We live, simultaneously, in two different worlds. Ultimately, we live in the World of Nature, a world that we did not create and the world upon which all life depends. Most immediately, we inhabit a "human world" that we create ourselves. Because our human world is the result of our own choices and actions, we can say, quite properly, that we live, most immediately, in a “political world.” In this blog, I hope to explore the interaction of these two worlds that we call home.
Gary A. Patton
I was an elected official in Santa Cruz County, California for twenty years, from 1975 to 1995. Now, I am an environmental attorney, practicing law in Santa Cruz County. If you would like to contact me, send me an email at gapatton@mac.com.
The Rise And Fall Of The Artificial State [RECOMMENDED] is the title of a recent book written by my favorite living historian, Jill Lepore. That is Jill Lepore pictured above. The link I have provided to the title of Lepore's book will take you to a YouTube discussion with Lepore. To order the book, click right here. You can also, of course, visit your local library, or obtain the book wherever you normally do that kind of thing. You might want to read the book first, however, before using that online "bookshop" named after a vanishing rainforest.
Since I am mainly a "reader," and only infrequently a "viewer," I have not, personally, viewed the YouTube video to which I have just provided a link. Maybe viewing that video will be enough, but I am encouraging anyone reading this blog posting to READ Lepore's latest book. I consider it to be quite an important book. It documents the "Rise" of the "Artificial State," and then discusses how the "Artificial State" might "Fall." By the way, for any science fiction fans, a lot of the history that Lepore mobilizes in this book is the history of science fiction!
By the time they get to the final chapters, I think that most readers will be rooting for the "Fall," and I confess that I was a little disappointed when I found out that the "Fall" of the "Artificial State," as more or less "predicted" in the title of Lepore's book, is not, in fact, predicted - or even guaranteed - at all.
The "Fall" of the "Artificial State" is a task yet to be accomplished. How to do it?
(1) Find Some Friends
(2) Set Up A Small Group Dedicated to The Task
(3) Meet Frequently (I suggest weekly)
(4) Collaborate with others doing the same
(5) Start practicing "politics" [Note the posters!]
Below, I am providing a quote from Lepore's final chapter, "The Last Days Of The Artificial State." As you read this quotation from the book, you might note the emphasis on what we often call "the environment," and what religious types call "The Creation." The last words of the book, in fact, are a quotation from the Bible, specifically from The Book of Job.
The Artificial State in which a great many humans have begun to live has not promoted their safety and happiness; it is a prison whose walls are comprised of mirrors: glowing screens. In its cells there are no windows that open to the wider world, to sea and sky, forests and valleys, islands and cliffs. From inside, no sound can be heard, not the rustling of animals, not the snapping of branches, not the roar of waves. No tendrils of vines snake their way under the door. No cobwebs gather in the corners. Arendt glimpsed this prison. What is required is to imagine an escape - and then to forge the tools, and summon the resolve, to make that escape....
The democratic governance of technology, instead of technological governance of humanity: that can still happen. The defense of the natural world: that began happening. "Grow tomatoes, not data centers" became a slogan as a backlash against data centers gained momentum in cities and towns and states all over the world, spurring a new environmental movement.
Escaping the Artificial State requires imaging a different future. That can still happen. The defeat of the Artificial State will require the inspection of facts, the exercise of reason, the search for meaning, the reading and study of philosophy and art and history and literature, and even learning the lessons of ancient parables and of modern science fiction.... Don't tether yourself to a computer. Unplug. If you cut down all the trees and all the animals you will die. Using robots to wage wars will always backfire: one day, they will wage war on you.... Never build a wall between yourself and the natural world, but if someone else does, clamber over it....
"Ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee." Job 12:7-9
Bill Gates (you know who he is, right?) is pictured above. He's the guy right in the center of the photo. Gates has written a twelve-page essay warning the world about the impacts of Artificial Intelligence. Gates' basic message is the following: "There Is No Plan."
Gates is concerned that "companies are barreling ahead with the technology with no larger plan for the upheaval it would cause." In his essay, Gates promises to talk to lawmakers in Washington, and to tell them that "you have a chance to act now, before unemployment rises sharply, communities are hurt, and public trust has eroded."
As if to confirm the premise underlying Gates' essay, The Journal ran another article, by Kate Clark, immediately adjacent to its article about the Gates' essay. The Clark article had the following headline: "AI Assistant Instinct Wows Silicon Valley." Clicking that link (and/or the link to the article on Gates) should let you read those articles, even if you are not a subscriber to The Wall Street Journal. The Clark article pretty much says that huge unemployment is a likely outcome, based on what is happening with AI. The competence of AI agents is going to put people (lots of people) out of work. That is what I am gathering from the two articles I am referencing. So, what do we do? If Gates is right (and he probably is), unemployment will, sometime soon, "rise sharply," and the government won't have thought through what our response should be.
I am going to suggest that we become "self-employed," but thinking "collectively," not "individually." There are many things we need to do, and to have done for us (collectively). What if we started recognizing that one major governmental function ought to be to function as an "employment agency," working for all of us, for "we, the people"? If people can find jobs individually - jobs they like, and that support them, that's great. But what if they can't?
