In Sanders victory speech, it was notable how comfortable he’s getting with the race-class narrative advocated by Demos and other lefty groups, and there’s an interesting contrast with how a more traditional Dem approaches it. In’16, Hillary had a refrain in her stump speech /1
where she’d call out a slew of identity groups and talk about how she was going to fight for each one. The list got so long that if your own identity wasn’t on it it became conspicuous, like the one cousin not invited to the wedding. Sanders approach is different /2
At his speech tonight he said something like: we’re up against a bully who wants to divide us by race, or gender, or sexual orientation, or religion, or where you were born, but we’re going to beat him because we’re all going to fight together for the same thing /3
There’s a subtle but fundamental difference there. It’s not that he’ll fight for somebody because they are X identity, but rather he’s calling out Trump for trying to use race, gender etc to divide and conquer working people /4
A ton of research by progressive groups went into that messaging and it’s interesting to see Sanders deploying it so effectively. The other approach just never worked for Clinton.
Check out this podcast by @anatosaurus for more on that research bravenewwordspod.com
