Thom Hartmann: a perfect example of the tone deafness of White progressives about racism in America

[Yavin4]

Watch and listen carefully to this exchange between a caller and Thom Hartmann. Thom makes a brilliant and logical argument about single payer health care. He cites examples from other nations. He has facts and figures to back up his argument, and the caller has no comeback to his argument.

After Thom makes his case, at 3:24 of the video, he asks the caller to please identify where Bernie Sanders does not represent middle America. The caller basically agrees with Thom's points, and tries to go into the "who's going to pay for this" argument. Hartmann then goes into comparisons with European democratic socialist nations, and the caller respectfully disagrees. At 4:18, the caller states that "we have a completely different mindset here". Again, Thom cites survey results which shows that a majority of Americans agree with his and Bernie's positions.

Finally at 4:55 of the clip, the caller states that he does not disagree with Bernie, and Thom asks why not vote for him? The caller goes into "big government spending". The clip ends with both men agreeing on getting money out of politics.

White progressives love throwing data at callers like these, and when they overwhelm them with data, they think that they've won the exchange. The truth is, the caller would vote for Bernie's entire agenda except for the fact that he believes that his tax dollars would benefit people from other races. When that caller stated, "we have a completely different mindset here", he's talking about race. Instead of throwing data at this caller, Thom should have probed that caller's position more. Get him out of the open on his prejudices.