So I see there’s another big food fight over the future direction of the party/site/known galaxy, because of course there’s nothing else going on in the world, nothing like, say, a fascist administration preparing to take over the reins of government and burn the country to the ground.
Nah, nothing to see here, amirite? Perish the thought.
Or maybe not, because here’s the deal: hate crimes are up across the country, minorities of every stripe are terrified of what the future may hold, the post-WWII international order is fraying at the seams, as apparently is our cohesion as a nation, and yes, women will have to live with the fact that the orangutan dude in the Oval Office is a self-described p****-grabber. Personally, and for the first time in my life, I am fucking terrified of what my government might do to harm me and mine; it’s that whole totes awkward gay thing. I hear they get rid of it with electroshocks, how awesome is that?
Against this background, it’s rather a bit rich for a United States Senator to make this precise statement:
In a speech Sunday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) urged attendees to move away from “identity politics” and towards policies aimed at helping the working class.
Sanders spoke to a crowd of more than 1,000 mostly young people at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston, according to a report from WBUR.
"The working class of this country is being decimated — that's why Donald Trump won," Sanders said, according to the same report. "And what we need now are candidates who stand with those working people, who understand that real median family income has gone down."
Boston Magazine reported that an audience member told Sanders that she wanted to become the second Latina elected to the U.S. Senate and asked for his advice. Sanders responded by urging the crowd to move the Democratic Party away from what he called “identity politics.”
"It is not good enough for somebody to say, 'I'm a woman, vote for me.' That is not good enough," he said, according to WBUR. "What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the fossil fuel industries."
It’s a free country, for the time being at least, so the good Senator is entitled to his opinions. I also understand that many fellow Kossacks have great affection for the man.
Here’s the thing though: I don’t give a fuck, because this is bullshit and needs to be called out as such.
Saying – in effect – that Hillary Clinton’s message was “vote for me, I’m a woman” is, in a word, pathetic. It also goes to a larger problem Senator Sanders has, that being a stunning lack of awareness of any difference that is not economic.
Because, I don’t know, pretending that there are no such differences makes them go away. Small wonder Black Lives Matter protested him at Netroots.
Yes, there are lessons to be learned from our loss in the recent presidential election. We can’t, as a party and a country, leave anyone behind, leave anyone feeling that they don’t matter. That’s not just good politics, it’s basic human decency. It is also unquestionably true that too many good people have been left behind in this economic recovery, and that we as Democrats today are paying the price for it. As Bertolt Brecht once said, “Erst das Fressen, dann die Moral”.
But the fact remains that this country is a multi-ethnic democracy, the only one of its kind on the planet, and that the only way forward for us as Americans is together.
Identity politics doesn’t describe a state of mind primarily concerned with one’s demographic box blissfully ignorant of “issues”; it is an acknowledgment that America is rapidly changing, that talent, leadership and expertise do not have a gender, a faith, a race or a sexual orientation. That justice ought to be blind and opportunity equal. That it matters for our kids to have an expectation of fairness from society and impartiality from the state, no matter what those kids look like. And that it matters for those kids to look at our elected officials and see themselves.
That’s what identity politics is, the real America struggling into the light of day. Damn right that’s an issue. This America will be under sustained assault in the next administration; there are dark days ahead.
There will be a dawn after the squalid night we’re about to enter; there always is. When that day breaks, I don’t want to have to look in the face of those the darkness hurt most, and yes, it will be people of color, immigrants, LGBT Americans like myself, religious minorities, most likely the very working class that elected the orange charlatan in the first place, in short: all the dispossessed of this good earth, and have to say “hey, you brought this on yourself, if only you’d shut up a bit more”.
Because before I’m a white man, or gay, or a New Yorker, a Democrat, or anything else really, I’m an American, and as Hillary Clinton said, we are Stronger Together.
That, dear Senator Sanders, was her message. Full stop, end of sentence.
That’s what a majority of Americans voted for, it is the right message, it is who we are: a dazzling mosaic of people come from all over the world to build a better life for themselves and their children, equal under law, with liberty and justice for all.
E Pluribus Unum. Is that worth fighting for? Hell the fuck yeah it is.