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Chokwe Antar Lumumba, a human-rights lawyer, won the mayoralty of Jackson, Mississippi, in June with 93 percent of the vote. (Illustration by Louisa Bertman)

With a clenched fist held high and the promise of amovement of the people, Chokwe Antar Lumumba asked the voters of Jackson, Mississippi, to elect him as their mayor in a race he pledged would lead to the transformation of a Deep South city in a deep-red state. Victory for his civil-rights-inspired, labor-backed campaign for economic and social justice would send shock waves around the world, said the 34-year-old human-rights lawyer as he vowed to make Jackson the most progressive city in the country.1

Too radical? Too bold? Not at all. Backed by a coalition that included veteran activists who fought segregation, along with newcomers who got their first taste of politics in Bernie Sanderss 2016 presidential campaign, Lumumba won 55 percent of the vote in a May Democratic primary that saw him oust the centrist incumbent mayor and sweep past several other senior political figures in Mississippis largest city. A month later, he secured a stunning 93 percent of the vote in a general election that drew one of the highest turnouts the city has seen in years.2

That victory renewed a radical experiment in community-guided governance and cooperative economics that his father, the veteran radical activist Chokwe Lumumba Sr., began during a brief mayoral term that ended with the senior Lumumbas untimely death just eight months after his own 2013 election as mayor. Governing magazine speculates that the younger Lumumbas tenure may offer striking evidence of a nationwide trend: strongly progressive policies being pushed in big cities, even in deep red states. Thats true. Unfortunately, Lumumbas June 6 win didnt get anything close to the media attention accorded a handful of special elections for US House seats in districts that are so solidly Republican that Donald Trump was comfortable plucking congressmen from them to fill out his cabinet.3

This is the frustrating part of Lumumbas shock waves around the world calculus: His election should have sent a shock wave. The same holds true for the election of progressives in local races from Cincinnati to St. Louis to South Fulton, Georgia, in a season of resistance that began with the Womens March on Washington and mass protests against President Trumps Muslim ban but has quickly moved to polling places across the country.4

The list of victories thus far on this years long calendar of contestsmayoral, City Council, state legislative, and even statewideis striking. Many of them are unprecedented, and most are linked by a growing recognition on the part of national progressive groups and local activists that the greatest resistance not just to Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan but to right-wing governors could well come from the cities and states where the day-to-day work of governing is done. Municipal resistance is crucial because these Republican governors often do the bidding of the Koch brothers and the corporate-sponsored American Legislative Exchange Council.5

Our nation will only change from the grassroots up. Dan Cantor, national director of the Working Families Party

Inspired not merely by their opposition to Trump but in many cases by the experience of the Sanders campaign, these next-generation progressive candidatesoften running with the backing of Our Revolution, the national group developed by Sanders backersshare a belief that effective opposition begins with saying no but never ends there. They recognize that an alternative vision can be proposed and put into practice in communities where taxes are levied, services are delivered, commitments to fight climate change are made, resolutions to establish sanctuary cities are adopted, and questions about poverty, privatization, and policing are addressed. Our nation will only change from the grassroots up, says Dan Cantor, national director of the Working Families Party, which backed Lumumba as well as the progressive winners of a hotly contested primary for Philadelphia district attorney, a statewide race for the top education post in Wisconsin, and a New York election that saw a Trump-backing GOP district pick a resistance-preaching union activist for an open legislative seat.6

Cantor is right to suggest that these victories make a powerful case that a new resistance-and-renewal politics is sending a signal to conservative Republicans and cautious Democrats alike about the ability of bold progressive populists to win in every part of the country. Thats why it is so worrisome that these electoral shock waves have been crashing against the wall of ignorance and indifference that surrounds a Trump-obsessed Washington media.7

