Social vs Economic Justice

Only Bernie Sanders can break the power of capitalism in the US

Apt.

But putting words in her mouth.

After slugging it out on live TV for two hours, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton stood up to make their closing pitches. 

Sanders, a Brooklyn native, focused on inequality and overwhelming power of money in US politics. 

He called for free healthcare, free tuition at universities, the breakup of big banks and forcing the rich to pay their taxes.

Clinton responded: “You know, of course we have economic barriers ... But we also have racial barriers, gender barriers, homophobic barriers, disability barriers.” 

The subtext could not have been clearer: forget fighting Wall Street – a more liberal capitalism is all you’re going to get.

Defining the race as a choice between class and identity, between economic justice and social justice, was Clinton’s masterstroke. 

If it works, Sanders will be sunk by a combination of Wall Street money and millions of black votes in the southern states. 

The latter backed Clinton in some places eight or nine to one.

Thereafter the script will write itself. 

Whether fronted by Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, the Republicans will lose. 

. . . .

So for all the global media’s obsession with Trump, the real question in this election is: what kind of progressive politics will govern America – one that leaves the power of money intact or, as in the great reforming eras of US politics, fundamentally re-orders capitalism?

But fundamentally reordering capitalism is not abolishing it or replacing it, which is surely what "breaking the power of capitalism" sounds like.

So the headline oversells the story, does it not?