Recently in Politics Category

Progressive writers and pundits -- myself included -- have fallen into the habit of defining the suite of comprehensive health care, labor, and social insurance policies necessary to promote shared prosperity and social inclusion in America as the "Next New Deal." First and foremost, this rubric refers to the dire need to restore a collective commitment to public spending in the United States in order to foster economic and social conditions that support a functional democracy. But it also draws on the understanding that real progress demands political courage and "new" thinking -- a conscious, if not complete, rejection of political beliefs and practices that have historically exacerbated disparities in wellbeing and opportunity between the nation's haves and have-nots.

AlterNet posted a series of interesting and intelligent perspectives on feminism, women, and the vote yesterday -- and I'm not saying that just because I wrote one of the pieces. (For the record, the original headline I submitted was "Trust Women?: What If We Elect the First Woman President of the United States, and She Sucks?) What's enlightening about the articles -- which include commentaries from Laura Flanders of The Nation and Kimberle Williams Crenshaw with Eve Ensler, plus an excellent overview of the points of conflict by Jill Filipovic -- is that each writer questions the feminist "mandate" to vote for Hillary from a different angle, but all call for a more nuanced understanding of feminist values and goals.