This podcast began during the summer with the premise that the mass death, disease and economic misery caused by the pandemic are themselves political forces. Now, as summer dissolves into fall, these forces are converging with the most consequential struggle for state power in recent U.S. history. My starting point for this second season of the podcast is that we, as socialists in the U.S., have to grasp both the promise and peril of this convergence. To the themes of the first season—labor, unions, protest, socialist education—the fall edition adds electoral strategy, a closer look into the connections between race and class in the U.S., and the pandemic’s impact in other countries.