Last weekend’s speeches by President Obama in support of two Democratic gubernatorial candidates, one in Virginia and the other in New Jersey, once again demonstrated how much his voice matters in the all consuming struggle against Trump and MAGA.

Trump’s numbers in public opinion polls are under water and getting worse. And yet with the midterm elections coming into view, he plows ahead with no adjustments to his neofascist agenda that might reverse his sinking popularity. While there is more than one reason to explain his refusal to alter his administration’s present course, one that figures large in his political calculus is the likely willingness of the not so “Supreme” Court and his servile MAGA party to gerrymander state election maps before the midterms to decisively favor the Republican Party Congressional candidates next year.

Unlike the European experience where the communists and socialists comprised the leadership element of the popular front against fascism, the popular front (I prefer peoples coalition) here during the Depression years had at its core the Roosevelt administration and the CIO and its member unions. The left in general and the communists in particular were organically embedded in that coalition and the surge of mass struggles from below of those times. Today circumstances are different in many ways. Nevertheless much can be learned from that experience, including the imperative of unity, not least multi-racial uniity.