I am suggesting that our government, working for all of us - for "we, the people" - should gear up to be able to provide work opportunities for anyone who is not able to find such an opportunity individually. During the "New Deal" years under President Roosevelt, something like that was actually happening, through the Works Progress Administration - the WPA. Even artists and musicians got employed - and photographers. Let's pick up the ball, and make that work again. Do we need people to provide childcare, health care, housing, and maintenance of our public infrastructure at the local, state, and national level? Well, yep. We do. So, let's make sure that our government, working for all of us, provides jobs in those categories, and in other categories where things need to get done, to benefit the public, but where the private market isn't doing the job, and where public agencies are currently underperforming.
If AI turns out to be such a great economic windfall for the corporate and other entities that will employ it, and save money them that would otherwise go to individuals currently employed, then those "profits" can be taxed to be used by the public, for the public.
If that sounds like "self-government," with "self-government" meaning a government that is "of the people, by the people, and for the people," then that's because that is exactly what it is. That's what a genuine "self-government" is all about.
Pictured is John Curtis, a United States Senator from Utah. His recent opinion column in The Wall Street Journal is reproduced below, in its entirety. I am told that even non-subscribers should be able to click this link, and then read Curtis' commentary online, but if that doesn't work, what I provide below does give you Curtis' argument, in full (emphasis added).
I Won’t Change the Filibuster It protects the rights of the minority in the Senate—even when it’s a minority of one.
By John Curtis July 30, 2026
The debate over the filibuster is often misunderstood. Most people think it is about a rule. It isn’t. It is about the absence of a rule. When the Senate was established, the Constitution gave it the authority to create its own rules. The Senate chose not to give itself a mechanism to end debate. Unlimited debate wasn’t an accident or a loophole. It was simply how the Senate operated.
This original design assumed a very different environment from today’s. There were no established political parties as we now know them. No modern leadership structure. Very little media. No mass communication. It was a small group of people sitting in a room, working through issues, knowing that if they wanted to act, they had to reach agreement.
In that setting, if no one could force the end of debate, the only way forward was to work it out. Cloture, which is what we usually mean when we talk about the filibuster today, came much later in the Senate’s history. Eventually the chamber grew, and unlimited debate threatened to bring all business to a permanent halt. While cloture was adopted in 1917 to limit debate, its current 60-vote threshold protects the Senate’s original design in the face of today’s realities by requiring a broad number of members to “work through issues” before passing bills.
This tradition contributed to the Senate’s reputation as the world’s greatest deliberative body. Not because senators speak longer, but because no one can be easily ignored. The structure forces engagement. It requires listening. It pushes ideas to be tested beyond a simple majority. Because of that, individual senators hold real power. This is an important distinction between the Senate and the House.
In the House, power is centralized. Leadership controls the flow of legislation, the terms of debate and often the outcome. Even senior members can have limited influence. I served there and saw how difficult it is for an individual member to shape major legislation.
The Senate operates differently. Because debate isn’t easily cut off, individual senators can’t be dismissed in the same way. A freshman senator can have more practical influence than a long-serving representative. Not because of personality or seniority, but because of how the system is built.
People often picture the filibuster as one senator standing and speaking for hours. That image is incomplete. Senate rules allow senators many opportunities to speak, and debate can continue through a rotation of speakers. It is less about endurance and more about the inability to force a conclusion without broad agreement.
The 60-vote threshold is usually described as protecting the minority party. That framing misses the bigger picture. The minority isn’t just a party. It can be any senator, on any issue, at any time, whose view doesn’t align with the majority. That happens more often than people might think. A senator in the majority may disagree with his own leadership. Under the current structure, that senator can’t easily be overruled and pushed aside.
It protects independence, not just party position. The Senate’s practice of holds is a good example. Any senator can place a hold on legislation. Overcoming that objection often requires 60 votes, which can be difficult to assemble. That gives individual senators the ability to stop or slow a bill—a significant amount of influence for one person.
If the threshold moves to 50 votes from 60, that balance changes. The Senate begins to function more like the House. Individual members lose their ability to stop a bill. Leadership gains the ability to move legislation with a simple majority.
It wouldn’t stop there. If leadership only needs 51 votes, it will organize the Senate accordingly. A rules structure similar to the House would likely follow. That means more control for leaders over what comes to the floor, how it is debated and whether amendments are allowed.
I saw this repeatedly in the House. Committees were bypassed. Debate was limited. Bills were brought forward quickly based on leadership decisions rather than member input. In seven years in the House, I didn’t have a single meaningful opportunity to influence major legislation. In the Senate, and as a freshman, I found myself in the thick of every major piece of legislation.
