Insiders recount how Sanders lost the black vote -- and the nomination slipped away

[comradebillyboy]

Bernie Sanders reached the pinnacle of his campaign inside Cowboys Dancehall in San Antonio on Feb. 22. He pumped his fist to punctuate a triumphant speech. He’d just won the Nevada caucuses and was sitting on top of the Democratic presidential race.

But 1,200 miles away in South Carolina, some aides and allies felt dread that trouble was lurking just around the corner. “I knew that our campaign had not done the work it needed to do,” Donald Gilliard recalls thinking. He felt the campaign’s strategy was “geared toward white progressives,” leaving black voters behind.

Gilliard, the deputy state political director, wasn’t alone. Mal Hyman, a former congressional candidate and a Sanders surrogate in South Carolina, had a similar sense of anxiety. “We knew we were vulnerable,” he lamented.

A week later, their worst fears came true. A resurgent Joe Biden thumped Sanders by 28 points in the South Carolina primary, sending the Vermont senator into a free fall from which he not recovered.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/insiders-recount-how-sanders-lost-the-black-vote--and-the-nomination-slipped-away/2020/03/24/2b7b8b8e-685e-11ea-b313-df458622c2cc_story.html

[redstatebluegirl]

1. Bernie got much worse during this campaign.

He was flailing way, pointing at people growling at the camera and that did not help him with any of the voters out there except his small 30 percent cult of people. I have said this before I liked him when he first came out for President, that changed totally after what he did to Secretary Clinton.

I don't think his rude behavior sits well with anyone over 65 and that includes Black voters.

[honest.abe]

3. Yes, a big part of Sanders problem is his personality.

He is gruff and rude and almost always appears angry. That turns off alot voters, I think in particular older black voters.

[redstatebluegirl]

5. Yep.

[Walleye]

7. Bernie is way to old to be an angry young man.

[KitSileya]

21. I think it was TheMagistrate who put it best

Paraphrasing here, but that Senator Sanders hasn't changed his mindset and outlook and politics in 60 years, since he was 18 years old. He is saying the same things as today's angry young men do because he hasn't changed anything about his beliefs since he was and angry young man. Only now he's sayign these things with white hair and a lined face, giving it the gravitas of an elder statesman and making his 30% think that their beliefs are well-considered.


I think that TheMagistrate was spot on, and what's more, anyone who isn't an angry young man knowsthat angry young men suck all the oxygen out of any movements. They relegate the women to making the coffee and people of color to the dirty menial tasks, and their activism is fueled from feeling they are being screwed over rather than more vulnerable groups being screwed over.

[Walleye]

22. Yes to all of that.

[zonkers]

37. This is true. His demeanor just did not cut it with so many, particularly older black voters.

[mcar]

2. He never even tried in SC

[NCProgressive]

4. Bernie's campaign was entirely based upon privileged

and college educated whites who could easily afford another Trump presidency to achieve a herd of unicorns.

Older, less educated and minority voters whose quality of life depends upon who is elected saw through the Sanders' policies as superficial and unattainable. Only slogans and no substance. Hopefully even the hard core BS supporters will take a step back from the effusive devotion, look at the congress and see how many of the BS proposals stand a chance of even getting out of the committee let alone a whole chamber and then get the 60 votes in the senate.

When the effusive disciples become realistic, Sanders looks like another leader promising stuff that he knew little about and couldn't deliver anything.

[LongtimeAZDem]

6. But, but, but, he marched with Dr. King!

[comradebillyboy]

10. Just like Mitch McConnell did...

[The Magistrate]

11. After Which, Sir, He Booked Off To Vermont

One of the whitest states in the country. He did so at about the time the 'Black Power' movement was setting in, and this had often a distinctly anti-semtic tinge. People tend to forget in the mid-sixties there were affrays which 'riot' does not quite accurately describe, though insurrections does not quite serve the purpose either. There were tanks in the streets of major cities, this sort of thing was looked towards seasonally, people wondering if there was going to be 'a long hot summer'. Sanders appearance at an open housing march, prior to these developments, and his good fortune to be photographed in the hands of a pair of 'Chicago's finest', has been blown up out of all proportion to give the impression he was shoulder to shoulder with Dr. King through thick and thin. He was not, and the pretense he was is a shabby deceit, depending on the audience being ignorant of the facts.




"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."

[MineralMan]

8. Bernie Sanders thinks he is "color blind." In some ways, he is.

He firmly believes that economic justice is all that is needed to end discrimination between people on all grounds. He is wrong about that, and people who suffer from racism, sexism, and a number of other discriminatory -isms know that from long experience.

His lack of focus on other things that hold people down and back is his downfall. Yes, economic justice is truly important, but for many minority groups, they lack economic justice due to institutional biases against them. There can be no economic justice where there is social bias. People who are actually affected by these things understand that. Those who are not effected typically do not understand it.

So, when Sanders rails against economic injustices, people who have seen social injustices all their lives recognize that Bernie is missing a crucial factor in the economic injustice they face. Without social justice, there can be no economic justice. It is just that simple an equation, and that is recognized by anyone who suffers social injustice.

Bernie simply doesn't get it.

[The Magistrate]

12. This Is A Besetting Sin Of A Marxist Orientation, Sir

To a Marxist analysis, most every 'social problem' is the result of some distortion or other introduced into society by the exploitative relations of capitalism. They can only be solved through successful class struggle. Attempts to address any such issues as problems in their own right is to be decried as 'bourgeois sentimentality' or worse. In fact, there is little worse than distraction from the class struggle, so that focus on such matters may even be seen as intended to hamper the class struggle, even sabotage it. As with the imprisonment of homosexuals and prostitutes in Cuba under Castro, persons who persist in such distorted behavior once the class struggle has been won are engaged in counter-revolution, and if they cannot be cured must be quarantined, so that they cannot interfere with the work of securing revolutionary gains. Sanders may have ceased employing the vocabulary in public, but the old structures of thought he feasted on in the U. of C. library still show through.




