A mature movement of the left not only gives people space to change their political positions that life has proved mistaken, but welcomes such changes by them. Assembling a movement of the majority in the interests of the immense majority becomes a sisyphean task without such an attitude.

Know your adversary is an ABC of politics and political struggle. In picking a fight with Pope Leo, Trump obviously forgot, if he ever learned, this rule. The support for the Pope and his message of peace has been overwhelming and from nearly every quarter, save the Republican Party, Fox News, and the MAGA movement.

With each passing day, the fall elections gain in political importance — and not only to the people of our country. It’s not wishful thinking to say that Democrats, notwithstanding the recent decision of the Roberts Court allowing the creation of new Jim Crow maps in the South, could end up controlling the House and the Senate in November. Such an outcome would strategically strengthen the hand of the larger anti-Trump, anti-Maga, anti-billionaire coalition going forward. Not everyone will see it that way. But what else is new?

The rest of us on the democratic, liberal, progressive, and left end of the political spectrum, it seems to me, should embrace the challenge of turning Election Day into a day of popular mass mobilization to the voting booth, with every bit of the political heft as the days of mass actions that preceded it.