1/ While I too--as with Bernie Sanders--am a fan of the social/economic model of the Nordic states (particularly Finland), I am acutely aware of the reason we don't have that in the U.S. And contrary to what most white leftists things it is NOT mostly about weaker unions...
2/ ...and to the extent it is about that, it begs the question WHY are our unions weaker? The answer to that is the answer to why the safety net is so weak. Namely, racism & racial resentment plain and simple: the idea that "those people" will take advantage & are undeserving.
3/ When white, class-focused leftists talk about how popular left policies are by pointing to polls they ignore the difference between abstract principles & concrete action. Whites LOVED safety net programs in the New Deal bc they largely excluded blacks...
4/ Beneficiaries looked like us, so we supported such programs. In the Nordic states, relative monoculturalism (compared to the U.S.) makes solidarity more common as well...unless the white class-focused left addresses this, and has a strategy for challenging racism head on...
5/ ...and not as a side issue, or symptom of the class system, or a secondary concern, we will lose. Leftists who advocate universal programs to uplift all don't get it: large numbers of whites don't want a rising tide to lift all boats. They want their boats to rise more...
6/ Until that mentality is confronted directly & those who hold it forced to confront why such thinking is destructive, the left will never truly win...Racism and whiteness are why the working class is not united. Can't dance around it. Must make these things the problem...
7/ Racial inequity and division are what cause white folks who also need stronger safety nets to oppose programs that would help them. They settle for the psychological wage of whiteness at the expense of health care, education, etc...
8/ To simply re-state that you will provide universal health care and affordable education will not move them unless you make clear that the other side has used racism to keep us from having those things up to now. Must make white folks see how racism actually harms them...
9/ ...not simply how the millionaires/billionaires do; or how elites do, for class reasons, but how race is used as a CASTE issue, to keep them in line. They must see themselves as the collateral damage of racism and inequality, so as to develop a shared sense of purpose with POC
10/ If we made a key point of all left politics the idea that the reason we can't have nice things, so to speak, is because racism and racial division encourages us to de-prioritize strong support systems for others (and thus for ourselves), we could begin to build solidarity..
11/ But too often we simply talk about the rich and policy ideas that are abstractly popular without discussing the manipulations around race directly...what then happens is, folks get excited about health care, etc but then the other side comes in and reminds whites...
12/ that "those people" are going to benefit (immigrants, single moms on public assistance, etc.) and because we didn't clearly inoculate folks against this nonsense, they fall for it against and again...simply railing on the rich for being greedy isn't enough...
13/ We must play upon the public's cynicism about their dishonesty, and how they've sought to con us all about "those people" for literally 400 years going back the colonial period. We must raise the issue of race first, not simply respond to the right's playing of that card...
