Where Bernie Was Right

 Yglesias (I promise I read other people) makes the case against centering race and for centering class as a way to combat racial inequality.

There are two important points I want to highlight.

First, the idea that poorer Whites vote "against their interests" neglects that fact that white supremacy has real benefits for them. If they are poorer financially because they vote for Republicans, they are better off socially because of white supremacist politics. There are real social and psychological benefits for poorer Whites in voting for Donald Trump.

Second, Democrats have a natural constituency among poorer Whites, but they have failed to maximize it since Trump came on the scene. In terms of raw numbers, Biden got more votes from WWC (Whites Without College/White Working Class)  than he did from either Blacks or Hispanics. He barely beat Trump among Whites WITH College but then his winning margins came from people of color. 

It is tempting to write off WWC because some of them are so firmly ensconced in Cult 45. The problem with that is simply electoral math. It is very possible - even likely - that you can consistently win a majority of the popular vote with the existing Democratic coalition. However, we know how 2016 turned out and how close 2020 was in the Electoral College, and we know how disproportionately White the Senate is, in terms of who is represented.

Bernie Sanders ran an aggressively class-based campaign, and he lost support for it among Black voters. However, there are few voting blocs more tactical in their decision making than Black voters (especially in the South). In the primaries, they will vote for who they think enough White people will vote for. That's how Biden swept the South. 

What Sanders was right about, but struggled to express well, was that Democrats need to create a class-based policy agenda for public consumption, while also making sure that activists representing People of Color know that any class-based policy portfolio will have a proportionally higher impact on their constituencies. Sanders tended to get bogged down in his own Soft Socialist rhetoric and the need to both defend and live up to his label as a Socialist that his ability to craft a message that could appeal to everyone on the basis of class, while wink-wink-nudge-nudge play to the activist base.

If there's a great example of this dynamic, I would say it's the term "environmental racism." When you read the definition, it is undoubtedly true that Black and Brown people suffer from the degradations of environmental toxins at disproportionate effect. But, again, if you were to look at absolute numbers of people living in blighted communities, it wouldn't shock me to discover that the plurality of people living near environmental hotspots were White.

Selling environmental cleanup of places like Flint will have a huge impact on the health of all Americans, but disproportionately on Blacks. Selling it as race neutral on CNN, while selling it as racial justice in the community centers in Flint is the way to getting 60 votes in the Senate and a lock on the White House.