We Sanders supporters need to recognize that his brand is damaged now

[Ken Burch]

142. He was, though, repeatedly(and unjustly)accused of not caring about the need to fight it

or to fight any other forms of institutional and grassroots social oppression.

And at times, he was even accused of not WANTING the votes of people of color, and of promoting policies that would only help white men. And "economic justice", at the height of the 2016 campaign, was treated as a euphemism for "left-wing white supremacism".

Not only was Sanders personally slandered on that(a line of attack that wasn't even ended when his campaign ended, even though there was no good reason to keep saying those things after Philly), his supporters were collectively accused of the same things.

Those supporters were treated as though THEY were indifferent to institutional bigotry or even, at times, as if they didn't care that black people were being murdered by police simply because they supported Bernie's candidacy-in a year where there were Sanders supporters at virtually every anti-oppression and anti-police violence protest that happened and in a political generation where EVERY young leftist or socialist is a committed antiracist. Virtually no one supported Bernie because they thought racism, sexism, homo-and-transphobia, or xenophobia aren't major issues-those who backed him did so because they believed, and I truly doubt anyone can say they were wrong to believe, that the economic issues they cared about would vanish from the political discussion the moment his campaign ended.

It was fair to say that the Sanders campaign didn't say enough about institutional social oppression. It was never just to imply that Bernie didn't care about that, and it was indefensible to claim that his supporters preferred him to other primary candidates out of white privilege or indifference to social injustice in supporting him.

I believe that the unrelenting vitriol spewed at Bernie as a candidate and his supporters as a group on anti-oppression issues, combined with the absurd contention that the "social justice" and "economic justice" movements-movements that had worked together for decades prior to 2015-sudden;y had nothing and no one in common and that economic justice couldn't be addressed at all until every issue remotely connected to social justice had been completely dealt with-a sequence that would, among other consequences, have the effect of making it impossible to achieve "social justice", since the economic conditions that help perpetuate white backlash would remain completely unchanged and thus guarantee that white backlash would only worsen-is what drove Bernie to make his disastrous "identity politics" speech. He had a valid point to make-the point that social justice cannot be achieved in isolation or simply by diversity in cabinet appointments, but he choose a foolish, reckless way to try and make that point.

My theory is that the fully justified bitterness he must have felt about his supporters-a new movement of mainly young people engaging in politics for the first time, people almost universally driven by idealism and transformational good will, being falsely accused, over and over and over again-of not caring about things any decent progressive would automatically care about and of backing a program that would benefit themselves to the exclusion of the Democratic base when everyone knew that program, even with its limits, would have disproportionately benefited that base, is what finally drove him to say what he said in the way that he said it.