Even before the 2016 elections, the national media were far too focused on Beltway intrigues. When the Trump-centric punditocracy hang on the 45th presidents every tweet, election results that cannot be tied directly to whats happening in Washington barely exist in their eyes. This is a damaging phenomenon: Even in an era of rapidly evolving social media, the validation that comes from traditional media coverage should not be underestimated. In the none-too-distant past, things changed because down-ballot races were closely monitored for evidence of the zeitgeist; the tangible signs of electoral progress for civil-rights campaigners in the late 1960s came initially in the form of election results for the mayoralties in places like Gary, Indiana, and Cleveland, and they inspired the next wave of campaigns in cities like Atlanta and New Orleans. City Council elections in Berkeley, Madison, and Ann Arbor in the early 1970s revealed the political potency of radical movements and lowered voting ages, just as Harvey Milks 1977 election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors told us that LGBTQ Americans were transforming urban politics. And a remarkable series of election results in 1983, beginning with Harold Washingtons election as mayor of Chicago, signaled the rise of a rainbow coalition that would inspire not just the Reverend Jesse Jackson but a young community organizer named Barack Obama.8

Lumumbas big win in Jackson and similar breakthrough victories across the country are powerful indications of todays emerging resistance. His overwhelming primary victory occurred on the same day that progressive Cincinnati Councilwoman Yvette Simpson shocked even herself when her power of we campaign finished first (ahead of a conservative incumbent) in that citys mayoral primary. Annie Weinberg, electoral director of Democracy for America, which has waded into dozens of down-ballot contests, said the message is clear: In 2017, voters are ready to make cities everywhere into bastions of resistance to the Trump regime by electing bold progressive leaders who run on, and are committed to fighting for, racial and economic justice.9

Weinbergs point was confirmed on May 16, when Philadelphia Democrats nominated veteran civil-rights lawyer Lawrence Krasner for district attorney. Krasner, who had defended Occupy Philadelphia and Black Lives Matter protesters, beat a crowded field of contenders with a campaign that promised to make the City of Brotherly Love a model for criminal-justice reform. Along with victories last year by Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxx in Chicago and Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala in Orlando, Florida, Krasners win reflects the political appeal of new approaches to policingones first voiced by protesters on the streets of American cities, and that the Trump administration and too many politicians in both parties continue to callously dismiss. The headline of a Philadelphia Daily News column by Will Bunch announced: This wasnt just a primary victory. This was a revolution. The columnist saw in Krasners victory nothing less than the stirrings of a whole different kind of revolution from the city that gave America the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rightsa revolution aimed at finally undoing a draconian justice regime that had turned the Cradle of Liberty into a death-penalty capital and the poster child for mass incarceration.10

Many recent progressive victors were Bernie Sanders supporters or Sanders DNC delegates last year.

A similarly revolutionary result came in St. Louis on April 4, when Natalie Vowell won a citywide school-board seat with an intersectional campaign that focused not just on education policy but addressed the housing, employment, and criminal-justice issues that often determine whether students succeed. A Sanders delegate to the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Vowell promised to empower parents across the economic spectrum and stop equating poverty with apathy.11

Developing detailed platforms that recognize the links between local, state, and national issues has characterized these recent victories. Winning candidates have made opposing Trump a local issue, with commitments to defend immigrants and fill the void created by federal budget cuts; but they have also rejected the austerity, deregulation, privatization, and intolerance of statehouse Republicans. For example, Dylan Parker is a 28-year-old diesel mechanic and member of the Quad Cities chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. In 2016, Parker was a Sanders delegate; in early April of this year, he was elected to the City Council of Rock Island, Illinois, with a campaign that updated the sewer socialist municipal politics of the 1930s by focusing on providing universal high-speed Internet access and expanding Rock Islands publicly owned hydroelectric power plant. Two weeks later, another DSA member, khalid kamau (who lowercases his name in the Yoruba tradition that emphasizes community over the individual), was elected to the City Council of South Fulton, Georgia. A Black Lives Matter and Fight for $15 organizer and also a Sanders delegate, kamau campaigned on a bold economic and social-justice vision that seeks to make the newly incorporated community of South Fulton the largest progressive city in the South.12