The 60-vote threshold also plays a role beyond day-to-day legislation. It acts as a check on structural and institutional changes. Decisions on matters such as District of Columbia statehood, federal election law and internal Senate rules aren’t routine policy questions. They shape the system itself. Requiring broader agreement before making those changes adds stability. Without that threshold, those decisions can be made by a simple majority and just as easily reversed by the next. At that point, the Senate would become unrecognizable to our Founders. It would move from a body that requires agreement to one that runs on majority control.
So, the question isn’t simply whether more legislation would pass. It is whether prudence would still be required in lawmaking, whether legislation passed in one Congress would remain law in the next.
Under no circumstance will I support any effort to end or alter the filibuster, as any party that does so wouldn’t be guaranteed survival. Their agenda would be guaranteed death come the next majority.
oooOOOooo
What I would like to highlight, in Curtis' commentary, is his observation that both our House and Senate are ever more subservient (in terms of decision-making) to the "leadership" of the two political parties that now seem to be the only political realities that have any meaning for many Americans.
This situation is profoundly contrary to the system envisioned in our Constitution. In its original design, our government was clearly composed of elected "representatives," who each, individually, took direction from (and whose jobs were subject to control by) a discrete number of citizens who lived in a specific geographic "district." The complexity and variegated nature of the nation was recognized in this system of political accountability, and as both Sasse and Curtis note, this emphasized the need for "compromise," for discussion and then decisions, those decisions representing "deals" between the many different representatives, coming from all over the nation.
The nation was not, then, considered to be either "Red" or "Blue," and citizens in California did not receive massive numbers of fundraising appeals from those representing completely different communities in different states, where the political issues of most importance were absolutely different from the kind of issues that preoccupied those in California. Most of Utah has little in common with Santa Cruz, but if we really only have two choices, politically speaking, then it certainly does make sense for a Senator from Utah to appeal to those "Republicans" who live here, who would, presumably, think that the Utah Republican's political fortunes were of importance to all Republicans, everywhere. Same on the "Democratic Party" side, too, of course.
Our political parties are subservient to corporations and wealthy individuals, and our individual "representatives," whether Democrat or Republican, currently have to conform to what "the Party" says. Same thing is true in state government, too - at least in a place like California. I'm not sure about places like Alaska and Utah.
Are we really prepared to go along with the current system, and to cast aside, in perpetuity, the system contemplated in the Constitution? I'm not a fan of our "party-based" politics, and considering the issue of the filibuster is just one (and a pretty minor) way to begin understanding what has actually happened to us, politically.
I, personally, continue to think that the system laid out in the Constitution is a better bet than what we've got now. When the current president is no longer around, we are all going to have an opportunity either to continue the current "party-based" system of governance, or to figure out how we can restore what I continue to call "democratic (small-d) self-government."
A government that works according to what the Constitution provides is not going to happen without what amounts to a kind of political "revolution." But, hey, we are not allergic to "revolutions," are we, here in the United States of America, 250 years after July 4, 1776?
Jamelle Bouie is a columnist for The New York Times. In its hardcopy version, his column in the Sunday, October 4, 2026, edition of the paper was titled as follows: "All The Money Belongs To Trump." If you click that link, you should be able to read the entirety of what Bouie has to say - and that should be true even if you don't subscribe to The New York Times. Do be advised that a different headline will be presented to you, if you do click that link. The online column, though, is the same one I read in the newsprint version.
The point that Bouie wants to make is this, pointing to a basic failure in our current president's understanding of the job (emphasis added):
Trump’s attempt to seize spending power from Congress is not just about his preferred policies; it is also about his effort to etch himself into the nation’s built landscape with new structures and monuments. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in taxpayer funds are flowing to the president’s ballroom and triumphal arch, among other supposed beautification projects. This is true despite the fact that Congress has yet to make a specific appropriation for Trump’s gaudy revamp of the nation’s capital.
But much of the trouble involves the president treating the public treasury as his own to use as he sees fit. Trump rejects any distinction between himself and the office he holds. The presidency belongs to him, as does the nation itself. (This helps explain why he felt he could remove journalists from the White House. In his mind, they are in his house, accountable only to him.)
And if it all belongs to him, then who is to say that he can’t decide what he wants to spend? Who has the right to tell him anything at all?
As I believe almost everyone actually understands, the nation does not "belong" to our elected president. The White House is not the president's house. The White House is our house. It belongs to us - to the people of the United States of America.
Maybe our current president is suffering from dementia, and truly doesn't understand his role as president. Some have been suggesting that, recently. Maybe he's just a grifter, elevated to high office by what I have labeled a "mistake" on the part of the people. I, personally, find that explanation more plausible. Maybe there is some other explanation.
The explanation is not the main thing to focus on, however - at least in my opinion. When somebody comes into your house, and then starts making radical alterations, without even giving notice, much less asking permission - and when someone starts spending your money for things that haven't been discussed with you, or authorized, you can, politely, try to get whoever that person is to start acting properly.
And if that doesn't work, what then? Well, that's when you throw the bum out!
