General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: How you can tell if Sanders speaks to the concerns of people of color [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)What are posters who post that poll result arguing...that if HRC is getting 87% support right now among AA voters that the discussion is already over and Bernie has been proved to be unacceptable?
Can you understand that there's a certain level of absurdity in HRC beating Bernie among AA voters(or LGBTQ voters or women if that is the case), given that Bernie's actual record on issues involving those groups is far superior to HRC's? Given that HRC played a major role in founding the Democratic Leadership Council, a group whose whole agenda was based, primarily, on distancing the party from blacks(and feminists, and gays, and anybody else who wasn't a Southern hetero white dude)?
The only reason Bernie's commitment to anti-oppression issues is subject to any real question is that it serves the interest of the HRC campaign to pretend that Bernie doesn't care about those issues.
What you hear as presumption or imperiousness is actually frustration...frustration that a good and impeccably anti-oppression candidate is being smeared as not caring about social oppression when he's done nothing whatsoever to deserve such a smear.
I agree that he should make a major speech clearing the air on this, but can you not see that it's ridiculous and kind of insulting to Bernie for anyone to be acting as if he can't be trusted on these issues?
If he's been voting 100% anti-oppression his whole career, why the hell isn't that enough? What possible argument exists that HRC is better on them? Yes, she gets more money(since she's always backed everything rich white people want), yes she's currently leading in the polls for the nomination...but how does that equate to anyone seriously arguing that she's better on the issues of racism, sexism, homo-and trans phobia, ableism, religious and ethinic persecution, or any other anti-oppression cause you could think of? Does "electability" assuming she's actually more electable than anybody else, which is problematic) equate to superiority on issues?
This isn't sincere inquiry...it's a vilification campaign against a good man who has never done anything to deserve it. That's why you see the responses to see. Bernie is being asked to prove himself when he's spent his entire life proving himself.
Why should he be getting this treatment, when Bill Clinton got the votes of those groups even though his whole program in presidential politics was to fight to lock them out in the cold? How is there any degree of fairness in that?