In Scott Walkers Wisconsin, April voting saw Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers win a statewide nonpartisan race after being targeted by conservative backers of the school choice schemes favored by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. While his challenger embraced DeVos and called her selection a positive development for education, Evers challenged the Trump appointees promotion of taxpayer-subsidized parochial or private schools that are part of the choice program and said DeVos should be paying attention to public-school students. We need her to be an advocate for those kids, explained the teachers union ally, who calls for the increased funding of public education, especially for schools serving African-American, Latino, and rural students. Evers won 70 percent of the vote in a state that narrowly backed Trump last fall.13

While DC pundits have kept a reasonably close watch on congressional special elections in the districts won by Trumpand have seen signs of political movement some of the clearest signals are coming from special elections for seats in the state legislative chambers that will redraw congressional district lines after the 2020 Census. Progressive Democrats running in historically Republican districts in New Hampshire and New York won breakthrough victories in May. Republicans should absolutely be concerned: Two Republican canaries died in the coal mine yesterday, GOP political consultant William OReilly said after the results were announced. He explained that Trump voters and other Republicans simply didnt show up, and voters from the left did.14

THE STAKES ARE HIGHER NOW THAN EVER. GET THE NATION IN YOUR INBOX.

The New York special-election winner, elementary-school teacher and union activist Christine Pellegrino, described her victory as a thunderbolt of resistance. But it was also something else: Pellegrino, another 2016 Sanders delegate, wasnt the first choice of Democratic strategists and local party leaders. She gained the nomination with the help of the group Long Island Activists, which was born out of the Bernie Sanders movement, and she ran an edgy anticorruption campaign that recognized the mood among voters frustrated with both major parties. As observers hailed her victory in a district that gave Trump a 23-point edge last November, Pellegrino explained that her winning strategy wasnt all that complicated: A strong progressive agenda is the way forward.15

Pellegrino proved her point by taking 58 percent of the vote in one of the 710 legislative districts nationwide that have been identified by Ballotpedia as including all or part of the so-called Pivot Countiesthose that voted for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and then voted for Republican Donald Trump in 2016. As the website explains: 477 state house districts and 233 state senate districts intersected with these Pivot Counties. These [districts comprise] approximately 10 percent of all state legislative districts in the country.16

For progressives, figuring out where to win and how to winnot merely to resist, but to set the agendais about more than positioning. This is the essential first step in breaking the grip of a politics that imagines large parts of the country will always be red, and that says the only real fights are over an elusive middle ground where campaigns are fought with lots of money but little substance. The resistance-and-renewal politics thats now gathering momentum rejects such empty politics and embraces what Chokwe Antar Lumumba identifies as the struggle [that] does not cease: to give people the jobs and freedom they need to shape their own destinies. That makes every election in every community matter, because the point isnt merely to resist one bad president; as Lumumba reminds us, it is to change the order of the world.17

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A Progressive Electoral Wave Is Sweeping the Country - The Nation.

A liberal advocacy group spent a Saturday afternoon knocking on doors to get Howard County residents talking about politics.

Together We Will, a group founded in reaction to Donald Trump's election as president, held a door-to-door "listening campaign" June 10 in Owen Brown to ask residents what political issues mattered most to them. They began knocking on doors around Howard County in March and will continue through 2017, with the next outing in mid-July.

The canvassing effort, called Knock Every Door, draws from a national movement that advocates "deep canvassing," which requires in-depth conversations with voters. Canvassers gather data by asking respondents to rate their preferences on a scale, then getting them to describe those preferences in detail with follow-up questions.

Together We Will co-chair Becca Niburg said the effort is strictly a "listening campaign not an attempt for us to impose views or lecture people.

"Politics has become an exercise of people talking at each other," Niburg said. "Our goal with the campaign is to bridge the divide to truly listen to all points of view."

She said she hopes elected officials will use the data they collect to craft policies that respond to "what real people need."

"Everybody is kind of worried about the same things," said Niburg. "People just want their families to be safe and they want to have a job."