The "Opinion" page of The Wall Street Journal has recently suggested that we need to "Stop The Shadow Regulators." I'll let you read the entire statement, below. Online, the picture above accompanies The Journal's statement. It suggests, to me, that the "shadow regulator" that The Journal is most worried about is the person currently serving as the President of the United States. Reading the actual text of the Opinion column, though, it appears that The Journal believes that the "Shadow Regulators" most to be decried are former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Legislating is out of fashion in Washington, but the current Congress does have opportunities left to do some good before riding off into the midterm sunset. A big win would be reining in out-of-control shadow regulations.
A bill in the Senate would require executive agencies to publish regulatory guidance to a single, searchable portal. The aim is to introduce more transparency to this practice as a prelude to reforming it. The measure, known as the GOOD Act, has passed the House and a Senate committee and awaits a floor vote.
Agencies already must publish draft regulations to the Federal Register. “Guidance” is different. The term refers to the letters, advisories, online FAQs, interpretations and other administrative flotsam and jetsam that agencies generate to explain how they will interpret laws and rules.
Guidance has become Washington’s preferred alternative to legislating or formal rule-making because it can be done with next to zero formal accountability. The letters and the rest are merely supposed to explain how agencies will use their discretion and aren’t meant to carry the force of law. But in practice few businesses or individuals are willing to challenge government guidance even when it exceeds statutory authority.
Some of the Obama Administration’s most controversial actions were implemented via guidance such as a “Dear Colleague” letter from the Department of Education or a memo from the Secretary of Homeland Security. Examples are its guidance on the DACA program for younger illegal immigrants and to colleges on sexual harassment enforcement.
The Biden Administration used regulatory guidance to intimidate states out of conducting audits of election procedures after 2020. This gimmick also became a mechanism for that Administration to introduce an “equity” requirement into new funding for electric-vehicle charging facilities and to change merger-review rules.
A worrying sign is that it’s impossible to say exactly how common this form of non-regulatory regulation has become. The first Trump Administration tried to create a central register of existing guidance alongside an executive order limiting agencies’ use of the tactic. That register counted some 70,000 examples.
The Biden Administration quickly ditched that reform in 2021. During the Biden years, guidance outstanding swelled to some 108,000 examples, according to Clyde Wayne Crews Jr. of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. These are likely undercounts given how hard it is to pin down exactly what counts as “guidance.” The huge spending bills of recent years are invitations to more regulation-by-guidance as agencies set rules for vaguely defined new government programs.
The Senate Guidance Out of Darkness Act [the GOOD Act] would take a first step to control this runaway regulation by creating a central portal where agencies would have to register regulatory guidance. That would tee up future deregulation because you can’t reform a mess like this until you measure it. That makes this a win for Republicans if they want one.
I personally agree that making it easier for ordinary people (the "regulated") to know what the government is doing and demanding is quite important, and while I haven't actually read the "GOOD Act," I like the idea outlined in the Opinion statement I have quoted above. While The Wall Street Journal is a "conservative" paper, and generally supports "Republican" ideas and programs, I don't think this issue of governmental secrecy is a "partisan" issue, whatsoever.
While I do think that governmental regulations should stand in the light, and not be veiled in "darkness," and thus like the idea of more regulatory transparency, I would like to advance an even more "radical" proposition. Here it is: We, the people, should be able to see, and evaluate, almost ANY information possessed by our government.
I don't want the so-called "nuclear codes" to be published for all to see, but I do think that we can't really have anything that deserves to be called "self-government" unless "we, the people," have access to the same information that our elected representatives (including the president) and our governmental employees are using to make their decisions.
And... just to address that "nuclear codes" issue, please do click on the link provided in the paragraph above, and notice that we are being told that, "The U.S. President has sole authority to authorize the use of U.S. nuclear weapons."
So, do we agree that it makes sense for our supposedly "self-governing" people to have decided to let one person make a decision that would, quite likely, lead to nuclear war, without sharing with all of us exactly what has led that person to make that call?
"We, the people" should be in charge. To the degree that we have, in the past, thought that it was appropriate to give power to one person (the person who happens currently to be serving as the President, whoever that is), the ability to bring down a nuclear attack upon the nation, and all of us, without ever sharing what information might make reasonable people think that this is, in fact, a good idea, we are abandoning the whole idea of "self-government."
I am not ready to do that. I hope nobody reading this blog posting thinks that "we, the people" shouldn't have the right to access the same information that our delegated representatives have, so that decisions about things like starting a nuclear war, or cutting off food stamp assistance, and any and every other decision taken in our name, is completely available to every one of us.
To my mind, the "Guidance Out Of Darkness Act" needs to be expanded, radically, and "we, the people," should have the ability to know everything that our elected representatives (including the president) know.
And just to be clear, I am not in agreement with any plan to "annihilate" the Republic of Iran, and I can't think of any information that could possibly convince me otherwise.
I have written at least two blog postings focusing on Octavia Butler. She is pictured above.
On September 17, 2023, I wrote a blog posting about Butler's book, Parable Of The Sower. If you click that link to the title, as just provided, you can read what the publisher says about that book:
The radically speculative odyssey of a young Black woman in a post-apocalyptic America and the community she cultivates despite the horrors of climate change and social inequality.
