socialism

You sometimes hear about "intersectionality", the ways in which systems of oppression like patriarchy and racism overlap, and so the interests of those working against them also intersect. You almost never hear about the intersectionality of economic class. It's as if today's "liberals" (so-called) and Democrats don't actually care whether society is built as an oppressive hierarchy, just so long as being an oppressor is an equal-opportunity position. It's no wonder that since the days of the Reagan Democrats -- indeed, going back to the 1960s -- the Republicans have been able to catch this demographic "on the rebound" as it were, after the Democrats dumped the to pursue identity politics.
(Contrast this with how the radical Black Panthers reached out to work with poor whites; and for interesting history, read Kenneth D. Durr's Behind the Backlash: White Working Class Politics in Baltimore, 1940-1980.) The reunion that Sanders suggests would be a powerful thing -- and those in power now sure as hell don't want that.

Burying the White Working Class | Jacobin (www.jacobinmag.com)

These kinds of statements are the name of the game for today’s Democratic elite. The party has established a clear line on the white wage-earning class: they’re all either dying (demographically or literally), irrelevant in an increasingly nonwhite country, or so hopelessly racist they can go off themselves with a Miller High Life-prescription-painkiller cocktail for all they care. As liberal hero and Sanders nemesis Barney Frank put it a couple of weeks ago, “the likelihood that fifty-eight-year-old coal miners are going to become the solar engineers of the future is nil.”

The problem with this line is not just that it’s gross and elitist — it’s that it’s not even true. The working class is bigger than ever, is still really white, and is broadly supportive of a progressive populist agenda.

It just turns out that the Democratic Party outside of Sanders isn’t too interested in that agenda. And it’s even less interested in that specific chunk of the working class that forces liberals to confront head on the naked brutality of the economic system they cherish.

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After decades of being told white workers would never support socialism because they’re racist, we’re now told that they support the socialist candidate because they are racist. Yes, this is where liberals are in the year 2016.

It would be nice if the various yahoos who yell about "Marxism" and "socialism" knew what these things mean. The Raw Story reports on how a CNN reporter tried to get one well-know GOP politician to define her terms: Soledad O’Brien tries to get Christine O’Donnell to define the word ‘Marxist’

CNN host Soledad O’Brien finally had an Inigo Montoya moment on Monday, and all it took was former Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell misusing the word “Marxist.”

Granted, it’s not the first time O’Donnell, a longtime anti-abortion activist, has called the president or Democrats “Marxist.” She even used the term to describe her Democratic opponent, Chris Coons, drawing exclamation points across the conservative blogosphere. But when she rolled it out on O’Brien’s show Monday, describing the president’s public statements as “Marxist sound bites,” it was little more than a nonstarter.