Blue Monday Archives - Public Seminar

Blue Monday

Anti-Semitism at the Bard Conference?

When early reports don’t tell the whole story about a protest

October 14, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

This is why I re-posted a powerful piece by Batya Ungar-Sargon entitled “I Was Protested at Bard College for Being a Jew” (Forward, October 12 2019) on Facebook. In the piece Ungar-Sargon reported that she was protested “for being a Jew” because a panel discussion on anti-Semitism featuring her and ...

Blue Monday

The Trump “Whistleblower” Situation Is Very Dangerous for Democracy and for the Democrats

Biden’s disingenuousness is no match for Trump

September 23, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Do the recent revelations by investigative journalists at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and most notably the Wall Street Journal represent an “inflection point,” exposing a level of malfeasance and criminality that can no longer be ignored? Perhaps. It is too early to tell. But the record of the past seems pretty ...

Blue Monday

Warren is Not Too Late

Of course Jacobin prefers Sanders, but this does not make him the obvious candidate of the broad democratic left

September 16, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Kilpatrick and Sunkara’s argument is complicated, and somewhat convoluted (they say “paradoxical”), and boils down to this: while Warren is passe because her vision is grounded in the failed promises of financial regulation under the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama that can be traced back to the politics ...

Blue Monday

Is “Motherfucker” The Concept Political Science Now Needs?

An Immodest Proposal

September 9, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Is “Motherfucker” the concept that political science now needs? The question is a serious one. And the answer, I suggest in all seriousness, is “yes.” Kind of. We live in troubled times. The June 16, 2018 cover of The Economist stated the trouble clearly: “How strongmen subvert democracy.” The September/October cover of Foreign Affairs also puts it well: “Autocracy Now.” But ...

Blue Monday

Putting Trump’s Racism in its Place

One More Reason Why AOC Should Be the Face of the Democratic Party’s Future

August 12, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

A naïve reader might read this and imagine that Hewitt’s point is obvious: the contrast between Presidential candidate Kennedy in 1968 and the current President, Donald Trump, in 2019. The contrast is more than obvious. It is glaring. And yet, of course, Hewitt has other purposes in mind. The first is ...

Blue Monday

Some Banal Thoughts About the Mutuality of Evil in our Midst

We Must Defeat Trump, Not Entreat Him

August 5, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

According to the Gun Violence Archive, these episodes are the 250th and 251st mass shootings of the year. It defines a mass shooting as “four or more shot and/or killed in a single event [incident], at the same general time and location not including the shooter.” As USA Today noted: “The bloody 24 hours also ...

Blue Monday

The Perils of Pelosi

I wish Pelosi would open up to her left colleagues, but it’s not likely to happen anytime soon

July 10, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Pelosi’s majority depends more on what happens in the presidential race than anything else. In 2016, the correlation between presidential votes and House votes was a near-perfect .97, higher than it had ever been before. That’s the reality of our polarized electorate, where every race is nationalized.To put it simply, if the ...

Blue Monday

The Perils of Pelosi

I wish Pelosi would open up to her left colleagues, but it’s not likely to happen anytime soon

July 10, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Pelosi’s majority depends more on what happens in the presidential race than anything else. In 2016, the correlation between presidential votes and House votes was a near-perfect .97, higher than it had ever been before. That’s the reality of our polarized electorate, where every race is nationalized.To put it simply, if the ...

Blue Monday

How Much Longer Can Pelosi Keep Fiddling While Constitutional Democracy Burns?

What we need now is a Democratic leadership that believes in democracy.

June 17, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

It has been two and a half years since Donald Trump first took his presidential wrecking ball to America’s very flawed system of constitutional democracy. It has been more than two and a half years since the Justice Department -- the FBI, the Special Counsel, lesser federal prosecutors -- first began ...

Blue Monday

Trump, Impeachment, and the Question of Democratic Legitimacy

To allow Trump to continue to act as if he has legitimacy is simply to continue to legitimate him and his party

June 3, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Trump declares boldly and angrily that he is President because he won the election; that as President he is entitled to disparage long-standing governmental norms, break the law, declare national emergencies on a whim, assault the civil rights and liberties of immigrants, minorities, and women, and treat his critics, in ...

Blue Monday

How to Move Toward Impeachment, Now

A carefully orchestrated process could help strengthen the Democrats for 2020

May 13, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

The Trump administration continues to defy Congress and to demonstrate its contempt for constitutional democracy, refusing to share an unredacted copy of the Mueller Report with House committees, citing “executive privilege,” and refusing to comply with a number of lawful subpoenas for information, about counterintelligence, obstruction of justice, and tax ...

Blue Monday

Nancy Pelosi May Be Too Clever for Our Own Good

Why only unambiguous opposition to Trump can save us

May 6, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Last week a New York Times profile of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi reported that Pelosi wants the Democrats to “stay in the center,” insisting that for the party to succeed in 2020 it must “own the mainstream.” Pelosi, currently the most powerful Democrat in public office, has surely sought ...