On April 17, 2024, my blog posting was titled, "A Terrifying Warning." That blog posting also referenced Parable Of The Sower, and here is a brief excerpt (you can read the blog posting in its entirety, if you'd like to do that, by clicking the link to "A Terrifying Warning"):
We need to "find some friends," bond with them, person to person, in real life, and turn our attention, with those friends we find, to what we need to do, now - what we should do in a world transformed by our actions in the past.
What should we do? What can we do? What is going to be possible for us - not waiting for someone else to tell us what to do? What do we need to do, in this world in which we now realize we are living, with the boulder rolling down the mountain?
Find some friends. Give up your old plans, premised on the idea that things have not changed. Things have changed....
Make a new plan, friends! Do some things you haven't done before; do them with the friends you find; do some things you think will help.
As you may note from what I have written out, above, the phrase I most closely associate with Butler, and with her wonderful book, Parable Of The Sower, is this one - a phrase I repeat frequently in my daily blog postings: "Find Some Friends." The phrasing of that admonition, by the way, is my phrasing, not Butler's.
Well, I am happy to report that the book club to which my wife belongs has decided to read Parable Of The Sower. The group will discuss the book in one of its upcoming, monthly meetings. My wife, in anticipation, has now read the book (which she hadn't read before), and she commented to me that the ending was "sad." That was her reaction.
I am not a member of my wife's book club, so I won't be in attendance when the group discusses the book. To my mind, though, the end of the book (which closes with the full text of the "Parable Of The Sower," from the Bible) is infinitely hopeful, not "sad," at all.
Here is the parable at the end of Butler's book. See what you think (emphasis added):
A sower went out to sow his seed:
and as he sowed, some fell by the
way side; and it was trodden down,
and the fowls of the air devoured
it. And some fell upon a rock; and
as soon as it was sprung up, it
withered away because it lacked
moisture. And some fell among
thorns; and the thorns sprang up
with it, and choked it. And others
fell on good ground, and sprang up,
and bore fruit an hundredfold.
Find Some Friends, I Say, And Let Us Sow Our Seeds
This is a "Sunday Sermon," I think, fit for the distressing and terrifying times in which we live.
At the bottom of this blog posting, I am including a complete copy of the editorial statement written by Katrina Vanden Heuvel and John Nichols, and published in the September 2026, edition of The Nation magazine. I want even non-subscribers to be able to read the editorial in its entirety, but here's the part I want particularly to highlight (emphasis added):
Too many Democratic Party leaders in recent years have complacently mounted campaigns that address legitimate fears of Republican hegemony, yet fail to offer a bolder vision that speaks to the most powerful of all incentives to vote: hope. We’re not talking about vapid “It’ll all work out in the end” optimism or, worse yet, the dismissive “Just trust us” messaging of old-school politicians. We’re talking about a radical hope that lives can be made dramatically better by movements that recognize and embrace Patti Smith’s promise that “people have the power…to dream, to rule, to wrestle the earth from fools.” This is the prospect that FDR entertained when he dramatically expanded the Democratic coalition by proposing a New Deal that pundits dismissed as extreme—even socialistic—but that the electorate embraced as essential. This is what Barack Obama understood when he had the audacity to call a divided nation to “come together as a single American family. ‘E pluribus unum.’ Out of many, one.” And this is what the Rev. Jesse Jackson was talking about four decades ago when he pleaded for a new Democratic politics based on the idea that “if you raise up truth, it’s magnetic. It has a way of drawing people.”
Anyone who has read my daily blog postings with any regularity knows that I don't think that "voting," by itself, is what will ultimately save our system of self-government. "Self-government" means a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" - the kind of government that Abraham Lincoln talked about.
A government by the people requires that "the people," which means you and me, must be personally involved with the process of governing. The practical name for that is "politics." If we, as citizens, are not ourselves engaged in the process of choosing (and then disciplining) our elected representatives, we aren't doing what "democracy" and self-government actually require. What democracy and self-government require is more than mere "voting" once every two or four years. They require our personal involvement all year round - every year!
That said, "voting" is still key. It's central. It's the main way that most of us can, and do, engage in the process of self-government.
It also happens to be true that we don't vote, and we won't vote, if we don't think that it makes a damn bit of difference. We will engage in "politics" only if we have a well-founded and legitimate expectation and belief that our political involvement (our vote and our other political work) will make a difference.
Patti Smith sings, "the people have the power," as The Nation's editorial notes. But is that true?
Well, it is true! Listen to her sing it. We do have the power. But we have to believe in our power if we're going to use it.
One more time: Using our power is what puts us in actual charge, but we won't actually "use" the power we have unless we believe that using it will make a difference.
Therefore.....