Other local liberal organizations including Red to Blue, Indivisible and Do The Most Good are also participating in the campaign, as is the Howard County Democratic Campaign Committee.

Niburg co-chairs the county's branch of Together We Will with its founder, Chiara D'Amore.

The Howard County chapter of Together We Will began as a chapter of Pantsuit Nation, a private Facebook group of Hillary Clinton supporters that emerged before the election. After Trump was elected, organizers across the country began working to "galvanize" reactions, and D'Amore decided to focus on local issues.

"Politics are highly local," D'Amore said. "I just wanted to do something at the county level where people could get to know each other."

She describes Together We Will as a "progressive solidarity network" whose priorities include fostering inclusive communities, protecting the environment, securing equal rights and amplifying other progressive voices.

The volunteer-driven Howard County group has more than 1,200 members on its private Facebook page, Niburg said. A smaller number, D'Amore said, come to in-person meetings regularly. About 70 percent are women, she estimated, but she said each volunteer has a different drive to show up.

"What I've found is that most people want to do something, they just don't know where to go or what to do," D'Amore said.

One of Together We Will's youngest volunteers is Niburg's daughter, Alyssa. The 8-year-old has helped in Knock Every Door events and said her favorite part is "that I get to hear other people's stories and compare them to some of mine."

One of Alyssa's biggest worries about the next four years is that "more children are gonna have less friends, because their friends are immigrants," she said. "If you go back far enough, everyone's an immigrant. Trump is an immigrant!"

Together We Will Howard County falls under the national group's umbrella, and is also a registered member of the movement Indivisible, recently in headlines for organizing protests at Republican town halls around the U.S. But both D'Amore and Niburg said that their group's focus is local and strictly non-partisan.

Howard County bills that the group has supported include CB-9, , the so-called "sanctuary bill," and CN-30, a bill to create a public finance system for political candidates, Niburg said.

For D'Amore, who said she saw Howard County and Columbia as a "progressive, forward-looking place to be," the presidential election, as well as the Republicans leading the state and county, signified a shift.

On June 10, five volunteers trudged from door to door in the stifling 88-degree heat, knocking on doors, asking residents of Owen Brown what mattered to them.

Armed with scripts and clipboards and sunscreen, the group divvied up neighborhoods and split into two groups. One group approached a quiet block of brick townhouses. It took 10 doors before the volunteers heard the sound of a latch opening.

Later, Hester remarked on the cultural and ethnic diversity of the neighborhood, noting that most people they talked to that day were non-native English speakers. Most residents they spoke to leaned liberal, and none were Republicans.

The first resident they spoke to, Ali Ali, said he approved of Trump despite being a registered Democrat. "He's not a typical politician," Ali said. "That's a good thing." Ali later said one of the most important issues to him was arts education, because "it makes people more tolerant."

Other residents saw Trump in a more negative light. Asked to rate his satisfaction with the president, on a scale of one to 10, Lolu Osoba let out a deep, booming laugh. "Zero," he shouted. "Russia select your president for you!"

Owen Brown resident Michael Ioffe also gave Trump a zero, and when asked to think of words to describe him joked: "Do you really want me to think about him?"

Originally from Nigeria, Osoba told the volunteers that he now votes in every election Hester gave him a fist bump. Ioffe, who came to the U.S. from the Soviet Union, also said he votes regularly. "I came from a country where that wasn't an option," he said.

Nearly every resident named healthcare as a primary issue facing the country; many also named education and the environment.

Though most had strong opinions about national politics, most were stumped when asked about state and local politicians.

One resident said Hogan had "done a lot of beautiful things," but when asked for specifics admitted he did not pay attention to state politics.

Most people, volunteer Jennifer Jones said, didn't like Trump, but were "okay" with Republicans Gov. Larry Hogan and County Executive Allan Kittleman.

Prunier Law, who said Saturday's canvassing event was her first with Knock Every Door, remarked that peoples' political opinions seemed overshadowed by their daily lives. She described asking one rushed resident if they were happy with the election. The resident responded, "Sure not. But I've got to feed my kids."

