Moscow, drumming out dissenters, and making excuses for communist regimes’ human-rights violations in the name of revolutionary solidarity—should be a warning to ideologues pushing for greater uniformity on the left and to anyone tempted to think that dogmas, slogans, and tactical orders from headquarters should be accepted without debate. Unfortunately, some factions within the organized left are repeating the CPUSA’s errors today, most notably in their rigid, doctrinaire response to the Hamas attack on Israel in October.
 
Read more. 
The Atlantic.com 
 
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/06/what-failure-american-communism-should-teach-left/678697/?
 

www.poorpeoplescampaign.orgwww.poorpeoplescampaign.orggNational Poor People’s Campaign.  March on Washington and to the Polls.
 
Mass Poor People’s Campaign and Low Wage Workers.

Poor People's & Low-Wage Workers' Assembly & Moral March on Washington, D.C. & to the Polls, Livestream Party for those unwilling or unable to travel to Washington DC for the event. Refreshments will be provided. Event is free and open to the public. The venue is St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, 910 NW 38th St, Lawton OK 73505. The date and time are June 29, 9 AM to 1 PM.

In less than a month, thousands of impacted people, poor & low wage workers, and allies will join us in the nation’s capital for the June 29th “Mass Poor People’s & Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly & Moral March on Washington D.C. & to the Polls” to demand that those running for elected office this year embrace a moral public policy agenda.
This  Monday, June 17, please join us for a National Virtual Rally from anywhere in the United States by watching a livestream we will be posting on our website.
https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org

     
Claudia Sheinbaum’s Victory Is a Triumph for Mexico
BY
KURT HACKBARTH
 
Claudia Sheinbaum has won Mexico’s presidential election in a landslide. In her victory speech, she paid homage to the social movements of the past and promised to continue MORENA’s impressive record of social progress.
 
…So far, Claudia Sheinbaum holds a thirty-point lead over her conservative rival, Xóchitl Gálvez, 58.3 percent to 28.7 percent, with third-party candidate Jorge Álvarez Maynez coming in at 10.5 percent. According to projections made by the National Electoral Institute, Sheinbaum’s final total was expected to fall within a range of 58.3–60.7 percent, outperforming all but a pair of final preelection polls.
According to the institute’s conteo rápido, or fast count, the landslide was expected to carry over into Congress as well, with MORENA and its allies winning up to 380 of 500 seats in the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, and up to 88 of 128 seats in the Senate. This would put the center-left coalition within range of its ambitious goal of achieving a qualified majority of two-thirds, which would allow it to pass constitutional reforms on its own (together with the state legislatures it controls). And not only did MORENA win the all-important mayorship of Mexico City with candidate Clara Brugada, the MORENA coalition is also set to pick up at least six of the eight governor’s races up for grabs.
To put MORENA’s victory in perspective, Sheinbaum is on course to best Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO)’s 2018 landslide victory of 53 percent by some five to seven points. Where AMLO received a historic total of thirty million votes, Sheinbaum will have received some thirty-five million. Similarly, Gálvez was running about ten to twelve points behind the conservative party’s total in that election. In 2018, the conservative parties Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and National Action Party (PAN) ran separately; this year, they ran in coalition. But instead of adding in numbers, the coalition wound up subtracting.
A Refusal to Be Goaded
True to her scientific background, Sheinbaum ran a disciplined, methodical campaign. Taking nothing for granted despite holding a virtually unchanged lead since announcing her candidacy, Sheinbaum racked up the miles, holding three times as many rallies as Gálvez. Where Gálvez veered from one uncosted policy proposal to another, Sheinbaum rolled out a hundred-point program that includes extending social programs and scholarships, continuing annual minimum-wage increases, consolidating Mexico’s push toward national health care, building a million affordable homes on a rent-to-buy plan, constructing seven long-distance train lines, avoiding the maquiladora experience of the 1990’s by mandating that companies investing in the “nearshoring” phenomenon provide higher wages and benefits, and — in what is certain to continue raising the shackles of multinational energy interests — a public sector–led energy transition building on Mexico’s state-owned oil, electricity, and lithium companies.
​
More.
https://jacobin.com/2024/06/claudia-sheinbaum-mexico-presidential-election
 
jacobin.com/2024/06/claudia-sheinbaum-mexico-presidential-election