Progressive Stacey Abrams won a landslide victory in the Georgia gubernatorial primary over ‘moderate’ Democrat Stacey Evans. And the win shows the Democratic base is ready for a break with centrism in favor of bold, leftist politics. Abrams ran on a platform of expanding Medicaid, passing a living wage, protecting voting rights, opposing school privatization, and enacting criminal justice reform. Importantly, she also ran on growing the electorate by going after working-class people of color,

As North Korea’s Kim Jong-un threatens to call off historic peace talks with the United States over joint US-South Korean military exercises, one thing should be painfully obvious: Donald Trump’s aggressive ‘maximum pressure’ campaign is an utter failure. Trump’s warmongering rhetoric pushed the Korean Peninsula to the brink of war in 2017. Many saw his ‘fire and fury’ comments in August of that year, for example, as a needless provocation at a time of heightened tensions. North Korea spent th

After two crushing progressive defeats in Democratic primaries in Ohio and West Virginia, ‘centrist’ Democrats have renewed their attacks on left-wing challengers as unelectable. But lost in the debate is the huge role money plays in making these ‘Democratic’ contests quite undemocratic. Take the gubernatorial race between the former head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Richard Cordray, and former Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich ran a bold, leftist campaign against a mor

We need to talk about a troubling trend in US politics. Wealthy businessmen, no longer happy with just funding political campaigns, are now running for office themselves. The latest is Don Blankenship. The former coal executive spent a year in federal prison after a deadly explosion at one of his mines exposed safety violations. Now, he’s running for senate in West Virginia. Blankenship started the campaign as a way to rebuild his image. But the money he poured into television ads turned his p

As we head into the 2018 midterms, the US left remains divided on an important question: what to do about the Democrats? Should we stick with the party or try to form a new one? Both options, #DemEnter and #DemExit, offer strong opportunities for growth, but both have serious drawbacks. Only a combined strategy – working within the Democratic Party where necessary and outside the party where possible – offers the best hope of seeing a strong left in the US. Since the Bernie Sanders campaign in

CIA director Mike Pompeo’s nomination as Secretary of State could go down in history as the first top diplomat to be confirmed after failing to get the public support of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And if he is confirmed, Pompeo will have one or more conservative Democrats to thank for it. Pompeo needs at least one Democrat to vote for his confirmation, because Republican senator Rand Paul has already come out against him. And unless Republican senator John McCain comes back quickly

US House speaker Paul Ryan has announced he won’t seek reelection in November. And the move spells disaster for Republicans in the House already facing tough midterm elections. Ryan’s announced retirement has sent political shockwaves from Washington all the way back to his Wisconsin congressional district. Ryan’s likely Democratic opponent, union ironworker Randy Bryce, was already within single digits of Ryan in an internal poll. He also raised an impressive $2.1m in the first three months o

It’s that time of year again when politicians and pundits alike pretend to champion the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr while not making clear exactly what they think that legacy is. But even as conservatives and ‘centrists’ try, and fail, to make themselves seem like heirs to King’s movement, activists are organizing to make his radical dream a reality. On the 50th anniversary of King’s assassination, conservatives have latched onto him in generic terms, whitewashing his radical socialist visi

US politicians continue to plot power grabs. But now, the Supreme Court is hearing from angry voters on the issue, and could make a real difference. The Supreme Court will weigh in on partisan redistricting for the second time this term. This time, the case comes from a state where Democrats hold the edge. The plaintiffs in the case, seven Republican voters in Maryland, say Democratic politicians violated their their First Amendment rights by targeting them for removal from their district base

Donald Trump’s appointment of neocon war hawk John Bolton as national security adviser on 22 March has sparked worldwide alarm. And it should put the final nail in the coffin of a bad idea – making it clear that left-wingers will never find common cause with supposedly anti-war right-wing nationalists. The appointment sent shockwaves around the world. European, South Korean and Japanese allies all fear the Bolton nomination signals that Washington has war in mind. National security experts are