Are there any non "woke" progressives anymore?
I have always been a class focused guy. I came of age around Obama's first term and his style of pragmatic progressivism always appealed to me, especially in the 2008 campaign. His actual presidency was a mixed bag and I ended up voting for Bernie in the 2016 primaries before ultimately holding my nose to vote for Clinton even though I wasn't a big fan. Then came Trump and we all know what happened next.
I have moderated a lot of my opinions over the past decade and tried to see the value in both sides, but the right has gone off the rails and the democratic establishment has proven to be old, out of touch, and corrupt. I'm ready to return to some of my more radical roots but I feel a bit like a man without a country in the modern political landscape.
My main gripe with progressives over the past few years has been their laser focus on race, gender, and sexuality past the point of common sense. The intersectionality movement has created division amongst those that should be allied along traditional class lines. The lower and middle classes have far more in common with each other than the ultra rich. It comes from a good place, but I find the whole movement preachy and moralistic and, at times, kind of deranged. I thought we might be moving away from this but some of the clips coming out of the recent DNC leadership meeting makes me think we still haven't learned our lessons.
Where are all the class based progressives without the poison pill of overly racialized woke ideology? Who is out there pushing this platform currently and how can we bring it back to the forefront?