I would say that in terms of solutions, Naomi Klein is far ahead of Umair Haque. But to be fair, I have only read Klein's book, not her column.

But having said that, I also recognize the immense difficulty of someone with good ideas and vision to enter the fray of politics, work up the party hierarchy, get elected, build alliances, work through the onerous rules to create legislation, battle all the sharks that want to see that politician fail, and stay elected so they can finish the job. It is so hard to keep any kind of focus. I would say the "right kind of leader" is mostly wishful thinking.

I don't think there is any political messiah out there.

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Chris Crawford used to be on Medium. I would call him a "rational leftie." While he felt that his responses (he had far more responses than articles) were mostly to other other lefties, he believed there were enough conservative "lurkers" on Medium who would read his responses and be affected by what he was saying.

Maybe.

My experience of two years on Medium is that I have not affected anyone's thinking at all. I have to wonder how other political writers are influencing people outside their base.

And Mr. Crawford is no longer on Medium.