Portside

Stopping the rightwing, anti-immigrant, poor-bashing Republican juggernaut won’t be easy.

The debt ceiling turns out to be unexploded ordnance lying around the American form of government. Only custom or moral compunction stops the opposition party from using it to nullify the president’s powers, or, for that matter, the president from using it to nullify Congress’s. To weaponize the debt ceiling, you must be willing to inflict harm on millions of innocent people.

Progressives cannot retreat into enclaves as long as millions of Americans are abused in zones under pro-corporate Republican rule.