Truth-out has an the article Kshama Sawant vs. Rebecca Traister on Clinton, Democratic Party and Possibility of a Female President. The article has the video below and a transcript. Also, you can go directly to the video with this link.
KSHAMA SAWANT: Well, as a Socialist and a feminist myself and as a woman and a woman of color, I have no question in my mind that in order to make social change, it is absolutely critical that women, people of color, all the members of the oppressed communities under capitalism, be on the forefront of struggle. But I think the identity of the person we are talking about, the leading people, is — are much less important. Their identities are much less important. What’s far more critical is where they stand.
So, if you look at the significance of her being the first female nominee, I understand the appeal of that, I’m sympathetic to that. But here’s what I would say. I actually — you know, all throughout this campaign season, I was reminded of a show — an episode that you played, Amy, in 2008, when you had Melissa Harris-Perry and Gloria Steinem debating, and Gloria was saying, “Well, if you’re a woman, you need to vote for Hillary Clinton,” and Melissa was saying, “Well, if you’re a person of color, you need to vote for Obama.” And I was sitting there watching as a woman of color, saying neither of these candidates represent my interests as a woman of color. And the reason I say that is it has less to do with their identity and far more to do with the interests they represent.
Kshama Sawant keeps elevating the discussion above sound bites. She makes a stronger case than even Bernie Sanders has made. She is a far better debater than Bernie ever was. The one point that she missed at the end was her response to the following comment:
REBECCA TRAISTER: OK, OK, all right. It’s interesting looking at all the emails that were hacked and that have been released. And one of the things that struck me is that, of course, there was the horrendous sort of discussion of using Bernie’s faith against him. You know, it was very obvious that people within the DNC didn’t like Bernie Sanders. It doesn’t come as a huge surprise to me. I think the DNC was not operating well throughout this — throughout this primary season. But what I didn’t find, actually, was any evidence that there was any systemic rigging. I mean, Hillary Clinton won millions of more votes than Bernie Sanders over the course of these primaries. And there — yeah, there are all kinds of arguments about why and whether it should have gone that way. But, to me, there is — I have found no persuasive evidence.
I found evidence that people in the DNC did not like Bernie, that people in the party did not like Bernie. He hadn’t — you know, he recently joined the party. That’s very true, and I understand why it’s troublesome. But I haven’t seen any evidence that the process itself was rigged or that there was any actual — they couldn’t — they didn’t get it — there was nothing in all those emails about what they were going to do to stop this guy, who, yes, they were saying they didn’t like, but I think the idea that the DNC, a rather ineffectual organization, had an impact on what was a democratic — a deeply flawed process, that I wish we did differently in this country — but she won. By a lot.
Kshama could have pointed out that if the evidence of rigging was not found in the emails, there was plenty of such evidence elsewhere. The fact that they weren’t stupid enough to be emailing about election fraud, is as logicians would say “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”. That last thought is especially important when there is evidence elsewhere.