General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I posted some things two years ago about Kamala Harris that were I shouldn't have. [View all]BainsBane
(53,003 posts)Or policy positions, but as is all too common these days, hurling names like corporatist and establishment at at people for the crime of failing to been the knee. And ALL of their targets are women and people of color: Clinton, Harris, Perez, Jaime Harrison, Pelosi, Jim Clyburn and John Lewis.
Notice the uniformity of the script: the same insults; the same arguments; and the exact same language. https://mic.com/articles/183105/democratic-rising-star-kamala-harris-has-a-bernie-sanders-problem#.N9UkCI4yB That she dares to consider a presidential run leads them to make blatantly false claims about her being "anointed." That term arises time and time again. The point is to smear, to engage in character assassination, not based on policy or issues but because she isn't one of them.
It doesn't stop at public figures either. We see entire races of people, the poorest and most marginalized voters, insulted as corporatist or establishment in order to engineer the economic and political dominance of a small, privileged demographic. We see the most cynical evocation of terms like "poverty and economic equality," while they actively argue against positions that seek to address both, only to insist the priority should be on proposals that benefit them and their class. They wont listen to what the poor and marginalized care about. They won't respect their votes. They use them as rhetorical pawns in a quest for power and even greater privilege.
Two examples: Jaime Harrison and Tom Perez. Harrison, head of the S Carolina Dem Party, ran for DNC chair. When he saw was unable to attract enough support to win, he dropped out. They sought his endorsement for their candidate Ellison (a good man who didn't deserve any of this). When Harrison endorsed Perez instead, he was suddenly maligned as a "corporatist." http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/sanders-revolution-resists-dnc-loss-235404 Nothing about him changed from one day to the next, except for his endorsement of Perez. That demonstrated in no uncertain terms that those labels were hurled for purposes that have nothing to do with the influence of capital.
Example two: Tom Perez, whom the OP himself insulted as a corporatist. Imagine, a man born into a poor immigrant family, who worked as a janitor to pay his way through law school and then went to work as a civil rights attorney is a "corporatist." A man who transformed the Civil Rights division of DOJ, who has devoted his entire life to fighting injustice through the law. He was a corporatist? Why? For one reason only. He didn't facilitate one faction's quest for power.
I've had it with the false rhetoric, the craven opportunism, and politics of white male entitlement obfuscated through lingusric exploitation of the lives of the poor and marginalized.