Let’s Talk About Warren v. Sanders (02-24-2020)

#politics #classwar #presidentialpolitics

Let’s talk about the 2020 Democratic Primary, everyone’s favorite topic. It has been a contentious primary, to say the least but hardly a competitive one. To my, and many other leftists’ delight, Bernie Sanders has emerged as the frontrunner. He got the most votes in Iowa (but gets less delegates! democracy!), he won New Hampshire, and he completely fucking smashed everyone in Nevada. Why then, is it important to talk about a primary that’s wrapping up? Because I’m still seeing a whole lotta bullshit, and there might be more bullshit on the horizon if certain people get their way.

This post will be written to those of you caught between Warren and Sanders. Stuck in the middle of this apparently difficult choice between two candidates both of whom I would vote for. I am giving you the respect you deserve as a reader, as a thinker, that you’re not even considering any of the others. The truth is, if you’re supporting Klobuchar, Biden, Buttigieg, or shivers Bloomberg, then you’ll need much more guidance than I can give you. In fact, you might need Jesus. So this is for the rest of you, caught between two decent candidates, caught between who your brain wants but who your heart needs. However, I want to make the case that one of these candidates is so obviously better than the other one that it doesn’t make sense to think of them as equal in your brain. Instead, this is a contest between a once-in-a-lifetime game-changing candidate and one who, despite having some good policies here-and-there, is suffering from a great credibility gap.

In one corner we have Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist making a historic run and quickly gaining momentum. Even Sanders’ most ardent haters admit his track record as a truly principled politician is unrivaled. For decades, Sanders has talked about the dangers of a system that is designed to leave large swaths of the population destitute, and concentrate wealth in the hands of the few. From all accounts of the man, he has believed these things forever and put them into action as an activist during his days as a student. Aside from being principled, Sanders’ policies have a wide swath of support across demographic groups. Despite the vile ‘Bernie Bro’ stereotype, Sanders is thus far in the primary season the choice of candidate for people of color, particular young people of color. His appeal is clear — he’s speaking about issues related to grand inequalities that affect the youngest people the hardest. While Biden poo-poos student debt, and Buttigieg floats the idea of mandatory military/ public service for everyone (fucking oof), Sanders has empathized with and spoken to young people about their issues directly.

Warren has much of the same appeal as Sanders when it comes to progressive policy — she has a storied record of consumer protection as well as plans for everything from educational debt policy to entrepreneurship programs. What Warren lacks, and it’s become clear this is a problem, is credibility. Ever since I bought bumper stickers from her site, like literally the day after, she has made a concerted effort to distance herself from Sanders and position herself as the ‘unity’ candidate between the centrist and progressive wings of the party. She has done this by echoing attacks on the Sanders campaign levied by the likes of Mike Bloomberg and reversing her position on taking SuperPAC money. Her SuperPAC reversal is especially weird, considering her case is that all of the men running for president are wealthy or are taking PAC money themselves, so why can’t she? But this only makes sense if you ignore Bernie since he is 1) less wealthy than she is and 2) isn’t taking PAC money. Her inconsistent position is only validated by Sanders not existing.

Still, Warren supporters like to try to paint her as a unity candidate, despite her awkward shots as Bernie’s age or her hypocrisy on SuperPAC money. According to them, her ‘plan for everything’ is better than Sanders’ class-primacy plans and, as a result, she’s better positioned to win. Their main argument here is an important one to shoot down — according to them, she’s “better on race” than Sanders. This isn’t explained at all, but it relies on an age-old line about the limits of Marxist thought. Marx as a writer was very concerned with the socio-economic system, the machine of Capitalism. But his writings are admittedly limited on the subject of race. Marx wasn’t unconcerned with race, but he was certainly not focused on it. As a result, Marx-adjacent arguments get associated with race-deficient ones, when in reality, it couldn’t be further from the truth.

The truth is, there is no legitimacy to the idea that Warren is ‘better on race’ because the idea is predicated on a Marxist strawman. Being ‘better on race’ here is a stand-in for being shittier on class. The eternal truth is that people are afraid of class. They’re so afraid of class in this country, that they’ve begun using racial injustice as liberal bait to avoid issues of class inequality. It’s such an odd gambit to rely on, and what’s weirder is it works for a lot of people. Despite having robust plans for dealing very specifically with racial inequality, alongside class inequality, Sanders gets pegged as the race-deficient candidate. Only in a country as sick as the United States with politicians so devoid of morality could issues of racial injustice suddenly become a political tool.

But okay, look, you say ‘well Warren’s plans ARE better and Sanders is just a class-primacy COMMUNIST blah blah’. I hate to be that guy but class is the structuring behemoth of our entire lives. There is no way around the complete dominance that capital has over literally fucking everything. The entire earth is capital’s dominion. Does that mean that class is the only thing that matters? No! And Sanders has never fucking said that. But it does mean that if you ignore the primacy of capitalism in our lives then you ignore the structural basis for social problems. Warren’s “ENTREPRENEURS OF COLOR’ is exactly the kind of ’solution’ we should be critical of. Re-investment through redistribution of wealth out of the hands of the powerful, that’s a way to help mend our issues with racial inequality. Not #MorePOCBillionaires, you psychopaths.

And look, look, I don’t want to be the orthodox Marxist in the room, but capitalism is an evil fucking system. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this world around us — where families have to choose between life-ruining hospital bills and letting their loved ones die — this is capitalism, this is the result of capital accumulation. Warren and her ilk would have you believe this is just the system run amok, but the system runs amok. It is in the blueprint of capitalism to grow and accumulate more, to eat everything around it and make everything it. There is no sicker way to organize people than through capital accumulation. So you should be wary of people like Warren who proudly proclaim over and over that they are capitalists. Look at the sick world around you — that is capitalism no matter how much they want you to believe it’s not. To proudly associate yourself with such a system is, at the very least, a red flag.

The even weirder thing about Warren is that, in addition to being a proud capitalist, she was a Republican until 1996, aka the year of her 47th birthday. I’m not gonna pretend to know and understand everything regarding politics, but at age 28 I feel like I have enough sense to understand that the republican party is the party of racist bullshit. ‘But Matthew,’ you, a republican cry out: ’the party has changed!’ Sure, it’s changed, but she was a republican through the fucking Reagan era, which was hardly the most moral era of republican politics. Look, if you’re Abraham Lincoln, you get a pass. If you’re a 30-something year old white lady in Reagan’s America, I don’t give that same level of respect. You either have to be stupid, which Warren definitely isn’t, or be woefully unaware of the pain your politics cause.

I am not here to convince you not to vote for Warren, instead I want to show you that she is a problematic candidate. Further, Sanders’ consistency on issues of race and class inequality in the United States make him a uniquely strong candidate, one that I don’t think we’ll see again for a while. Sanders’ movement is growing — in the Nevada caucus, according to NBC entrance polls, Warren got 8 percent of the Latino vote compared to, get this, Sanders’ 51 percent. I may suck at math, but I believe that’s about hmmm oh yes more than 6 times Warren’s support with Latinos. Sanders’ support with black voters in Nevada (25%) was also about twice as much as Warren’s (13%). So far, Sanders is the candidate of people of color, despite him being supposedly be ‘deficient on race.’ So when I see white liberals drone on about how Warren is so much better than Sanders on race, what I’m seeing is bourgeois white liberals who don’t actually give much a shit what people of color think. For them it’s a political game, a tactic to talk about race as a way to demean Sanders’ campaign as though they give a shit. You want to be a good white ally? Hop on board the campaign that’s currently receiving the most PoC support. Hop on the Sanders campaign and fight for a better country for us all.