2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumEnough of the racism attacks toward Bernie OR Hillary. From Slate, featuring David Brock.
Now Slate is using the racist meme against Bernie Sanders. That is such a contrived argument, and it is not helping Hillary Clinton when it is used by her spokespeople.
That is a part of the primary that has made me the angriest. Neither of our candidates is now or ever has been racist at all.
Top Clinton Ally: "Black Lives Don't Matter to Bernie Sanders"
In 2008, when most black Democratic primary voters supported Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton argued that he couldn't win the general election because white voters didn't like him; she infamously said that Obama's appeal "among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans" was limited. Her campaign representatives and surrogates, meanwhile, suggested that there was something a little shady, un-American, and possibly even Muslim about Obama. Her campaign's belief seemed to be that white people wouldand perhaps should!be suspicious of a candidate who was too popular with black people.
This year, as Slate's Jamelle Bouie wrote yesterday, Clinton is facing a primary opponent who's popular with white voters but not black voters. A widespread protest movement, meanwhile, has helped put issues of racial justice at the top of many Democratic and liberal Americans' minds. It is under these circumstances that a longtime Clinton ally, the notoriously aggressive Democratic operative and pro-Hillary Super PAC founder David Brock, just declared disparagingly to the AP that Bernie Sanders' new TV ad is evidence that "black lives don't matter much to Bernie Sanders."
To be fair, there are a lot of white people in the ad ... literally thousands of them. White people everywhere, as far as the eye can see. Does that mean Bernie Sanderswho has made extensive though generally ineffective efforts to make inroads with black votersdoesn't care whether black people live or die? Eh, probably not.
Either way, though, it is heartening to see that Hillary and her supporters have made such personal progress in their understanding of the importance of black lives and black votes.
Ben Mathis-Lilley edits the Slatest. Follow @Slatest on Twitter.
That pathetic article was written by the editor of the Slatest blog. That's sad.
arcane1
(38,613 posts)Stupid is as stupid does.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)And both candidates need to avoid such tactics.
And they need to speak out when others use that tactic in their name.
arcane1
(38,613 posts)madfloridian
(88,117 posts)I respected him after reading Blinded by the Right, even wrote about it here.
He is swiftly losing my respect as his voice is becoming too shrill and untruthful.
arcane1
(38,613 posts)I had the same respect after reading the same book, but apparently he thinks it's OK to use those same lying techniques as long as he thinks it's for a cause he believes in.
He lost me a few months ago when he tried that scare tactic of saying Sanders would turn the US into Venezuela.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)Truprogressive85
(900 posts)The man who had to smear a black woman to get a paycheck
David Brock must be high on coke
Racist POS
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)madfloridian
(88,117 posts)morningfog
(18,115 posts)madfloridian
(88,117 posts)He really is.
Skwmom
(12,685 posts)are. Clinton said Rahm loves Chicago.