It wasn't a slip. The Dems already have the black and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the latino working class. The problem is that class-type programs that tend to be couched as racially-targeted appeals have the perverse effect of encouraging a redefinition of class legislation as racialist and of redefining the working class as non-white (and, by corollary, defining the white working class as "middle class.")
> deepens all those suspicions that those who would drop "cultural" and
> "racial" politics in favor of an allegedly "broad" economic
> populism really want all those troublesome folks and their issues just to
shut up or get lost. Is there no black/Latino working class?>
Those suspicious of economic populism are of little political consequence, as far as left politics are concerned. I have no doubt that blacks and latinos would be the first to jump on board an economic populist movement which white workers were strongly supporting and even leading. Only the p-b left and a few middle class civil rights types will squawk about some issues being demoted in rank. Because blacks and latinos are so overwhelmingly working class, they will understand that class legislation is in their interest, even if it doesn't speak to the entirety of their interests. By contrast, it seems clear that the present course of de facto separation isn't getting them anywhere.
MBS