Believe!
oooOOOooo
Insurgents Are Revitalizing the Democratic Party
To hear the DC insiders tell it, insurgent socialists and progressive firebrands are wrecking the Democratic Party. Don’t believe it. The insurgency that swept across the United States during the spring and summer of 2026, with its spike in voter turnouts and headline-grabbing primary results for young candidates who are challenging entrenched incumbents, is not, as some would have you believe, undermining the world’s oldest political party in this critical midterm-election year. The insurgency is revitalizing it. And if established party leaders don’t screw things up—by echoing Republican talking points about a “dangerous” left, or by opting for caution when the electorate is calling for action—this revitalization has the potential to build a vibrant coalition of Democratic base voters and legions of younger, more diverse, and newly registered ones. If it is sufficiently bold and innovative, strategic and inclusive, this coalition can do more than simply check and balance Donald Trump, by giving Democratic candidates and economic-populist independents control of the House and the Senate and key governorships nationwide. In the run-up to the 2028 presidential election, it can merge Democratic candidacies and movement energy into a political force capable of finally realizing the deferred dreams of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Economic Bill of Rights and the Freedom Budget for All Americans that A. Philip Randolph and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. advanced as an essential extension of the civil-rights revolution of the 1960s.
Too many Democratic Party leaders in recent years have complacently mounted campaigns that address legitimate fears of Republican hegemony, yet fail to offer a bolder vision that speaks to the most powerful of all incentives to vote: hope. We’re not talking about vapid “It’ll all work out in the end” optimism or, worse yet, the dismissive “Just trust us” messaging of old-school politicians. We’re talking about a radical hope that lives can be made dramatically better by movements that recognize and embrace Patti Smith’s promise that “people have the power…to dream, to rule, to wrestle the earth from fools.” This is the prospect that FDR entertained when he dramatically expanded the Democratic coalition by proposing a New Deal that pundits dismissed as extreme—even socialistic—but that the electorate embraced as essential. This is what Barack Obama understood when he had the audacity to call a divided nation to “come together as a single American family. ‘E pluribus unum.’ Out of many, one.” And this is what the Rev. Jesse Jackson was talking about four decades ago when he pleaded for a new Democratic politics based on the idea that “if you raise up truth, it’s magnetic. It has a way of drawing people.”
The progressive gospel that Jackson preached in his Rainbow Coalition campaigns of the 1980s, and that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders outlined in his 2016 and 2020 presidential bids, laid the groundwork for what a new generation of candidates and activists propose today. They are speaking confidently about enacting Medicare for All, taxing the rich, ending poverty, protecting immigrants, and changing our foreign policy. They are remaking American politics and policymaking—as the July vote by 103 House Democrats (including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi) to end US aid to Israel demonstrated. What Politico described as a “seismic shift” in the party and in Congress is taking place because voters all over the country are demanding a new politics.
After a trio of insurgents—Democratic Socialists of America members Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier and veteran progressive Brad Lander—swept New York’s Democratic primaries in June, Mayor Zohran Mamdani was mocked for his claim that democratic socialists with working-class economics and values-driven agendas “can get elected anywhere across this country for any position.” Less than a week later, 29-year-old DSA member Melat Kiros defeated a 15-term incumbent in a Colorado House primary. That same day, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who pledged to stand up to corporate monopolies on behalf of workers, farmers, and consumers, overcame a 30-point deficit in the polls to beat a sitting senator in the state’s primary for governor. Weiser’s win shocked the Democratic leadership and his own progressive supporters, whom he heard asking on primary night, “Can I really believe again?”
It’s not just that Democrats can believe again. They must.
The Democratic brand as it’s been defined by its congressional leaders is unpopular, even among Democrats. It doesn’t have to be that way. The party can become every bit as appealing, and electable, as it has ever been. But that won’t happen if control over its future remains in the hands of the people who spoiled the brand in the first place.
Democratic voters know that the party needs a new direction, and they are forging it by nominating candidates such as US Representative Analilia Mejia, a key aide to Sanders during his 2020 presidential bid whose February special-election victory in a suburban New Jersey district shocked commentators. “People will say that this district is not the kind of district in which a progressive or a lefty could win. But it’s not about left/right,” Mejia, the sole candidate in a crowded Democratic-primary field to call Israel’s assault on Gaza a genocide, said on election night. “It’s about right and wrong.”
By choosing candidates like Mejia, who easily won her general election, Democratic-primary voters are charting a new course. They know—better than many party leaders, it seems—that it is necessary to remake the party as a popular movement for economic, social, and racial justice, for saving the planet, and for a foreign policy that chooses human rights and diplomacy over bloated Pentagon budgets and forever wars.
That gap between the electorate and party leaders has led to this dynamic and sometimes contentious moment. Media outlets are paying attention to Democratic primaries and scrutinizing the results from Maine to California, Pennsylvania to Texas. Right-wing publications like the New York Post run articles warning about dire consequences for Democrats as a result of a “socialist takeover.” Former Clinton-administration commerce secretary William Daley—whose centrist choice for Illinois’s March Senate primary got crushed by a progressive contender—complained that “this far-left socialist, some call ‘progressive,’ part of society [is] basically trying to take over the Democratic Party.” Leaders of Third Way, the DC think tank that puts a contemporary spin on the neoliberal agenda of the old Democratic Leadership Council (DLC)—which Jackson called “Democrats for the Leisure Class”—warn that “the DSA’s radicalism makes it not a faction to be appeased; it is a movement to be opposed.”
