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Were the Framers Democrats?

Cass Sunstein The New Rambler
This book, says reviewer Cass Sunstein, "might well be the best book ever written on the founders and their handiwork." It is the kind of book that helps provide useful context for this complex political moment. Readers interested in this topic might also look at America's Constitution: A Biography, by Akhil Reed Amar (Random House, 2005).

To Resist a Trump Presidency, Ask: “What Would the Abolitionists Do?”

Linda Hirshman The Washington Post
What can anti-Trump liberals and progressives actually do? With his party in control of the White House and Congress, and with Trump about to tip the balance of the Supreme Court, it’s easy to despair over how little leverage the Democrats seem to have. One episode from history reveals reasons to hope. In 1850, like the Democrats and their allies in 2016, the abolitionists took a terrible hit...

What About the Black Working Class?

Tanzina Vega CNN
Amid all of the talk about economic populism this election cycle, one group has been largely left out: working class Americans of color.

Mazzocchi and the Moment

Adoph Reed, Jr. NonSite.org
Tony often observed, regarding capital’s revanchist attack on working people that has steadily intensified over the last four decades, that what we would now call the neoliberal Democrats had nothing to offer those who have been or fear being ground into the dust by the juggernaut. He cautioned that, if the left and the labor movement didn’t find ways to connect with that growing population of those hurting, ... other, nasty and dangerous tendencies would.

A Pentagon Rising: Is a Trump Presidency Good News for the Military-Industrial Complex?

William Hartung TomDispatch
As we enter the new era of Donald Trump, amid a welter of conflicting signals, only one thing seems clear when it comes to the U.S. military. Whatever extreme figures end up in key posts in the Trump version of the national security state, as TomDispatch regular William Hartung indicates today, yet more money will be sent swirling down the Pentagon's drain.

Trump Has a Plan for Government Workers. They’re not Going to Like It.

Lisa Rein The Washington Post
Hiring freezes, an end to automatic raises, a green light to fire poor performers, a ban on union business on the government’s dime and less generous pensions — these are the contours of the blueprint emerging under Republican control of Washington in January. these are the contours of the blueprint emerging under Republican control of Washington in January.