galen. You were feeling the bern back before it was cool. What are your thoughts these days?
I'm still concerned about his foreign policy positions (one of the few areas the president has actual power). I also question his ability to deal with race effectively; his written platform contains a lot of good stuff, but from his rhetoric, I'm not sure he even believes that there's an issue with American racism that's separate from economic inequality. The reason I supported him in spite of that is that I thought he was the only candidate who could bring out enough new voters to bring progressive victories down the ballot. I'm not sure how I feel about that now. I certainly have no illusions about his ability to win the nomination, barring some catastrophic blow to the Clinton campaign. I'm mostly just sad because we're moving rapidly towards 5 months of Clinton vs Trump.
This is one of the things he is actually quite correct about. Identity politics is a ruse brought about by politicians who have a lot to gain from it, and it's bought into by large swathes of people who would be much better off focusing on how bad they're getting fucked every time they punch a clock. The reason the ghettos exist is because black people were systematically excluded from joining nice neighborhoods for many decades. Economics is everything, and every time we focus on what building is called by which name, or who made whom feel bad at the lunch table, all we do is take away from the much, much larger problem of lack of access to financial equality. Most modern racists (baby boomers, for example) are racist because they conflate race with welfare with societal morals. In the 2012 election, Rick Santorum actually came out and said what they all think, which is, "I don't want to give my money to black people." Money talks, and it's the only language everyone speaks. There's a lot of reason I don't care for Sanders' candidacy, but his insistence that racial issues are completely and totally entangled with economics is perhaps his most important message.I'm not sure he even believes that there's an issue with American racism that's separate from economic inequality.