2016 Postmortem

As I've said in many threads, there is a big difference between saying that we need a message that reaches the white working class, and the media's smirking version of that, which tries to suggest that we should abandon civil-rights causes in favor of some ephemeral disembodied bullshit about "jobs,"a divisive narrative to be sure. That entirely ignores the corrosive influence of money in Washington and the galvanizing call for class-warfare to be waged back against that big-money. But of course the media would twist whatever it can to its own purposes, and do its part to take that target off of its corporate masters.

In spite of that, the media's version has never been what Sanders has been saying, and for that matter, most of his supporters. You may think his use of terminology has sucked, but he didn't mince words about what he meant when he spoke about identity politics or politically correct. He was using pre-charged language, already weaponized by the right, and morphing their meanings into something else as he talks to people that already think those things are bad. That's a verbal Judo, and we can talk about whether or not you think it is effective, since there have been obvious reactions from some Democrats.

There is nothing Sanders has said that can be construed as us needing to subsume civil-rights issues or ignore the rights of any marginalized people for the purpose of courting the white working class. I think the opposite actually, and his policies and history tend to reflect that fact.