elections

The Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, contrary to all expectation, has become the most important left insurgency in the United States in nearly half a century. A year ago, even his most optimistic supporters might have hoped that Sanders would enliven the presidential debates by challenging Hillary Clinton on issues of Wall Street power and big money corruption, and perhaps garner a quarter to a third of the primary vote. Instead, Sanders won

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Trump’s Odd Allies: Union Members

March 2016April 2018 Charles Lenchner Donald Trump, elections

So no surprise then that union members voting in the Republican primaries vote for Trump at significantly higher rates than other GOP voters. This, after roughly two decades of energetic, expensive and, until now, fairly successful efforts on behalf of the AFL-CIO to educate union voters and their families. This makes perfect sense; after years of making it clear that corporate friendly free trade deals were harming workers, why wouldn’t Republican union members square the circle by going for Trump?

Feeling the Bern: An Analysis of the Sanders Phenomenon

February 2016August 2017 Thomas Gallagher capitalism, democracy, Democratic Party, elections, politics, Spring 2016

When Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy for president, his assertion that he was in this to win seemed like maybe the kind of statement a candidate feels he has to make. If you followed this sort of thing, a more modest and reasonable hope seemed to be that he’d at least fare better than Dennis Kucinich, the last candidate of the left to attempt a significant candidacy, in 2004 and 2008. As a U.S. Senator, self-identified socialist, and the longest serving independent member of Congress, Sanders hopefully could…

The Fissuring of the Republican Party: A Road Map to Political Chaos

December 2015May 2016 Darren Dochuk capitalism, conservatism, elections, politics, populism, Republican Party, Tea Party, Winter 2016

Donald Trump took his own stab at idiocy by reading out Graham’s phone number, encouraging his audience to “try it.” Trump’s antics came in response to Graham’s own a day before when in an effort to defend his friend John McCain, another of the billionaire’s targets, he called the rich politico the “world’s biggest jackass.” The contest intensified in September after GOP polls…

The Greek Inquisition: International Finance, Syriza, and the Greek Labor Movement

October 2015December 2015 Nick Toloudis austerity, debt, democracy, elections, Fall 2015, Greece, Syriza, trade unions

Why has the new Greek government failed to accomplish so much of what it had promised? And where does that leave the Greek labor movement? The government’s and the labor movement’s problems stem from the same fact, which has endured since the February 2012 signing of the second bailout agreement: Greece is no longer a sovereign nation state.

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After the Fall: An Autopsy of the Midterms

February 2015June 2018 Michael Hirsch elections, mid-terms, Winter 2015

Surveying the wreckage of his party’s 2014 election campaign, Howard Dean, on the November 9th Meet the Press, was candid, with such sound bytes as, ““Where the hell is the Democratic party …You got to stand for something if you want to win.” The Republicans’ message was, “We’re not Obama.” What was the Democrats’ message? “Oh well, we really aren’t either.”
Translation: “Get my message; we need a message.”
No matter how hard the Democrats tried to demonize their Republican rivals — they couldn’t.

New Labor Forum

Bernie Sanders, Labor, Ideology and the Future of American Politics

Trump’s Odd Allies: Union Members

Feeling the Bern: An Analysis of the Sanders Phenomenon

The Fissuring of the Republican Party: A Road Map to Political Chaos

The Greek Inquisition: International Finance, Syriza, and the Greek Labor Movement

After the Fall: An Autopsy of the Midterms