Eh, I think he's right. On the ground, the "centrists" are mostly the Clinton/Obama wing of the party who are very fluent in identity issues and the "leftists" are mostly the Sanders wing of the party who are more focused on economics.
Maybe ironically, as one of them I wouldn't say "centrists" center anything. We tend to see the whole thing as a milieu. Not that economic issues aren't super important, but there's no serious way to analyze the US without taking both economic and identity issues into account.
Agreed that centrists (or more precisely, "moderate Democrats") are more aligned to Clinton/Obama wing, but the idea that Clinton/Obama are the identitarians rather than the progressive wing (Warren, AOC, Pressley, Tlaib, Omar, etc) is beyond belief. Clinton and Obama might've capitalized on their identities in pandering to the progressive wing, but that's the point: the identity stuff is coming from the far left side of the party which is absolutely breathless about identity stuff (Sanders here is the exception to the rule). On more than one occasion, Obama explicitly cautioned against left wing identity extremism while "The Squad" cheerleaded the BLM riots. Do you think Warren, AOC, Omar, etc are really "moderate Democrats" or do you disagree that they are committed identitarians?
> Agreed that centrists (or more precisely, “moderate Democrats”) are more aligned to Clinton/Obama wing, but the idea that Clinton/Obama are the identitarians rather than the progressive wing (Warren, AOC, Pressley, Tlaib, Omar, etc) is beyond belief.
> Clinton and Obama might’ve capitalized on their identities in pandering to the progressive wing
If you look at where Hillary Clinton’s support was vs. Bernie’s , Bernie’s was on the economic left, Clinton’s was with all the identity-politics factions. (Not just what is predictable by “exploiting her identity” as straigh cisgender heterosexual white woman.)
It can be confusing, because there is also a leftist/progressive identity politics which is highly intersectional and also highly integrated with class politics, but the dominant neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party has long been deeply dependent on the very different bourgeois identity politics which rejects the class struggle, as what distinguishes them from the more moderate fringes of the Republican Right (this was especially true during the period of the neoliberal consensus, less so since Trump replaced corporate capitalism with a side order of culture war social politics to energize the base with White nationalist culture war populism as the center of the Republican Party.)
> Do you think Warren, AOC, Omar, etc are really “moderate Democrats” or do you disagree that they are committed identitarians?
I think all of them (even Warren, who remains overtly pro-capitalist and is more centrist than the others) center economic/class issues more than identity politics, and all but Warren do so fairly explicitly because the kind of identity politics they engage in are precisely the progressive/left kind, not the bourgeios kind.
I guess I disagree with your taxonomy, and I think The Squad has wrestled with being progressives while also being unwilling to let identity issues go. I'm very pro-Warren, but I think if you look at the policies pushed not just by her but by the other women you named, you'll find a lot of economic and climate policy (I mean Green New Deal, come on).
The right-wing propaganda machine is very hard on ambitious women (as a former Hillary staffer I can attest to this), and it's definitely part of the plan to smear these folks in particular. I think we should be asking why there's a concerted, well-funded messaging effort against these women and not against people saying similar things like Hakeem Jeffries or Bernie Sanders. My personal view is that it's raw misogyny. And, frankly, I think you're repeating a lot of it here. In particular your use of the word "cheerleaded" is a pretty gendered criticism.
We're all misogynists, we're all racists, we're all homophobes, because of the culture we grew up in. But by introspecting on this, we're able to fight against it and create a fairer society.
The right has plenty of criticism for Sanders but they don’t criticize him for being an identitarian because he largely isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with gendered language, but that wasn’t how I was using “cheerleading” and if we want to lob accusations it seems pretty sexist to imply that men oughtn’t be cheerleaders. (: Anyway, I reject most identity doctrine, including that we are all racist, sexist, etc.
> The right has plenty of criticism for Sanders but they don’t criticize him for being an identitarian because he largely isn’t.
It feels like you missed Sanders' entire campaign then [0] [1] [2].
The main differences between Warren and Sanders is that Warren's policies are better, and Sanders is a Jewish man (I feel like potentially being our first Jewish president didn't get enough play, but it would have been a powerful moment for the US and humanity as a whole).
> it seems pretty sexist to imply that men oughtn’t be cheerleaders
If you use phrases structured as "[stereotype] [people the stereotype is used against]", that's a stereotype. If your excuse is that the stereotype isn't absolute, it's a tacit admission that you used a stereotype against people. Own it or don't, up to you.
The right has plenty of criticism for Sanders but they don’t criticize him for being an identitarian because he largely isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with gendered language, but that wasn’t how I was using “cheerleading” and if we want to lob accusations it seems pretty sexist to imply that men oughtn’t be cheerleaders.
Maybe ironically, as one of them I wouldn't say "centrists" center anything. We tend to see the whole thing as a milieu. Not that economic issues aren't super important, but there's no serious way to analyze the US without taking both economic and identity issues into account.