But voters don’t see it that way. They are open to candidates—be they democratic socialists such as Pennsylvania House nominee Chris Rabb, or progressives like Minnesota Senate candidate Peggy Flanagan, or old-school economic populists like Troy Jackson in Maine and Sherrod Brown in Ohio—who break with status quo politics. That’s not surprising. Remember: Bernie Sanders represents a rural state and was the first non-Republican to win his Vermont Senate seat since the 1850s; and some of the most progressive members of Congress, such as Wisconsin’s Mark Pocan, represent urban, suburban, and rural districts. And look at the polling analyses from groups like the Center for Working-Class Politics, which remind us that “championing progressive economic policies can reverse the exodus of blue-collar voters from the party” and that “contrary to what many might expect, the working class has become both more progressive on economic issues and less conservative on social issues in recent decades.”
Instead of getting distracted by the establishment’s hand-wringing, Democrats should recognize a moment of renewal and potential. The party suffered devastating defeats in 2024, in part because of an enthusiasm gap among its core constituencies, and in greater part because of its failure to engage with the disaffected potential voters who will be essential to a robust governing coalition. Yet now it is suddenly experiencing what the CNN data analyst Harry Enten describes as a “supercharging” moment. A July Washington Post/Ipsos poll, conducted amid the hype about upheaval in the party, found that Democrats had a 10-point advantage over Republicans when it came to voter enthusiasm. That was eight points better than in 2018—the “blue wave” midterm-election year that saw seven governorships and at least 40 House seats flip to the Democrats. “And,” the Post noted, “more than seven in 10 Democrats say it is ‘more important’ to vote in 2026 than in previous midterm elections, compared with just over half of Republicans.” Of course, voters are eager to cast ballots against Republicans who back Trump, but they’re also eager to cast them for a bolder, better Democratic Party.
Jesse Jackson saw this moment coming. “If we lift up a program to feed the hungry, they’ll come running. If we lift up a program to study war no more, our youth will come running,” he declared as he sought to forge a new Democratic politics. “If we lift up a program to put America back to work, and an alternative to welfare and despair, they will come working.”
In 1984, Jackson surmised that the people have the power to change a party and a nation. In 2026, a new Democratic coalition—fueled by the energy of a dynamic multiracial, multiethnic progressive insurgency—can prove him right.
Americans have come to accept the idea that our government should be allowed to have lots of secrets - secrets from all of us, citizens of the United States of America, who are, supposedly, actually in charge of the government.
How can we citizens actually be "in charge" of a government that decides that it will make its operations "secret"?
The secrets that Ellsberg was most concerned about were the secret plans of the United States Government to initiate a nuclear war that would end up killing about 600,000,000 people, and that would, probably, bring on a "Nuclear Winter" that would kill a lot more (and maybe everybody on the planet). Ellsberg did not share those nuclear war plans in his book, but he indicated that he knew what they said, and that he was not sanguine about the future of humanity, precisely because he knew about those plans.
Well, here's a story about government secrecy that is a lot less threatening than the secrets that Ellsberg was talking about. I am speaking of the revelation that a CIA agent, David Rush, was able to conceal the fact that he stole "more than 600 pounds of gold bars, together with more than $2 million in cash and dozens of Rolexes and other luxury watches." You can read all about this in a story in the June 17, 2026, edition of The Wall Street Journal. The story is titled, "A $40 Million Gold Heist Risks Exposing CIA’s Top-Secret Spy Programs."
Are we, the self-governing people that we profess to be, ready to stop allowing people who (supposedly) work for us to decide that they can hide the government activities that they are undertaking, and that they think should be secret?
I am raising my hand! Considering the challenges ahead, I think that everyone in the world would be better off if we all knew about whatever those government secrets are that the people who are (supposedly) working for us think we shouldn't get to know about!
Think about this. Making all government information available to the people, as a matter of right, is actually a really "radical" idea. Just about as radical as the idea that ordinary people should be in charge of the government, instead of subject to it!
As a member of the Sierra Club, I regularly receive a hardcopy version of its quarterly magazine, Sierra. If you click this link, you should be able to access the Fall 2026 edition of the magazine in its digital format. I particularly liked an article that begins on page 35, entitled "The Support Group." The article is by Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan, who begins the article with this personal recollection:
If we avoid that "most odious pronoun" that I have written about, and stop thinking only in individualistic terms, we will recognize that we have much to do in this country, and not enough people to do what needs to be done. Not in terms of those who are paid full time wages, anyway. Environmental restoration work is one category of work that the article brings to mind. There are lots of others, too. Childcare. Senior Care. Education. Various municipal services.
What if we organized ourselves to make it possible for "volunteers," to do much of what needs to be done? Elizabeth Kwak-Heffernan's article made me think that this could work. I hope anyone reading this blog posting will go on to read her article, to see if they might agree.
