2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Bernie Sanders did NOT ... NOT say ditch identity politics !!! [View all]MADem
(135,425 posts)Making a negative example of "that woman" or "that LATINA" is not leadership--it's a doggone dog whistle. It jumped right out at me, and I'm certainly closer to a three than a ten on the hypersensitivity to bigotry scale.
Now, I'll give it to him that he truly might not realize what he's doing; but this is just more of the same of that "Man and Woman" schtick from his bad old days. He has a mindset about women that he just can't shake -- even if he intellectually rejects it, it is visceral with him and it just pops up at the most inconvenient junctures.
It's like that old guy/lady we know from down the street who "is polite to EVERYONE" and "doesn't have a mean bone in his/her body" who PERSISTS in using the term "colored" to describe black people. or "oriental" to refer to Asians. "Oh, he/she doesn't MEAN anything by it." Yeah, maybe, but it is still anachronistic and unkind to talk that way. How hard is it to watch your damn mouth?
He's been in politics too long, IMO, for this to be anything other than an expression of his own POV. He's not a newbie, he's been doing this for years. And singling out women (to include Hispanic women) to toss under the bus, not once, but twice, is a signal to me that he's still appealing to that "white working man" to the EXCLUSION of people of color and minority ethnicity/women.