“I think, first of all, it is not surprising that people in the first wave of the Bernie moment were feeling their way through what might be the right strategy, what might be at that moment the right tactics, how to win, because we came out of forty years of utter desolation and absolute defeat, dejection, and confusion.

And out of nowhere, Sanders comes. And he comes at a moment when there’s no organizational base. There’s no political culture. The media is corrupt as hell. And what passes as left wing of the Democratic Party is a kind of neoliberal identity politics, right?

So it’s not surprising that we’re having to fight our way out of this morass. But something Krystal brought up is absolutely key to this, which is the confusion that you can fight for what you want to see — which is the kind of populist wave fighting for people’s basic economic needs and their security — or you can try to win. And supposedly Biden was the guy who can win, even though we love Bernie.

I think Mamdani’s win has huge implications, since he came out of nowhere, he was exactly the person who “could not win,” he stuck to his guns, and he continued to pound the streets and go door-to-door delivering his message. I think at this moment, Krystal is 100 percent right, this opportunity is the best we’ve ever had.

Now that we’ve come out of the other end of the Bernie moment, one lesson is that, in fact, the Sanders campaign, this kind of social democratic program, this kind of electoral strategy, is not only something that lines up with our moral inclinations and our political program, but it’s also practically the one that can actually get you where you need to be.

And my feeling is that this, and the fact that we are finally coming out of the woke brain virus on the Left, gives the Left an actual chance to win, and to extricate the notion of progressive politics from the grip of the black, brown, and white elites who have captured it.”

Read the rest of the discussion right here.