Shadi and Damir have been circling a question for weeks: is the American left’s moment real? To find out, they invited Sam Adler-Bell, co-host of Know Your Enemy and a socialist since it was, in his words, about as fashionable as collecting model trains.

Radicalism keeps outperforming caution. Sam admits he used to advise against using the socialist label, against making Gaza a litmus test, against letting the movement’s fringe run loose — and history embarrassed him each time. So should the left keep pressing?

Damir hears something ominous in the pattern. Maybe these positions won because the whole country has slipped into a revolutionary mood, right and left together, and the adults in the room are simply gone.

Shadi wants to know whether a movement can inherit the future while losing working-class and black voters, the constituencies it claims to speak for. The Democratic establishment gets a vote too, and Michigan is where it plans to cast it.

Required Reading:

* Sam’s July 4th tweet. (X)

* Know Your Enemy, Sam’s podcast with Matthew Sitman. (Patreon)

* Zohran Mamdani’s July 4th speech.

* Bhaskar Sunkara on Ross Douthat’s Interesting Times. (New York Times)

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Is the Left's Moment Really Real This Time?

Wisdom of Crowds

Is the Left's Moment Really Real This Time?