so, re the McElwee/Bruenig discussion on whether the left should build coalitions or try to create a party around class divisions. 1

I think they both kind of miss the point a bit. US politics are based around class divisions. In the US, the most important class division happens to be between white people and the people oppressed under white supremacy. 2

this has basically always been the case. our nation is built on expropriating land from indigenous people (class exploitation) and enslaving Black people (also class exploitation.) those divisions persist quite clearly in our current politics. 3

Zoltan Hajnal's book Dangerously Divided makes an extremely persuasive case that the primary division in the electorate is race. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-suburban-lifestyle-tweet-mixes-race-class-here-s-ncna1235234

Leftists who feel that the parties are not divided by class are I think failing to understand how race and class are intertwined, and how huge the gap is between the GOP as the party of white people and the Ds as the party of the underclass that white people exploit.

not that Ds are perfect at all. but I think it's difficult to make them better without acknowledging the way race is a real, material vector of oppression, and the way it splits partisan commitments.

I know for many on the left it's frustrating and confusing that race in the US supersedes what they see as more important indicators (income, profession, wealth).

but rather than getting mad at democrats or Black voters (or even white voters) for doing it wrong, it seems like it might be more useful to think about whether in fact racism in the US is a material fact that carries huge weight, and deal with the class implications of that.

among other things, there are real problems, moral and practical, in dreaming of a left party based around class as a replacement for our current partisan division based on race, if in fact race is the most important material basis of class in the US.

and people in fact vote as if race is the most important material basis of class in the US, and historically there's good reason to believe it is, so...

I mean, we are in the middle of an ongoing uprising against state violence demanding redistribution of resources to the lower class. And that's powered by antiracism, as the most important uprisings in US history have tended to be. this isn't a coincidence.

we need a left analysis that takes seriously the actual divisions and material struggles of the dispossessed, rather than bemoaning the failure of facts to fit (white) left theories of change and struggle.