Comments on TAPPED aren't cooperating with me, so I'll post it here.

Mark Schmitt on Edwards, poverty and race:

And yet, as I point out, he actually talks about poverty in a relatively safe way that treats it purely as an economic issue and he often (though not always) avoids the issues of race, racism and power that are inherently connected to entrenched poverty, especially urban poverty. His major speech on poverty last fall mentioned race only as something that used to be a problem, whereas now income is the problem.

The popular narrative today among many liberals and liberal-leanings seems to be that racism and misogyny are over, done with, relegated to a few extremists with no power to do anything about it, and instead the major social justice problem of our time is class. It's not exclusive to Edwards.

It's frustrating to try to argue with people who subscribe to this narrative, because they'll take any evidence of discrimination or mistreatment and automatically tie it back to class. Yes, the two (three, or more) are inextricably intertwined. No, this does not mean that racism and sexism no longer exist and are simply expressions of classism. It's an overly- simplistic view, and I suspect it comes in part out of a desire to free the movement of the conservative backlash against the increasing power of women and minorities in the country, an attempt to distill the progressive message and make it more palatable to those who suffer some forms of discrimination, but benefit from male or white privilege and are averse to a frank recognition of same.