The Sale
If you are making a sales pitch for a vacuum, you demonstrate it by cleaning up a big mess. A mess most home owners will never see. If instead you just vacuumed dust and unseen dirt in a carpet it doesn’t get much attention. Your product won’t sell.
If you are the late night guy selling an adhesive product, you saw a boat in half then repair it with your product. Then you power around in your seaworthy boat to prove it’s strength. The target audience isn’t destructive boat owners. The target is the average person who has had a less significant problem.
You see Bernie Sanders holding town halls in the reddest of red districts and talking to Trump voters about Economic Justice. Don’t assume these people are the target audience. He’s well aware these people are the toughest sell, the least likely to switch to Democrats. This is early, only months after the Presidential election. He’s showing the most reluctant voters the power of these ideas. If he hold’s his own in those rooms, imagine how effective the economic policies will be with the more moderate and receptive.
Sander’s economic policies, sometimes referred to as Economic Justice, are good for all races and demographic groups. They are a throwback to middle class policies of the FDR era. The Civil Rights movement came after FDR. That means the benefits were denied to some due to discrimination. The FDR pro-worker policies, absent discrimination, would be good for all.
The Audience
Racism has been around since before our country, or any country was founded. These Trump voters are mostly the same people who voted for Romney, McCain and the Bushes. Trump just dropped the coded language but used the same Republican play book. What was new this cycle was a worldwide recognition of income inequality. The realization that the game is rigged against you. The issue that was promoted by the Occupy movement and finally sunk in to the broad electorate.
The right harnessed this energy with racial scapegoating as usual. Our Party funneled the energy into the narrowly unsuccessful Sanders campaign focused on Economic Justice. With that outlet denied, we tried to coalesce around Hillary.
Hillary Clinton was the Senator from Wall Street, a lifelong fundraiser of special interest money, a person whose charity foundation relies on donations from the rich and powerful to solve worldwide problems. It’s hard to square that with a message that says Democrats are for the average citizen over interests of the Powerful. She was undoubtedly committed to Equality, but Economic Justice was a stretch.
Many issues determined the election, a perfect storm, but to deny that our candidate and record on Economic Justice was a factor is disingenuous. It suggests you don’t want to recognize flaws in the candidate or shortcomings of our Party. It’s putting your head in the sand but feeling morally superior in the process. It only furthers the interests of Corporations who support Equality but fight like hell to preserve income inequality. That’s the half loaf we’ve been offering for 50 years.
"What good does it do to be able to eat at a lunch counter if you can't buy a hamburger." — MLK
To win in the future, with all the gerrymandering, voter suppression, Russian ploys, we need all the votes we can get. We only needed 35k more votes last cycle for Hillary to win. Democrats have been weak on Economic Justice, just look at the Corporate giants calling the shots in Washington. Being better than Republicans is not a measure of success in this field. If we push this Economic Justice along with Equality, Education and the Environment we can will have the margins to win again.
For more on Equality and Economic Justice see my earlier diary. If you can present these ideas better than me, please do. I’m no expert.