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Of the 60 speakers who will address the Democratic national convention during the prime hours of 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. this week, 29 are members of Congress. Perhaps that’s not a surprise considering that both men on the ticket are sitting senators, and that presidential nominees have to pay obligatory dues to leaders on […]

When it comes to convention security, Boston is a case of wretched excess. They’ve closed Route 93, the major north-south commuter road into (and out of) town, between 4 p.m. and 1 a.m. And, to add insult to injury, they’ve also shut North Station, one of the mail commuter-rail hubs. Many Boston merchants are literally […]

BOSTON — At the corner of Summer and Washington streets, a block away from the Boston Common, which by Saturday was already teeming with the Democratic hordes, I saw a man wearing a blue Nader baseball cap, with a blue Nader button to match. Except for the obvious recklessness of the act, the man seemed […]

For the past several years, one of the ongoing mysteries of a not overly mysterious labor movement is what the Carpenters Union will do in any given election season. Since the maverick Doug McCarron became Carpenters president in 1995, the union has left the AFL-CIO, linked itself to such organizing-intensive and progressive unions as the […]

Longtime union officials and staffers were exuding an almost gleeful incredulity this weekend on the eve of the convention. Not about the November election itself; on the question of the ultimate outcome, experienced political hands remain cautious. United Auto Workers Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Bunn fretted that “Michigan is closer than it should be” due to the […]

Whatever unfolds here in Boston, the long-range most important story of the week has already been written. The piece by Matt Bai in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, “Wiring the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy,” introduces to broader public view an effort to which liberal donors, Washington Democratic insiders, and some other random progressive types have been […]

The beginning of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States breaks open with the force of a thunderclap. The historian sets the stage for the encounter between Christopher Columbus and the Arawak people of the Bahama Islands in one spare paragraph: Upon catching sight of the explorer and his crew, the natives “ran […]

Marie Gonzalez sounds a bit like your classic Valley girl, punctuating her sentences with the obligatory “for sures” and “you knows.” And, for sure, the 18-year-old, who graduated this spring from Helias High School in Jefferson City, Mo., seems in every way your normal American young woman — on the tennis and track teams in […]

Social class is one of the most explosive issues in American politics. Like any explosive, it can dramatically transform a landscape — or blow up in the user’s face. There are far more ordinary wage-earning people than wealthy investors and corporate moguls, but the political right has done far better at using class solidarity to […]

There are few times when the public awaits a speech. The State of the Union address, the presidential inauguration, and the acceptance of a party’s presidential nomination are the only regular fixtures on the political speechmaking calendar, and they are relatively rare. But because these addresses are so anticipated — and, in the past, have […]