"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."

[comradebillyboy]

14. At least he hasn't called for the liquidation of the

kulaks as a class. Just the billionaires.

[The Magistrate]

16. He Is Not Really A Gun In Hand Type, Sir

He doesn't really want to kill anyone, or even take all their property. But he has, as a man entering middle age at least, lent some countenance abroad to people who were just that sort....




"He was a better man than I. But I have killed better men than I, with a small pistol."

[comradebillyboy]

18. Although Bernie is no Joseph Stalin he does embrace

that class warfare theme a little too enthusiastically.

[The Magistrate]

19. We Are In Agreement There, Sir

But you may forgive a reminder that argument by hyperbole is a dangerous practice. It can on occasion give clarity to a point, but all too often, people who habitually resort to it come to forget they are employing a rhetorical device, and take their exaggerations for effect as statements of fact.

[comradebillyboy]

25. Indeed, I myself have some of the same personal flaws

as Senator Sanders. I'd like to be a better person but I just can't help myself sometimes.

[frazzled]

9. If you've been watching The Plot Against America,

the HBO series based on Philip Roth's trenchant 2004 novel of the same name (about an alternative history in which Charles Lindberg, with his America First movement, actually does win the 1940 presidential election), you would have seen this completely prescient scene:

Lindbergh holds these rallies all over the country, in which all he does is basically repeat the same line over and over again ("It's not Lindbergh against Roosevelt, it's Lindbergh against war" ). The main characters, an extended Jewish family in Newark, NJ, rail against his fascist tendencies and don't believe he can ever win over the general populace.

The scenes in question involve a rabbi (played by John Turturo) who is against the US entering the war and thus very pro-Lindbergh, who has been enlisted into the movement to give a speech endorsing Lindbergh at a big rally. As the family listens on the radio, they can't believe he would be suckered into such a thing, and proclaim that this is not going to get Jews to buy into voting for the creep, because they must certainly know Lindbergh's anti-Semitic tendencies.

A rebellious cousin explains to them the following: They're not using the rabbi to get the Jewish vote; they're using him to get the white Protestant vote (or something like that). It's a way of alleviating them of the burden of being considered anti-Semitic themselves so that they can vote for him. It's like a free pass for them.

I dropped off the sofa when I heard this line, because it encapsulated so perfectly what I felt about political candidates who use token minorities (blacks, women, etc.) but could never quite articulate. Getting a black celebrity or politician to endorse you or speak out at a rally is just what Roth so incisively explained in his novel: it's not about getting the black vote. It's about giving white people permission to vote for you despite your not attending to the real issues that affect black people.

That was Bernie Sanders's (and many other candidates') problem with black voters. They're like the fictional Jews who wouldn't vote for Lindbergh despite his flashing an articulate token rabbi around. They know.

At any rate, that show is amazing: beautifully shot, cast, and written.

[KitSileya]

23. That is an excellent point.

It's all about making white voters comfortable with voting against the interests of minorities.

[SidDithers]

13. C'mon. He had a SOUL FOOD lunch with Killer Mike 4 years ago...

and he chained himself to a black woman in college.

That's not enough?



Sid

[murielm99]

15. I haven't seen you here in a while.

Am I reading the wrong threads?

It is good to see you.

[SidDithers]

17. Still kicking around..

not posting as much though.

Good to see you too

Sid

[Cha]

29. But on March 1, 2020 he skipped going to the Edmund Pettus Bridge to

honor John Lewis and those who marched with him on Bloody Sunday .. It was noticed.

[Demsrule86]

20. Excellent read...thanks. K&R...the Sanders campaign made little effort to win over AA voters

IMHO- counting on a multiple candidate primary instead...a scenario where 30% could win the nomination and Black voters would not have been needed. Sanders was so rigid, he couldn't even adjust his message in order to attract AA voters. One wonders how they thought this would work...very naive campaign and candidate. This also illustrates that Sanders would have had a very difficult presidency...an inability to build coalitions would have really hurt him. I am thankful that Biden is our nominee.

[Happy Hoosier]

24. And then skipped the Selma commemoration....

The message was always one of benign neglect. He took for granted that if he could finagle the nomination, they would support him. He just neglected to really understand how important the black voter base is in this party. Being a Vermonter, it probably barely crossed his mind.

[empedocles]

28. 'finagle the nomination' - BS came close

[Tarheel_Dem]

31. "BS came close". To what?

[empedocles]

34. BS came close to finagling the nomination, with the thinnest Dem support

in the unrepresentative primaries of IA, NH, NV.

The Dem Party as a whole, did not want a Socialist BS nominee in November.

[Tarheel_Dem]

35. Oh, I see. n/t

[empedocles]

36. 'finesse' would be the more polite word than 'finagle'

[RandySF]

26. They did the very same story in 2016.

I had to double check the byline date.

[Eliot Rosewater]

27. Virus...more...important....than....this

[Cha]

30. We Can Multitask.

[BidenBacker]

32. Glad to see

the Hawaiian 3rd shift is at work. Can I go watch Morning Joe now?

Hey, it's 2:30 PM in Moscow so if you cross paths with one of Putin's IRA boys tell them I said "hi!" and keep up the great work.

[SidDithers]

33. Bernie didn't lose the black vote...

You can’t lose what you never had.

Sid

[Cha]

38. Thank you!