That "volunteers" could actually accomplish many things that we need to do, and that we're not doing now, is really a hopeful thought, and Jesse Jackson's admonition rings true to me. Let's "Keep Hope Alive."
We face an incredible number of daunting challenges - and we have so many incredibly positive opportunities, too. Let's think about how we can create and sustain the kind of "Support Groups" that are helping to protect and preserve our public lands, and expand our idea about what we can, collectively, achieve.
Connor Lounsbury is a Democratic media consultant. Before that, though, he was an actor. In an opinion column that ran in the August 26, 2026, edition of The New York Times, Lounsbury says that "Democrats Need To Learn How To Act." That is the hardcopy version of the headline on his column. Online, Lounsbury's thoughts are described by the following headline: "Great Actors Are More Believable Than Democrats." Jon Ossoff and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, pictured above, are Democratic candidates who get Lounsbury's seal of approval. They've both got "presence," he says, which is the most important thing.
Here's the quote from Lounsbury's column that has stimulated my blog posting today (emphasis added):
Democrats’ debates about messaging and ideology are our beautiful lies — not because they are false but because they allow us to avoid our real problems. We are focused on the symptoms of apathy, not the apathy itself. When Hamlet asks, “To be, or not to be?” he is deciding whether to take action in spite of his suffering or check out entirely. It’s the same choice Democrats face today.
You can read the entirety of Lounsbury's column if you'd like to hear what he has to say about Democratic Party politics at this critical time in our national history. I'd like to comment on the more "existential question" posed by Shakespeare (you know, "to be, or not to be?"). As the quote above should make clear, Lounsbury thinks that question is pertinent to us all, right now, and I do, too.
I am not saying that typical partisan politics is not important, though I'm not a big "party" guy. What I am saying is that the question facing the nation, and facing all of us, who are supposedly in charge, is whether we will be "actors" in the sense of "taking action," or whether we will be "spectators," who don't believe ourselves to be "on stage," but rather identify with the audience, sitting in their comfortable, or perhaps not so comfortable, seats.
"To be, or not to be" is the true and existential question that faces us all, as we contemplate our lives, and as we determine what our lives mean, and what role we have in our own lives, with the basic and binary choice already described. Are we "actors" or "spectators"? As Shakespeare puts it in Hamlet, we do need to make a fundamental choice and decision about just that question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them.
So, what is it going to be, friends? Are we just going to get up each day to face those "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," as we contemplate the latest actions of our current president, and his largely incompetent cronies, or are we going to "take up arms" (meaning getting personally engaged in the struggle)?
There is no doubt what's needed - and particularly if we want to side with Abraham Lincoln, and make sure that a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" does not "perish from this earth."
"Our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." That's the way our Declaration of Independence puts it. Our money, our time, and all our lives. That is what is at stake. That is what we need to put out there, on the table, if we want to preserve self-government in the United States of America. That's the kind of "acting" we need, and there is enough time for your action, and mine, to make a difference, before November 3rd!
Megan Fluke, pictured above, is one of my "Facebook Friends." She was a nonprofit Executive Director and worked in both the nonprofit and public sectors for over twenty years. I know her best as the past Executive Director of Green Foothills. Now, Megan provides nonprofits and public agencies with consulting, coaching, facilitation, and mediation. Here is one of Megan's recent Facebook postings, which I saw on June 17, 2026 (emphasis added):
For a long time, I thought being authentic meant being unfiltered.
Raw. Telling it like it is.
That definition left me constantly at war with myself.
If raw = real, then who was I when I was thoughtful? Polished? More curated? Was the professional version of me a performance? Was the tired, unguarded version the truth?
I didn't know who the "real me" actually was.
Then my coach said something that changed everything: "Author and authenticity come from the same root word. You. Get. To. Create. Who. You. Are."
Authenticity isn't about letting whatever happens, happen. It's about being the originator of yourself. Choosing your values. Tending your character. Deciding how you want to show up.
That's a very different thing than just being unfiltered.
I've stopped trying to figure out who the "real me" is — and started making choices about who I want to be....
What are you writing in the book of you today?
This is very good advice. It is, I think, actually the same advice that I have been providing in many of my daily blog postings since 2010. To know what's "real," what "is," we must understand that our basic role is not to "observe." Rather, our role is to "act."
That principle also applies when we consider ourselves, and wonder who we really "are." There may be a temptation to think that we might be able to discover who "we are" by self-observation, but Megan Fluke tells us otherwise. The "authentic" me (or you) is the me, or you, we choose to be. We are the "authors" of our own selves. The same thing is true when we want to know what "reality" actually is. We are the authors of the "Political World" which we share with everyone else, and in which we most immediately reside.
I am not saying that self-observation is not valuable or important. It is! But as to who we "are," we find out who we are by deciding what to do - by acting, not by looking in the mirror (either a "real" mirror, on our wall, or the "metaphorical mirror" that we so often consult as if we discovered ourselves by reflection). That's what Megan Fluke is talking about, and she is right on target!
