The Week: Clinton Awkwardly Exploits the Limits of Sanders' Political Imagination

Some insight wrapped around a strangely self-contradictory worldview.

https://theweek.com/articles/607357/how-hillary-clinton-awkwardly-exploited-limits-bernie-sanders-political-imagination

This is your campaign," she said proudly, "and it is a campaign to break down every barrier that holds you back. We're going to build ladders of opportunity in their place so every American can go as far as your hard work can take you." From a pro-Sanders standpoint, there is Clinton's flawed thesis, right out in the open. Although Clinton is willing to acknowledge "the reality of systemic racism," she refuses to countenance the idea that our economy itself is systemically flawed, erecting secret barriers only radical reform can address.

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Sure, they'd agree with Clinton that "it's time for equal pay for equal work." But they'd object that, in a system where Marissa Mayer's wealth and fame seems to grow the more Yahoo's diminishes, the dramatic imbalance between the fortune of the few and the floundering of the many can't be waved away by an appeal to gender bias. For the Sanders vote, Bernie's emphasis on Wall Street is only common sense: It's Wall Street that plays the tune we must dance to. For all their innovative power, Google and Apple have yet to beat Goldman Sachs at its own game. Alone, free enterprise can't fix a rigged system.

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The temptation today in American politics is to give up on fundamental reform in favor of the comforts of identity politics. Whatever its partisan stripe, identity politics gives us a shot of pride right at the moment we'd rather not feel so insignificant before America's vast problems and vast government. This is what Clinton awkwardly taps into and what Sanders ignores — at his own peril.