"I think it's really important that we feel the humanity of people," Prunier Law said.

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Progressives launch "listening campaign" in Howard County - Baltimore Sun

The second decade of the 20th century was a heady time for progressives. A Democrat with liberal leanings on most issues, Woodrow Wilson entered the White House. The labor movement was getting stronger, and the suffragettes were taking to the streets. In 1914, Herbert Croly launched The New Republic, which would serve as a flagship for liberalism for the rest of the century. Progressivism had the wind in its sails, and high ideals shaped the political and social landscape.

In 1917, the United States entered World War I, and the whole idea of progress seemed as dead as the millions in the trenches of Flanders. Yet some progressives did not abandon their hopes. They persisted.

In his new book, Young Radicals In the War for American Ideals, Jeremy McCarter looks at this persistent idealism in the lives of five progressives who "didn't surrender their ideals." They are: Walter Lippmann, John Reed, Max Eastman, Alice Paul and Randolph Bourne. "The only way to understand ideals and the people who fight for them is to watch the story on the individual scale, where you can register personal desires, personal choices, and personal consequences," McCarter writes. "The story has to be told in close-up, not panorama."

Full disclosure: I met McCarter when he was an intern at The New Republic more than 20 years ago, and we have remained friends. I have not communicated with him since I received a review copy of this book, as is my practice.

The story begins with Lippmann working for the socialist mayor of Schenectady, New York in 1912, but he quickly grows disillusioned with the tiny steps they manage to take. "The gap between hope and reality brings him quickly to a crisis: Can he condone this sham exercise in socialism, let alone continue to be a part of it? For the first time in his overachieving life, he finds himself in a predicament with no clear way out." He decides to quit and return to New York City, but his idealism is intact. "Their era is 'bursting with new ideas, new plans, and new hopes,' he [Lippmann] writes later that year. 'The world was never so young as it is today, so impatient of old and crusty things.'"

The sentences quoted above not only disclose a lot about Lippmann, and advance the narrative, they illustrate McCarter's gift as a writer: This entire book is fluid and incisive, detailed and universal.

Back in New York City, Lippmann quickly reconnects with a classmate of his from Harvard, Jack Reed. Reed wants to be a writer and enlists Lippmann in a project that results in a 20,000-word unpublishable essay about their time at Harvard and the radicalism they tried to bring to birth. A tour of familial duty back in Oregon when his father dies gives Reed the space he needs to apply his talents to greater effect, and upon returning to New York, he shares in manuscript form an epic poem he has written about life in Greenwich Village, "A Day in Bohemia." It begins to forge his reputation and create a sense of self-identity for the Village, and young people flock to his flat at 42 Washington Square. Here are some lines that give some flavor of the poem, and of the times:

Now with an easy caper of the mind We rectify the Errors of Mankind; Now with a sharpness of a keen-edged jest, Plunge a hot thunder-bolt in Mammon's breast; Impatient Youth, in fine creative rage, With both hands wrests the quenchless torch from Age, Not as the Dilettanti, who explain Why they have failed, -excuse, lament, complain, Condemn real artists to exalt themselves, And credit their misfortune to the elves;- But to Gods of Strength make Offertory,- And pit our young wits in the race for glory!

Some of the best parts of McCarter's book are the many, many quotes from the protagonists' writings, brimming with verve and idealism, at least as the story begins.

Another text that communicates the ambience of Greenwich Village in these years was the statement that ran on the front page of copies of The Masses:

This magazine is owned and published cooperatively by its editors. It has no dividends to pay, and nobody is trying to make money out of it. A revolutionary and not a reform magazine; a magazine with a sense of humor and no respect for the respectable; frank, arrogant, impertinent, searching for the true causes; a magazine directed against rigidity and dogma wherever it is found; printing what is too naked or true for a moneymaking press; a magazine whose final policy is to do as it pleases and conciliate nobody, not even its readers there is a field for this publication in America.

