frankly, what I think we're doing here, is documenting the last gasps of democracy. Updated

[daredtowork]

328. Is separating "Social" from the "Economic" a horseman of the oligarchic apocalypse?

The Democratic party has always been the shelter of the economic left and poverty issues. While the Third Way has had much success in marginalizing the left, the traditional rhetorical weapons of "communism" and "socialism" no longer mean very much. In Seattle there's actually an emerging "Socialist Alternative" party.

I have noticed that that Hillary's attempts to validate separating the "social" from the "economic", so she can pursue feminist and LGBT issues for the upper middle class while continuing to stay "tough on welfare", have started to make opportunistic use of #BlackLivesMatter. I can imagine a media campaign seeded 24/7 with not only invocations of how Hillary's "social" means prioritizing race, feminism, the environment (yes, there is currently a thread making the social out to be the environment), but how the anyone who wants poverty issues included is somehow disrespecting or deprioritizing all those things. This is not just speculation: there are already OPs and threads on DU doing just that.

It seems to me this is a media trump card that will me used to cut off the economic left and weaken what little voice poverty issues have left. The depressing part is that poverty is also a race issue and women's issue, and a lot of people who will get swept up in the rhetoric of "priorities" will not realize how they are actually enabling the destruction of the ground floor of their ostensible priorities.