By request...some comments from Bernie Sanders 2014 NPR Interview

[Starry Messenger]

6. I think the problem goes deeper than Sanders, honestly.

His campaign approach just ripped off the lid on some serious ideological errors on the left that have been simmering away for decades.

White progressives have to recenter their definition of economic rights/civil rights. The current package of economic reform ideas considered "neutral" are not; they largely benefit whites and don't penetrate to the levels of disadvantages and punitive laws that impact the layers of people who are not white/male/straight/cis/abled.

"Now I agree with Mr. Sanders that the Democrats don't do enough to uphold the interests of the working class; hell, I don't think that the Democrats, by and large, do enough to uphold the causes of racial/gender justice."

I agree too. I also agree that working class whites don't vote with Democrats because of racism. We have a friend who is a professor in IN who says that his neighbor is a white union guy, smokes pot, and votes Republican because that is a cultural hallmark of being white where he lives. I don't see where the FDR coalition reaches back into the time machine and changes what has been done to working class whites to get them to vote against their interests. Any movement this group is making *as a mass* has been reactionary.

More insidious to me is the line of thinking that fights for civil rights/equality/"identity politics" have somehow been a distraction from teh "real" fight. Where I am stuck as an activist--is it our responsibility to draw a picture of how Big Capitalism* has actually been at work fighting us on civil rights and that we have been impacted by the system and that our fights are not just some political dessert topping? Or do we just keep doing our thing in the Obama coalition and ignore this reactionary strain in left-wing ideology? It seems to be small, but noisy, I don't know where to put my energy on this.

*(for example, the role that free market think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute have played in legitimizing works like The Bell Curve, attacking feminism, etc. That's just one off the top of my head. The far right forces of monopoly have been behind a lot of discriminatory bullshit that also has economic consequences, as I am sure many here can attest.)

I think the conversation has to go beyond the 2016 elections, since we are talking about the future alignment of the total electorate and what we are doing.