Aufhebunga Bunga
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/126/ Mr Bunga Goes to Washington (3) ft. Angela Nagle & Michael Tracey
🕑 Added 2020-06-02 06:17:59 +0000 UTCWhy did Bernie Sanders fail?
In the third in an occasional series on the US presidential election and the Left, we talk to Angela Nagle and Michael Tracey about their analysis of Bernie Sanders' campaign. We put to bed some bad arguments as to why Bernie didn't win the nomination, and examine some better ones: was the campaign was too establishment-friendly? too "left"? too middle-class? too anti-nationalist?... or are structural factors to blame instead?
And we ponder the end of the union of Old and New Lefts, of cultural liberalism and socialism. And the most worrying of all: was Bernie just a blip?
Reading:
- First as Tragedy, Then as Farce: The Collapse of the Sanders Campaign and the "Fusionist" Left, Angela Nagle & Michael Tracey, American Affairs
Comments
crux
that’s my issue with their critique. They end up contesting everything on the cultural plane that they are supposedly rejecting
Tulley
yeah... if I wanted superficial, identity obsessed cultural analysis coupled with centre left 'sensible' capitalist politics I would simply read the Guardian
Nick Thomson
I like Nagle on occasion, but both she and Tracey discuss the end of the Sanders campaign purely through a cultural lens, focusing entirely on resentment and internet animus. It's like they're taking a little sliver from the pie chart of reasons Bernie lost, and treating it like the whole pie, changing the subject when the rest of the pie threatens to come up in conversation. If Tracey were better at this, he wouldn't come off as very obviously disingenuous, but he isn't, so he does
