2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: If Bernie is courting progressive voters, why Liberty University? [View all]BainsBane
(53,035 posts)that in a way relate to this move by Sanders. The 99 % is not all the same. In fact, I see it used as a device by the upper-middle class to advance their interests over those of the majority. I have existed between the bottom 5 percent and the median income. I can tell you there is a world of difference in my life now being somewhere between the lower and upper 47% and that bottom 5%. A world of difference. Yet I am supposed to sit back while people complain about how $60k a year is so exploitative for interns, or how hard it is to get by at a combined household income of $150k-even $400 k a year, how they at $200k are "poor." While they insult me as a "corporatist," and a "tool of Goldman Sachs and the 1 percent" because I fail to recognize how much more evil someone who earns $500k is than someone who earns $400k, because I don't set aside concerns for my survival over what are their superior priorities they determine are essential to determining human worth--rage at bankers, drones, TPP ( not that I disagree with them on those matters, but rather I don't see them as the sum total of political consciousness).
This entire argument of economic justice is not in fact about economic justice for all. It is about the relatively recent decline of the white middle and upper-middle class. That is evident by the fact they hearken back to a time when the majority were deprived all economic justice and civil rights, to a time of "real Democrats," when I was working from age 10 to be able to pay to do my laundry and buy school clothes and bus fare.
That Sanders takes his message of economic justice to a white, right-wing middle and upper-middle class bastion of racism, homophobia and denial of equal rights for women, where that right-wing segment also conveys an abiding hatred for the poor, does not exactly convince me that this message of economic justice is justice for all.