Long read: Why Canada has a labor party and the US does not

In this year’s Democratic presidential primary, Bernie Sanders ran as a Democrat, despite describing himself as a ‘socialist’. In other countries, Sanders would have run as part of a ‘labor’ party, a political grouping that the US lacks. Barry Eidlin explores why the US does not have such a party, while its neighbor, Canada, does. He writes that in the 1930s, President Roosevelt co-opted labor and workers’ interests into the New Deal coalition; while at the same time, Canadian parties’ repression and neglect for workers’ created an opportunity for a new party to emerge which eventually became the New Democratic Party.