Bernie Sanders in Portland

Spring in Portland, Oregon:  People stood in the rain all morning to get into the Sanders event.   He spoke to 20,000 people.

Bernie Sanders is old school socialist:  social problems derive from the economic system.  The wealthy powerful special interests have captured the political system, he says.   They get tax breaks, they break the rules, they ruin the economy, and they get away with it.    "In the past 30 years there has been a vast redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the top one tenth of one percent.   I believe we need to impose a tax on Wall Street speculation.  That tax, not a radical idea, would bring in more money than we need.   The American people bailed out Wall Street and now it is Wall Street's time to bail out the American people."

The crowd roared approval.

His chief villain are the bankers on Wall Street.   He said that after being bailed out no bankers went to jail, the largest banks who were too big to fail before are even bigger now.  They get away with murder and it isn't fair.   Meanwhile, millions of kids have been picked up for marijuana and have a criminal record they will carry the rest of their lives.   But not bankers.   They prosper and get their bonuses.

Sanders has adjusted his speech from when I first heard him back in New Hampshire in September.   He has gotten tougher and more direct in references to Hillary.   He called her out on campaign contributions from Wall Street and on her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs.    We need a revolution and people whose campaigns are funded by Wall Street and the pharmaceutical industry will not be agents of change, Bernie said. 

Sanders is old school in speaking of class struggle.   The golden rule:  he who has the gold makes the rules.

Hillary sees the world differently.  Politics isn't understandable in terms of money and economic class warfare.   People have--and sometimes vote--their economic interests but they are first of all complex social animals with identity of gender, race, religion, culture, ethnicity.  The system is unfair--just as Sanders says--but it is unfair because of subtle and unsubtle barriers some people put in front of others.   It isn't primarily unfair to women because billionaires rig the system.  The system is unfair because women are treated unfairly as women.  As are Blacks, Hispanics, gays, the disabled, etc.   Our country is in struggle of values and respect, and there are people in every economic status who are fair and people who are unfair.   Of course rich people have political power, and Citizens United have pushed that too far, Hillary says, but her objection isn't to wealth, it is to the bad, selfish values of some rich people, and then the political party they have captured and corrupted, Republicans, who keep power by pandering to the ethnic and racial tensions in voters that persist in this culturally complex world. 


Bernie says rich bankers are screwing the average American, which they do because they are rich and bankers and as such want to hang onto power.   Hillary says that Wall Street is only bad when they act excessively to protect themselves from reasonable regulation.

So, in Hillary's world view, yes billionaires like their tax benefits, but there are a lot of really good people who are billionaires and she has enjoyed their hospitality, their campaign contributions to Democrats including her, and their donations to good causes like gun control, the environment, peace, reproductive rights, gay equality.    Her villains are racists and xenophobes both rich and poor, and Republican candidates and office holders who are the agents and puppets of conservative billionaire special interests.  And, of course, the villains are the voters the right wing manipulators have pulled into their orbit by appeals to divisive social issues like abortion, gay rights, and general appeals to xenophobia and fear of immigrants and Muslims.

Hillary focuses on the barriers to advancement faced by the Democratic Party's coalition of identity groups: young people, students,  women, Latinos, Blacks, Native Americans, Gays, the indebted.  And Bernie focuses on economic class warfare.

But Bernie is changing.   Now he calls out those groups by name and grievance.   His speech starts off about money and social class warfare but the second half of the speech is about identity--Hillary's turf.   This is new and different for old school socialists.   (Traditionally old school socialists considered race, ethnicity, and religion as false markers used by the rich to distract workers from their true unity and solidarity as victims of the rich.)  Now Sanders is using those identity markers himself, just like Hillary.

His speech called out young people:   free tuition at public colleges and refinancing student debt at lower interest rates.

And women:  pay equality, reproductive rights, family leave.

And "our brothers and sisters in the Latino community":   comprehensive immigration reform, end mass deportation.

And "our black brothers and sisters": redress centuries of discrimination, end mass incarceration, and hold police accountable.

Same for Native Americans and gays.

Hillary used to be the one who scooped up all the identity group voters, especially women, Hispanics, and Blacks, and it got her nice victories in the south.   Sanders is no longer conceding identity politics to her.  

And the crowd in Portland went wild.