April 1, 2010
Progressives and ‘Bitter’ White America
Frank Rich, as always, does his trade honors in Sunday’s NYT column on the real source of Tea Party anger. (The column pairs nicely with Richard Kim’s dissection of Tea Party conspiracy theories in The Nation this week.) But understanding this movement’s emotional and mental core is only part of the battle. We also have to respond to it, and that’s where progressive and Democratic Party leadership alike continue to fail. Progressives consistently meet tea partiers with sneering outrage. What we need, with increasing urgency, is leadership that explicitly aligns working-class white folks and people of color.
The Minority Brief 