“Where’s the fire-in-the-belly?”

Yesterday I was talking to Howie Hawkins. He said he recently was speaking with Ralph Nader. Regarding the state of the left Ralph said: “It’s been dismal since Bernie was sandbagged. Where’s the old fire-in-the-belly?”

I think:

The apparent choices — Ralph’s regulatory reformism or Howie’s workerist socialism or Bernie’s social democracy — aren’t particularly inspirational, haven’t brought the left to prominence, haven’t accomplished much in the way of social transformation.

So the left remains marginal and bogged down in a carping kind of identity politics.