How to live.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Editor's Note - Editorial

As you may know, I'm no huge fan f President Obama. But Election Night was a time to exult.

It was reassuring and reaffirming to see a new progressive coalition deal the forces of reaction a serious blow.

It was reassuring and reaffirming to see great candidates like Tammy Baldwin and Elizabeth Warren get elected to the U.S. Senate.

It was reassuring and reaffirming to know that Obama won because he embraced progressive themes throughout his campaign.

And it was nice to hear him say, in his victory speech, "We believe in a generous America, in a compassionate America, in a tolerant America."

But I share Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald's concern that "the political leader in whose triumph liberals are today ecstatically basking is likely to target their most cherished government policies within a matter of weeks, even days. With their newly minted power, will they have any ability, or even will, to stop him?"

Certainly, you and I have the will to stop him. But whether he listens to us or to Wall Street, whether he heeds the advice of Bernie Sanders or David Brooks, I can't be sure.

Looking back on the election that was, we still face the quandary of poor alternatives. We now have more data on the lack of utility of running third-party candidates for President. Jill Stein of the Greens got slightly less than 400,000 votes--or about 0.3 percent of the total. As I mentioned in my September article, "The Third-Party Dilemma," we've run this experiment several times now, and the results haven't been promising. It may be time to reconsider whether it makes sense to keep throwing progressive energy into the wind in this way, or whether our resources are better spent working locally.

The news that George McGovern died hit me hard. He was one of my first political heroes. When I was a fourteen-year-old kid, I passed out McGovern bumperstickers on the main street of my...