The statement came from the pen of Max Eastman, the editor, who could certainly attest to the fact that no one was making money off the publication. In the summer of 1912, he had received an envelope in the mail that enclosed a torn piece of paper which read "in its entirety" McCarter notes: "You are elected editor of The Masses. No pay." With a job offer like that, who could say no? Eastman would accept the position and go on to become one of the most committed and unflinching of the young radicals.

No one was more unflinching, however, than Alice Paul. In 1913, she had already spent time in a British prison for leading protests on behalf of women's suffrage, where she began a hunger strike and was force-fed. Returning to the U.S., she joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), which had been pursuing a strategy focused on winning suffrage at the state level. Paul leads a protest for women's suffrage down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington on the eve of President Wilson's inauguration. The protest turned into a fracas, garnering the publicity Paul knew it would. Fourteen days later, Paul is part of a delegation meeting with President Wilson. He is non-committal. Impatient with both Wilson and the more cautious leadership of the NAWSA, Paul founds the National Women's Party and would agitate for a federal amendment granting women the right to vote.

Randolph Bourne is the final young radical to whom the reader is introduced. The same year Paul is leading her protest in Washington, Bourne is getting ready to graduate from Columbia University. He had delayed college to earn money, and at 27 years old, he is nervous about his future. But Bourne's writing career has already kicked off with a bang: As a sophomore, he sent an essay to The Atlantic Monthly, and they not only published it, they kept publishing additional essays by him. He brings out a book of his essays in his senior year, Youth and Life, but he confesses to a friend that he was "never young, and has only partly lived." Deformed by a childhood illness, Bourne is a hunchback, and he writes of himself that he is "a man cruelly blasted by the powers that brought him into the world, in a way that makes him both impossible to be desired and yet cruel irony that wiseMontaigneknew about doubly endowed with desire."

I shall conclude this review tomorrow.

[Michael Sean Winters covers the nexus of religion and politics for NCR.]

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'Young Radicals' chronicles last century's US progressives - National Catholic Reporter (blog)

This was Saturday night in Chicago, at the People's Summit, and as Sanders addressed loyalists from around the country, rows of diehard supporters, many wearing red, chanted and waved placards with at least one banner declaring an intention to "Draft Bernie."

Asking "what comes next" as it pertains to his 2020 plans is a nonstarter with the Vermont independent. The future, as organizers here are quick to argue, is happening now. Coalition-building on the left, fighting to take hold and remake a party Sanders has pointedly refused to formally join, and strategizing ahead of the 2018 midterms are, truly, the work of the day. Projecting out four years is a stickier wicket, one Sanders has assiduously avoided discussing in any meaningful way.

"It's a little bit early to be talking about 2020," a spokesman told CNN over email. "His focus right now is on defeating Trump's disastrous agenda, to defeat the Republican health care bill that would take health care away from 23 million people and on advancing a progressive agenda to help working families across the country."

Sanders might not enjoy the constant queries, but they are not going away, and not simply because nosy narrative merchants in the mainstream media cannot abide -- or sell readers on -- the nuances of movement politics. Sanders' plans are important, as many activists here readily concede, for reasons they learned the hard way, as his campaign became increasingly hamstrung by the limits of its insurgency. For most here, though, falling short in 2016 was only a first step.

"Absolutely, he should run again," said freshman California Rep. Ro Khanna, who unseated a fellow Democrat, eight-term congressman Mike Honda, last year. "If you look at from the perspective of anyone in the past, if they come that close to the nomination, they'd almost be the de facto nominee the next time. I don't think he should be anointed -- we shouldn't make the mistake of 2016 again -- but absolutely he should run."

Khanna made the political case: Sanders, he said, has the vision, the stamina and "trust at a time when people don't trust anyone in politics" -- but also zeroed in on more pragmatic concerns.

"One of the advantages he would have this time is he'll have an infrastructure, (the support of) more elected officials and the apparatus to be strong," Khanna said.

