I love this article, and I think this passage is crucially on point.

I wrote a column a few weeks back about how the Democratic Party must pay more attention to working class people who are suffering.

I got a pretty favorable response, but I did get some criticism from people who told me that I needed to center people of color more and stop coddling racist white people.

My response is much like yours: what I was calling for in my column mirrors what people have color have been demanding for decades.

We should not coddle racists. We should fight for the interests of ordinary people in the United States, despite the tragic fact that some of them are racists.