Barely faint praise for Hillary

The failure of too many on the left to acknowledge – even in a quiet voice and bland tone – that a huge glass ceiling was shattered for the FIRST time in our nation’s history on Tuesday night when Hillary Clinton won the Democratic Party nomination reveals little about Hillary, but speaks volumes about too large a section of the left. Namely, it brings to the surface its shortcomings on issues of gender, equality, and democratic rights. But also its one sidedness and lack of complexity in its analysis, its tendency to collapse everything into categories of class, its penchant to think that role of the left is to turn up the temperature and stake out the most radical position in every circumstance, and, not least, its inability to think strategically (that is to understand that political struggles issue from a very concrete study of the exact balance and dynamics of class and social forces operating at any given moment).