The dead-on-arrival Medicare for All bill Sanders introduced in the Senate got a lot of hype last week. Sanders has made a point to be seen and heard at all the major media stops as he pushes legislation that everyone knows is going absolutely nowhere. One of my biggest beefs with Sanders is that he sees politics through the lense of the white working class while claiming that he’s attempting to help everyone.

There was the time he said he was “deeply humiliated” that Democrats lost the white working class. Or when he lashed out against identity politics (which Kellyanne Conway immediately praised him for) and said “It is not good enough to say, I’m a woman, vote for me.” Or the time in 2014 when he dropped this gem:

“Well, here’s what you got. What you got is an African-American president, and the African-American community is very, very proud that this country has overcome racism and voted for him for president. And that’s kind of natural. You’ve got a situation where the Republican Party has been strongly anti-immigration, and you’ve got a Hispanic community which is looking to the Democrats for help.

But that’s not important. You should not be basing your politics based on your color. What you should be basing your politics on is, how is your family doing? … In the last election, in state after state, you had an abysmally low vote for the Democrats among white, working-class people. And I think the reason for that is that the Democrats have not made it clear that they are prepared to stand with the working-class people of this country, take on the big money interests. I think the key issue that we have to focus on, and I know people are uncomfortable about talking about it, is the role of the billionaire class in American society.”

It is clear that Sanders believes that the Democrats focus too much on “identity politics,” and that minorities shouldn’t be basing politics on their color. Socially conservative Republicans feel the same way. Sanders has a hyper focus on the white working class, and he believes that single payer healthcare or free college would ameliorate their economic grievances. Neither program would do much to close the racial wealth gap, but that’s a story for another newsletter. My question is — if Sanders can be radical for the white working class and their economic issues, why can’t he be radical in regards to closing the racial wealth gap? It is a question that Coates has raised in the past. And perhaps the quote above has the answer.

But it bears reminding that when you ask the supposed leftist radicals about reparations for slavery, they suddenly turn into centrist pragmatists. And hypocrites for that matter. Sanders told the Iowa Brown & Black Democratic Forum that he wouldn’t support reparations because “the likelihood of getting through Congress is nil…it would be very divisive.” Both of those things are true of his Medicare for All legislation, but it didn’t stop Sanders from introducing a bill. Why is Sanders willing to be radical for the economic interest of the white working class, but not for Black people?