Ross, nicely done, as usual, and I've appreciated your history on Wellstone. Was going to compliment you on the earlier piece. And I'll send this on to some of my old lefty friends. Which brings me to my point. Back in the day, I was an intern for the SPD in Bonn. Helmut Schmidts party. Hamburg's (maternal family home) party. That party …
Ross, nicely done, as usual, and I've appreciated your history on Wellstone. Was going to compliment you on the earlier piece. And I'll send this on to some of my old lefty friends. Which brings me to my point. Back in the day, I was an intern for the SPD in Bonn. Helmut Schmidts party. Hamburg's (maternal family home) party. That party has sunk into near complete irrelevance, and may not survive. You mention 50,000 people organized. That's a tiny number in the US context. By way of comparison, there are roughly 20,000 car dealerships, each employing something like 69 people . . .
Similarly, the ideology here is thin, and blaming "neoliberalism" isn't enough. I just don't think mid-20th century understandings of political economy underlying so called "progressive" (that's another weird story, historically speaking) politics can work. Concerns for social solidarity, in short, need to be rearticulated, which is admittedly a big ask. Political imaginations don't change all that often. So what would a contemporary effort to politically articulate solicitude for our fellows look like?
I've done a fair amount of work with what I call "social capitalism," (sometimes confusingly, I'm told) probably should do more. You might find this of interest:
Ross, nicely done, as usual, and I've appreciated your history on Wellstone. Was going to compliment you on the earlier piece. And I'll send this on to some of my old lefty friends. Which brings me to my point. Back in the day, I was an intern for the SPD in Bonn. Helmut Schmidts party. Hamburg's (maternal family home) party. That party has sunk into near complete irrelevance, and may not survive. You mention 50,000 people organized. That's a tiny number in the US context. By way of comparison, there are roughly 20,000 car dealerships, each employing something like 69 people . . .
Similarly, the ideology here is thin, and blaming "neoliberalism" isn't enough. I just don't think mid-20th century understandings of political economy underlying so called "progressive" (that's another weird story, historically speaking) politics can work. Concerns for social solidarity, in short, need to be rearticulated, which is admittedly a big ask. Political imaginations don't change all that often. So what would a contemporary effort to politically articulate solicitude for our fellows look like?
I've done a fair amount of work with what I call "social capitalism," (sometimes confusingly, I'm told) probably should do more. You might find this of interest:
https://telospress.libsyn.com/episode-30-david-a-westbrook-on-social-capitalism (audio)
As always, keep up the great work.