You called me friend, Mandark. 
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I'm not really interested in speculating on why he doesn't support doing the right thing--he has after all now been denounced by the party organ--I just think that the Democratic establishment that stands against him doesn't have a particularly solid moral footing from which to attack him on the issue, not just for the fact that it's "unrealistic" economically but because even an unsatisfactory postwar German style of reparations would necessarily require that white America be disabused of many of their most favorite bedtime stories about rugged individualism and the Democratic Party's big tent currently includes people who pretend to be more patriotic than Columbia herself. But attacking from moral ground you don't have is politics, I know.
I sort of roll my eyes at criticizing anybody for not “doing the right thing” in part because there is no consensus on what reparations even means from a policy perspective. It could mean everything from “free college and Medicare for all but calling it reparations” to “give $1 million cash to everybody darker than a paper bag”.
Bernie’s response of “what does that even mean, specifically?” when asked if he supports reparations is imo, the right one at this point in time. I basically would support most of the “reparations” plans that have been floated by democratic candidates, but would also call all of them general anti-poverty programs and not really reparations the way a lot of people mean it.
That said, the only place I’ve ever really seen people come up with their preferred policy ideas for reparations was on 2016 Neogaf. And all of their ideas were obviously ridiculous and never going to happen.
I do think a constituency can be built to support reparations programs to some extent, but there Doesnt seem to be any organized activist groups trying to figure out something that might even be reasonable or workable.
Something along the lines of righting specific wrongs, while also instituting some generalized anti-poverty programs is probably something that could get support in the democratic caucus and maybe gen pop... but someone has to propose it and make the case.
I’m thinking something like “special below-market financing for home buyers whose family can be traced to neighborhoods affected by redlining” and “free college education for descendants of black soldiers denied GI Bill benefits”. Those things seem like reasonably able to be defined in a way that makes sense... but the idea of “giving each black person $200K cash” or whatever is completely unworkable logistically, economically, and politically. Nobody should even waste time arguing for it.
