Bernie Sanders, Latte Liberalism, and Economic Justice

At Bernie Sanders’s recent town hall, a young man named Roey Goldstein accused Sanders of demonizing the country’s top earners for benefiting from corporate-friendly trade agreements such as NAFTA. Roey expressed his disappointment and lamented that, as a “moderate Democrat” he and others like him were feeling a bit hung out to dry. Roey asked if Sanders could be more politically correct with his economic message so as not to alienate some Democrats.

I shed no tears over his concern. The country’s top earners are doing just fine.

Hand-wringing over the top 1% is the sort of backward rhetoric that tries to appeal to a liberal’s sense of social justice — that one should be careful not to offend any group, in this case billionaires and other top earners. Roey would like Sanders to treat the top 1% of our country as if they were any other marginalized group — one that faces institutional discrimination and is being unfairly demonized at the expense of working people.

This tactic isn’t new. Take this recent article on the Dakota Access Pipeline for example. In “The Real Dakota Access Pipeline Victim is the Construction Company,” the writer attempts to play on our sympathies and frame Dakota Access Services as the real group in need of justice. Reading his pontifications about a multi-billion dollar contract and lost potential revenue (reminding us that time is money) is almost enough to make the reader rue the plight of our friendly billion-dollar pipeline company. Never mind that the pipeline would be built on sovereign tribal land, lead to the desecration of sacred sites, and contaminate drinking water for both the tribe and Americans who live downstream. No, he argues, it is the pipeline corporation that deserves our compassion.

We should not be fooled into shedding tears for the billionaires. We must not be swayed by this rhetoric, which is peddled to prey upon our bleeding hearts. Our belief in social justice must not be perverted so that we ignore the needs of working people out of concern for the wealthy. Doing so would lead to us becoming “latte liberals” — those who clearly support diversity in gender, race, and creed but aren’t as concerned about our society’s vast income disparity. This is a fatal mistake for those of us working on creating a just society, and it can be fatal for our politicians as well.

We Won’t Be Rescued By Latte Liberalism

If Democrats wish to win federal elections, they need to address economic justice. Merely championing diversity and inclusion isn’t enough.

Take Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), for example. Booker was rewarded handsomely in the press for breaking precedent and testifying against Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) in his confirmation hearing for attorney general. Booker slammed Sessions’ abysmal civil rights record and was on his way to winning the hearts and minds of the American people.

But less than 24 hours later, Booker betrayed the same working people (including minorities) by voting against an amendment that would have helped lower the sky-high costs of our prescription drugs. 77% of Americans say their prescription drug prices are unreasonable, and millions of Americans either don’t fill their prescriptions, or skip doses, due to costs. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical corporations are posting billion-dollar annual profits. This amendment would have been so helpful to working Americans that despite it being proposed by Amy Klobuchar of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, 12 Republicans were on board with it.

And herein lies the problem with taking a “latte liberal” approach. The Democratic Party, which should be the party of working people, has become hard to distinguish from the Republican Party on issues of economic justice. A party that speaks to social justice but ignores cries for economic justice betrays itself.

It isn’t enough to draw a line in the sand on bigotry. We must also take a stand against the economic exploitation that makes billionaires out of pharmaceutical CEOs and necessary medications unaffordable for so many.

Billionaires Hate This One Weird Trick

On Oct. 14, 2016, Bernie Sanders’s Twitter account posted a 114-character tweet calling out pharmaceutical company Ariad on its greed:

Ariad’s stock proceeded to plunge, dropping approximately 15% by the end of the day, and cost investors $387 million .

Nothing is more important to a corporation than its stock price. And as you can imagine, the CEOs of GE, Verizon, and Disney have spoken out, often fiercely, against the idea that they are unduly benefiting from policies and trade agreements weighted in their favor. They often claim, instead, that corporate America is being unfairly targeted, that they ought to be seen as the saviors, and assert that corporations are people, too!

But we must shed no tears here. In fact, as Bernie said on Morning Joe recently, “If the billionaire class hates me or hates other progressives we should be proud of that because we have to start identifying with working people.”

If we work to rebalance the power between working people and corporations, it is true the billionaires stand to lose some of their vast accumulated wealth.

But this is not cause for us to weep for them. Rather, we must remain steadfast. We must not let our compassion be hijacked.

The tears we shed must be just.