The Law and the Prophets

        What prevailed over Bernie Sanders in New York was not only the disconnect between his unprecedented large rallies and ineligible younger voters, but the larger disconnection between familiar political landscapes and the menace of growing inequality.  The major re-shuffling that Sanders is proposing to correct how the economic system feeds this menace steps on the priorities of the “rights” communities—Women, LGTB, Civil Rights—and the business arrangements of party politics. 

         As to the first, Sanders asserts that 3 million New York State voters could not vote for him either because they were not registered, or not registered as a Democrat. Even if true, he also ran into the deeply-rooted democratic machine in Greater New York. In 53 of 62 counties of New York state Sanders won by large margins. In the big cities the ties of familiar advocacy alliances, patronage, ethnic politics and privileged (moneyed) partnerships delivered the Clinton majority; but it is also delivers the familiar status quo:

Nearly half of the greater New York City population is impoverished, living in or near the poverty line (Huffington Post 2014).  Half the city is rent-burdened, paying far more than 30 percent of their income for rental housing (HUD).

        Elsewhere, in places like affluent Silicon Valley for example a new study shows that 43 percent of the hourly workforce have become “contingent workers.”  Seventy-seven percent work only part time and three-fourths of those earn less than $15 an hour (Working Partnerships April 2016).

        This is essentially a status quo tolerated by both political parties, which is why the Sanders’ campaign still lives, and why the Democrats have now drawn their line in the sand: Sanders must be toned down or stopped or even discredited for the very big reason that Hillary Clinton cannot win in November without the Sanders voters.

        How much would helping Hillary Clinton win translate into support for the economic policy revolution at the heart of the Sanders campaign?  Or is the profound menace of  a widening inequality gap in fact a Democratic Party status quo that has the singular advantage of lubricating the power of the incumbents?

We might call this a new version of the biblical clash between “the law and the prophets.”