The Genuine Article

Our politics — liberal politics, American politics — suffered a huge loss in that Minnesota forest last Friday. The shlumpy, funny, courageous mensch who died with his wife and daughter and friends in that plane fought harder for our values than any other figure on the political stage, and by so doing inspired thousands of others to take up that fight themselves. Now the reel is running backward; the flesh has become word again. To the thousands of progressives he prodded and roused and inspired falls the challenge of animating it yet again.