Ambivalent Hillary Voters: Don’t Assume Someone Else Will Stop Trump

This is a column for all you leftists, liberals, progressives, feminists, Democrats—whatever you call yourselves—who are feeling passive, underwhelmed, downhearted, or paralyzed about the upcoming election. All right, you say, you’ll hold your nose and vote for Hillary Clinton, but you haven’t been knocking yourself out like you did for Barack Obama in 2008 or even 2012. “This election is getting really scary, yet I do not feel motivated to get active,” wrote one friend when I sent out a call for comments about enthusiasm, or the lack thereof. There are a lot of you out there.

Elizabeth Warren Just Gave Hillary Clinton a Big Warning

Senator Elizabeth Warren fired an unmistakable warning shot to Hillary Clinton and her advisors on Wednesday, cautioning against appointing cabinet or administration members who are linked to Wall Street while name-checking a firm closely tied to Clinton and the Democratic party.

Warren’s speech, delivered at the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund, cast the upcoming presidential election in stark economic terms. She described the tax-slashing, deregulatory approach laid out by Donald Trump and contrasted it to a laundry list of populist economic policies embraced by Hillary Clinton. Clinton has faced criticism recently for focusing too heavily on Trump’s competency and not enough on fundamental economic issues, and so Warren’s speech was well-timed and well-received.

Your Vote for Jill Stein Is a Wasted Vote

If the last three presidential elections are any guide, 75 to 90 percent of those who say that they’re planning to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein in November won’t follow through. Yes, there are some dedicated Green voters, but much of the party’s support is an expression of contempt for the Democrats that evaporates in the voting booth. I’m a registered independent and a supporter of the Working Families Party, and my disdain for the Greens springs from my own experience with the party. I agree with much of the Greens’ platform, but when I went to Green Party meetings, I found a wildly disorganized, mostly white group that was riven with infighting, strategically inept, and organized around a factually flawed analysis of American politics. There are effective Green parties in Europe, but ours is a hot mess. And while the Greens’ bold ideas are attractive, what’s the point of wasting one’s time and energy on such a dysfunctional enterprise?

The Era of American Global Dominance Is Over

You might recall the term “Eurasia” from high school geography classes. The term isn’t used much anymore in political discussions in the West, but it should be. That is where the most serious geopolitical action is going to be taking place in the world as we move deeper into the 21st century. The U.S., focused so intently on “containment“ of Russia, the so-called Islamic State and China, will be missing the bigger Eurasian strategic picture.

The Syrian Truce and Obama’s Exit Strategy

As almost everybody can now tell, the new cease-fire agreement on Syria is doomed to break down, as would any such agreement that does not settle the core political problem of the crisis. Of course, even a respite that doesn’t last is better than nothing at all (although the truce has so far been very disappointing with regard to humanitarian relief).

But short of an agenda that includes a comprehensive agreement for Bashar al-Assad to step down and allow a transition toward a pluralist government, no cease-fire stands a chance in that war-torn country. Were the mainstream opposition to accept a diktat for a sellout, it would be rapidly outflanked by the fighters, for whom anything less than the Assad clan’s departure from power would be tantamount to accepting that hundreds of thousands of Syrians were killed, and still more maimed, and huge swaths of the country turned to rubble, for nothing.

Donald Trump’s Misogynist Ratpack

Longtime GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway officially holds the title of Donald Trump’s “campaign manager.” What Conway really appears to be is Trump’s top surrogate, spending hours on television each day pleading his case with the invaluable white GOP women who are abandoning the Republican ticket in droves. But Conway can’t provide sufficient window dressing to hide the he-man woman-hater’s clubhouse the Trump campaign has become. Fox News’s decision to settle a lawsuit by former anchor Gretchen Carlson that charged Roger Ailes with grotesque sexual harassment is just the latest piece of information that ought to make reporters look more closely inside the frat house at Trump Tower, where Ailes is serving as an “adviser” to Trump, whether or not he’s on the payroll.

The Terrible Mini-Trump of Minnesota—and the Progressive Who’s Running Against Him

They call him “Minnesota’s mini-Trump”: Jason Lewis, the right-wing talk-show host who’s running for Congress for an open Republican seat in the suburbs south of the Twin Cities, the 2nd Congressional District. It’s the same seat Bill Maher targeted two years ago in his “Flip-a-district” campaign—only then it was held by a six-term Republican incumbent named John Kline. Maher’s effort didn’t work; Kline was reelected.

Donald Trump Is the Anti–Labor Day Candidate: Running Against Fair Wages, Worker Rights, and Unions

Donald Trump, the billionaire candidate who has argued that “having a low minimum wage is not a bad thing for this country” and complained in a 2015 GOP debate that wages are “too high,” is running for president this fall on the most virulently anti-worker and anti-union platform in the history of his Republican Party.

Trump and the anti-labor partisans who nominated him for the presidency have rejected the legacy of a Grand Old Party that once cheered when Abraham Lincoln declared: “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

The Scorching Cynicism of Scott Walker’s Assault on Voting

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has for many years engaged in urgent advocacy for laws that make it harder for voters to cast ballots. As the governor of a state that frequently backs Republicans in off-year elections, but that has not backed a Republican for president since 1984, Walker has emerged as a national leader in the fight for rules and restrictions on practices and procedures that are designed to make voting easy. That has put the governor at odds with Wisconsin’s historic commitment to high-turnout elections.

Is Julian Assange Exposing Innocent People to Persecution With Reckless Leaks?

Julian Assange really, really doesn’t like Hillary Clinton. His bile for the Democratic presidential nominee is so uncontainable that it even spewed onto fellow antisecrecy icon Edward Snowden, whom the WikiLeaks founder has accused of sucking up to Clinton in hopes of gaining a future presidential pardon. At a time when many on the left are wrestling with whether to vote for Clinton despite her well-known shortcomings or risk that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named will somehow win the presidency in November, Assange evinces no doubts: Hillary must go down. Meanwhile, Assange himself is under fire from gays in Saudi Arabia, dissidents in Turkey, and nonconformists elsewhere who complain that WikiLeaks’ unredacted release of their names and personal information has exposed them to persecution from the very authorities that Assange claims to oppose.