Among the loyalists at the People's Summit, a three-day convention organized by National Nurses United, the most active and vocal pro-Sanders union, there is broad support for another presidential run. And while most would prefer he again fight for the Democratic Party nomination, others are itching for an independent campaign. The "Draft Bernie" group wants Sanders to break away from the Democrats and form a "People's Party," which he would use to launch either his own 2020 bid or as a platform to lift up another progressive national candidate.

Maria Svart, national director of the Democratic Socialists of America, told CNN the organization would support Sanders if chose to run, but wasn't holding its breath waiting for an announcement. She also spoke about the importance of not leaving the decision until too late.

"He needs to build capacity now and build the ground team," Svart said. "He needs to make a plan, to do what he didn't have time to do last time around, which is absolutely necessary this time around."

Unlike in 2015, when Sanders entered the race and began to draw raucous crowds, and 2016, when his suddenly formidable challenge to Hillary Clinton finally faltered, there is now, in effect, a campaign-in-waiting on the left. Sanders' own "Our Revolution" is a formidable political organization, if for no other reason than its vaunted email list. And an increasingly activated and savvy progressive movement would flock to do the grassroots work most candidates would struggle to match.

Still, Jane Sanders is, like her husband, plainly annoyed by the speculation.

"That's exactly the wrong question," she told CNN's Wolf Blitzer last November, days after Trump defeated Clinton. "Nobody cares (about Sanders' 2020 plans) except the political pundits. He is not -- he's concerned about 2017."

Six months later, the realities of the presidential campaign life cycle are beginning to demand a more nuanced response. Sanders' silence on the matter could eventually put off other potential candidates, allies who might not enter if the godfather of the "Berniecrat" movement was lurking on the sidelines.

"I would say that we intend to play a role in the 2020 election," Sanders told CNN during a brief interview on Saturday, adding with a rare fatalist note: "What that is remains to be decided, but nobody should step back. They should be completely engaged now and the leadership will rise. It will emerge."

"I want him to continue to do the work of building a people's movement that is bigger than him," she said, the added with a knowing smile, "And then secondly, yes, I want him to run for president in 2020. Why not?"

Of 2016, Turner said, Sanders simply "needed more time" to match Clinton's organization and reach out to voters.

But there is another clock that might be working against Sanders. Even among devoted supporters here, his age -- Sanders will be 78 when 2020 contests begin -- is a prevailing area of concern.

"I like the idea of him running for president because I think he would do a good job, I just don't think that most of the public will believe that he has the strength and endurance to make it another eight years, let alone four, as president," said Ben Klahn, who organized for Sanders in Michigan.

Klahn recalled a friend telling him recently that she hoped Sanders would "choose someone who really represents him and his ideals and what he stands for and sort of anointing them and having them carry on the movement. To take it from his hands and run with it."

Like who?

"Oh god, I have no idea," he said. "No idea."

Sanders might consider the Democratic Party a mess -- he described its "current model and the current strategy" as an "absolute failure" in a rip-roaring speech Saturday night. But the state of his own movement, though humming along at the grassroots level with a coherence unusual for the left, suffers from at least one very familiar problem: the lack of a bench at the highest echelons.

Were Sanders to stand down, progressives would be met not just with a lack of consensus on who to back in 2020, but few easily named options. Where the liberal center of the party has ambitious elected officials in the mix like Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Kamala Harris of California, to name a few, the progressive field is quieter. Were she to run, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has made inroads with the party establishment, has the bona fides to woo the left, but her decision to endorse Clinton over Sanders is still painful for activists who expected her support.

People for Bernie Sanders co-founder Winnie Wong, one of the lead organizers in Chicago, compared the state of play among progressives with the moderate liberal wing of the party, embodied by the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank run by longtime Clinton ally Neera Tanden.

"CAP has a slate of people that they think maybe will become their candidate," Wong said. "We do not."

"There's a general consensus among all these groups here that there isn't a single candidate that we are uniting behind," she added, "but we would obviously unite behind and organize up behind Bernie."

If they get the chance.

