Kos writes, “We have near unanimous agreement in support of income equality, justice for all, a sane immigration policy, and respect for women.”
1) Clinically interesting Kos leaves out climate change and the looming extinction event of all humans. Sanders was the only candidate in the Democratic Party who identified climate change as the gravest national security threat.
2) Income equality is a symptom of a disease. Accepting money, whether it be campaign donations or speaking fees, from Wall Street or the City of London, is highly correlated with being willing to discuss the symptom while being unwilling to discuss how to cure the disease.
The disease is neoliberalism. There was a highly recced diary a couple days ago about Bill Maher denouncing the purists. One of Maher’s lines was an attack on Cornell West, who said “Trump will be a fascist disaster. Clinton will be a neoliberal disaster.”
Maher’s response was, “Neoliberal disaster? I don’t even know what that is.” That is a response I’ve seen a lot of here, mostly by Clinton apologists.
You don’t know what a neoliberal disaster is?
This is it. You are living it. You are living in a neoliberal disaster right now. Trump as President and reactionary Republicans in Control of both houses of Congress are a neoliberal disaster that has been in the making for nearly a half century now.
Opponents of NAFTA and free trade, opponents of deregulation, opponents of financialization, the dirty hippies and all, warned 30 and more years ago that those neoliberal policies would wreck USA industry, destroy the working class, and lead to a populist uprising which would be more likely to turn right than left.
Trump and reactionary control of government is the inevitable and PREDICTED result of the past 40 years of neoliberal policies.
And the only response you can offer is “neoliberalism is not a thing” or “I don’t know what you mean by neoliberalism.”
It is especially sad that Kos tolerates such responses on his site, given his Latino heritage. Because the very best indictments of neoliberalism have been written by scholars and journalists in South America. They had neoliberalism shoved down their throats by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, with enforcement by CIA-trained right wing death squads. Union organizers and leaders were shot, hung, slashed to death. So were priests and nuns. Tell their surviving friends, colleagues, and families “neoliberalism is not a thing” and you just might be slapped in the face.
But maybe not. Because Americans are expected to be provincial and uninformed, and professing ignorance of what neoliberalism is, simply fits the mold of the ugly American.
Cornell West is certainly not one of the “white and male Christian or atheist progressives” Kos appears to believe is the source of Democratic disunity. And let me also note that at the one Bernie rally I attended, I was very impressed — and heartened — by the huge number of younger people, including African-Americans. Not just their numbers, but their enthusiasm, too. And I have also read that Sanders had much more support among younger voters than did Clinton.
I do not understand why Kos and other insist that it’s either identity politics or nothing. There is no reason why identity politics and opposition to neoliberalism cannot coexist in the Democratic Party.
Unless, of course, you’re a neoliberal. That’s the only way such insistence makes sense to me.