Portside

Yes, Angela Merkel wins. Her 42 percent vote, impressive as it was with many parties contesting, left her with the biggest bloc of 311 seats in the 630-seat Bundestag, but five seats short of a needed majority. So instead of the previous more-or-less like-minded partner, further to the right on most issues, she must try to forge an alliance with her main election opponents, the Social Democrats.

Bill de Blasio's win in New York's Democratic primary isn't a local story. It's part of a vast shift that could upend three decades of American political thinking. Americans don't necessarily grow more conservative as they age. Sometimes they do. Economic circumstances that have pushed Millennials left are also unlikely to change dramatically anytime soon. de Blasio's mayoral campaign offers a glimpse into what an Occupy-inspired challenge to Clintonism might look like.

The opposition Tamarod (Rebel or Rebellion in Arabic) June 30 protests clearly marks a new and higher stage of the revolution, distinguished not just by their enormous size but by their far-reaching popular demands.

Reader Comments: Alice Walker Open Letter to Alicia Keys; Mideast; Israel; Palestine; Turkey; Bradley Manning; Electoral Strategy; Working Class, Racism; Trade Unions; Labor Movement; North Carolina Civil Rights Today; Fluoridation; Chinese Investment in the U.S.; Announcements - Left Forum, June 7 - 9; Iraqi Workers After the War - new video; Ruby Dee Documentary - June 26; Commie Camp - new film on Camp Kinderland - additional show - June 29

If current trends hold, all Southern states will be transformed in some way by the changing blend of Southerners, new and old.

Reader Comments on: Lean In and One Percent Feminism; Marx's Revenge: How Class Struggle Is Shaping the World; BRICS; Dues Check-Off; Obama's Cyber-War; Internet Privacy; Social Security; Independent Worker Unions; Minimum Wage; Detroit; NCAA; Announcements - Fair Elections Rally in NYC - Apr 3; Delegation to Venezuela - Witness the Elections; NYC People's Jazz; Paul Robeson, Woody Guthrie, Peter Seeger - Lessons from the Cultural Front

Italy's Five Star Movement owes a big debt to the left – but won votes by rejecting it

Is the country more or less racist? How can the percentage of people holding anti-black attitudes have increased from 2006 to 2008 at a time when Obama performed better among white voters than the two previous white Democratic nominees, and then again from 2008 to 2012 when Obama won a second term? In fact, the shifts described by Tesler and Pasek are an integral aspect of the intensifying conservatism within the right wing of the Republican Party.