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Progressives consider, or don't, life after Bernie Sanders - CNN

Les Leopold, executive director at The Labor Institute writesWill Progressives Only Talk To Themselves?

For the last generation, progressives have organized themselves into issue silos, each with its own agenda. Survival depends on fundraising (largely from private foundations) based on the uniqueness of ones own silo. Each group must develop its own expertise and activities which distinguish it from other groups. Each needs to proclaim that its issue is the existential threat, be it climate change, police violence, abortion rights or health care. The net result of this Darwinian struggle is a fractured landscape of activity. The creativity, talent and skill are there in abundance, but the coherence and common purpose among groups is not.

Siloed organizational structures also make it extremely difficult to cooperate on a common program to reverse runawayinequality, There is little incentive to form a grand progressive alliance to build what the Sanders campaign, for example, had set in motion. Better to launch your own national effort and claim that it is the center of the organizing universe.

It is therefore not surprising that the two biggest progressive challenges to runawayinequalityin the last decade Occupy Wall Street and the Sanders campaign did not arise from within these siloed organizations. OWS largely grew from a notice in Adbusters, a Vancouver, BC, journal. Most of those who did the occupying at the 900 encampments also did not come from progressive siloed organizations. In fact, the non-profit/NGO community more or less watched from the sidelines.

Similarly, the Sanders campaign also did not emerge from a concerted effort among progressives to create a new politics within the Democratic Party. Rather, it was driven by Bernies own social-democratic vision that he had been espousing for over 40 years, year after year after year. When his effort showed signs of life, progressives broadly divided between the idealists feeling the burn and the pragmatists seeking to back a sure winner, who at least would provide access to progressive ideas.

The advent of Trump certainly has unleashed an enormous amount of progressive activity. In addition to the many sizeable marches, there are now approximately 5,000 Indivisible groups making life miserable for Republican office holders. However, nearly all of this activity is anti-Trump and defensive. There is no common Indivisible national agenda, nor is there a common organization to set a coherent strategic direction.

More importantly, pure anti-Trumpism guarantees we will be talking to the already convinced. By focusing solely on Trump, it becomes next to impossible to reach the Trump voters who also voted for Sanders and Obama.

Some argue that such outreach is a waste of time because there really are not that many Obama-to-Sanders-to-Trump voters. Unfortunately, exit polls do not give us enough data to reasonably estimate the size of this hybrid voting population. But sources inside the United Steelworkers, for example, report that 50 percent of their members who voted, voted for Trump. Given how representative those members are of the broader working class, were probably looking at several million Obama-Sanders-Trump voters.

We do know this: In the state of Michigan there was a 500,000 vote loss from Obama (2012) to Clinton (2016). It was minus 290,000 in Pennsylvania and minus 222,000 in Wisconsin.

Very few, if any of our siloed progressive organizations are targeting these working people. Danger ahead. [...]

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QUOTATION

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. ~Molly Ivins, from her final column, January 11, 2007

TWEET OF THE DAY

BLAST FROM THE PAST

At Daily Kos on this date in 2002No charges against Padilla:

Once upon a time, security agencies needed things like "charges," or "probable cause" to arrest and detain someone. Thanks to the WOT, that's no longer necessary. Case in point: The alleged "dirty bomb" suspect that had the press in titters the last two days. While headlines trumpeted a victorious blow against terror, the government's case against gangbanger Jose Padilla was nothing more than vapor. The latest in this bizarre saga? Rumsfeld now admits that the US is not going to arrest Padilla. They just want to 'question him'.

Yet at the same time, in violation of everything this country and its Constitution stand for, he is being held "indefinitely". This is getting really scary.

Ontoday'sKagro in the Morningshow:Greg Dworkinrounds up the Trump Trainwreck. On the radar: GA-06 andVA-Gov. Trumps trust gap is yooge. Will Republicans skip recess toavoid constituentswork? Latest legal wrangling over emoluments, explained. Caesar? Thats just locker room talk!

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Continued here:
Open thread for night owls: LeopoldWill progressives only talk to themselves? - Daily Kos