General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: When minority voters don't flock to a candidate, we're told we just don't know enough about them and [View all]BainsBane
(53,032 posts)Not least of which is that you tell the OP his criticisms alienate Sanders base, yet you criticize him for seeing that faction's rhetoric as alienating.
To say the concerns are not about policy may be true, principally because the current efforts to reshape the party exist almost entirely in the realm of rhetoric, with little attention to policy. In fact, in some cases change at the level of policy is undermined in lieu of rhetoric and judgment about individuals.
The OP and many of us see as alienating the continual rhetorical focus on white male conservatives, the odd construction of working class to exclude the majority of low and median wage workers, who are not white and male. That extends to the attacks on "identity politics," which are interpreted by many as an attack on them and their lives, and the willingness to sacrifice the rights of more than half of Americans by endorsing anti-choice candidates--all alienating to many outside of the faction you prioritize.
The mantra about the party moving to the right isn't based on policy either, but that doesn't stop people from buying into it, from accepting it as fact while pointing to no evidence since the 90s that it is true. It is typically based on false constructions of the historical past, a past in which the great majority were subjugated for the benefit of a privileged minority.
The OP doesn't address Sanders but rather a general tendency to orient the party toward the white male bourgeoisie way from the Democratic base. That your response is to tell him he is inadequately reverential or too uninformed to appreciate Sanders greatness is precisely the sort of condescension the OP points to. Although he doesn't even mention Sanders, you've decided that his concerns must be "tempered to avoid alienating Sanders base," yet you express absolutely no concern about alienating him and the rest of us who do not share the view that that Sanders base you refer to matters more than the rest of the population. It is that implicit belief in the superiority or greater importance of one group that makes it impossible to find common ground. That hierarchical ethos runs through virtually every conflict within the party. No one, much less those subject to historical and current marginalization, are going to agree to join forces around the idea that they are less. I imagine you don't seen it that way, but it is nonetheless clear in the political discourse the OP comments on, and your post reinforces it.