Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
There is a damning article in Fusion detailing how Bernie Sanders and his campaign never put forth the effort needed to win black votes. His lazy approach to black voters was so bad that he could not pick up Black Millennial votes on HBCU campuses. Campaign workers note that Sanders never funded black outreach and paid little attention to the concerns of his black outreach team. HBCUs are a hotbed of black Progressives and should have been a ready source of Support for Sanders, but Sanders performed poorly with black Millennials because he never asked for their votes. At one HBCU, the Sanders campaign fumbled ticket assignments so poorly that the audience was mostly white.
Bernie Sanders sees things in terms of class and appears to have very little insight into the impact of race in the United States. Because he is incapable of adapting his message, Sanders handed the black votes in a gift box and FedExed them to Hillary Clinton. The article includes a speech that Hillary gave on race this year that Sanders could never have delivered.
Sanders was dismissive of black voters. Reading comments from black people who worked on the Sanders campaign, you come away with the impression that the article confirms the vibe you got from Sanders and his campaign. You also come away angry.
Comments
It's a sad story. RMRD - do you agree with the author that "it didn't have to be [this] way". In other words, Sanders could have performed much better among black voters than he did. If you do agree, what should he have done differently that would have convinced African-Americans (perhaps even you) to vote for him. If you disagree, then doesn't that render the whole premise of this article moot?
by HSG on Thu, 07/14/2016 - 9:20am
Hal, Sanders was in Congress for decades and nobody in the black community knew who he was. Sanders never directly addressed black concerns. Sanders places racism on the back burner. He arrogantly decided that he could mount a direct challenge to Obama in 2012, and not face pushback from the black community. Neither Sanders or his hardcore supporters ever took black voters seriously, The position taken was that either you are for us (Sanders) or you are against us. Labeling John Lewis a traitor was outrageous.
We have had this conversation repeatedly. What becomes clear is that neither Sanders or his hardcore supporters are able to create a bridge to people with different opinions. All we hear from Sanders and his supporters is what others have to do to appease their feelings. There is zero empathy for those who do not feel the Bern. Sanders does not understand ethnic minorities and is too old to change. From the standpoint of African-Americans, it is good that Sanders will not be President because black concerns would not have been an issue.
I realize that we will have this same conversation in the future because Sanders supporters only see their point of view as important. John Lewis, and everyone else with a different opinion is made into an enemy by Sanders and his hardcore supporters. As I have noted repeatedly, Sanders is not concerned with building coalitions. Both he and his hardcore supporters want strict obedience. They will always demand that other people make concessions.
Edit to add:
Hal, these sentences serve to confirm that hardcore Sanders supporter tears have no clue about the black community despite this being 2016.
by rmrd0000 on Thu, 07/14/2016 - 10:50am
RMRD - you claim that merely by asking you what Sanders could/should have done differently I am demonstrating cluelessness. Okay, fair enough. I am clueless. Educate me. How could Sanders have reached out differently and more effectively to the African-American community?
by HSG on Thu, 07/14/2016 - 2:36pm
Sanders had a tough row to hoe in that he spent years in the House and the Senate and apparently was absent on the issues that concern black voters. I and others have posted articles in which senators, representatives, and leaders of black organizations in Vermont and nationally claimed Sanders wasn't willing to expend effort working with them. If we consider that this isn't all partisan sniping and there is some truth to this characterization there was little Sanders could do. One can't change in a few months a reputation that was built over a couple of decades.
by ocean-kat on Thu, 07/14/2016 - 2:51pm
I'm not even sure he had a bad reputation with African Americans going into the election. More like no reputation. Bernie Sanders is stuff white people like and, really for most of his career he was stuff white people in New England like.
by Michael Maiello on Thu, 07/14/2016 - 3:36pm
Bernie never felt the need to reach out to groups that did not fall into lockstep with his position. He also wilted under criticism.
An article from the "Daily Beast" portrayed Sanders as dismissive of black activists in Vermont. No one in Sanders campaign felt that there was a need to counter the article. The unchallenged article confirmed the perception the black community had about Sanders
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/17/vermont-s-black-leaders...
It took a Huffpost article to challenge the article. The Sanders camp did not defend their candidate. The Huffpost article notes that some of the organizations criticizing Sanders were inactive or may have been front organizations. The praise that one local black Vermont activist heaped on Bernie was lost in the mix.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/liam-miller/african-american-leaders-in-ve...
Sanders campaign did not have enough interest in the black community to correct the record. If his campaign could not take the simple action to show Bernie had black support in Vermont, how disastrous would a national campaign facing constant charges from the GOP have been? Sanders was not interested in black people.
by rmrd0000 on Thu, 07/14/2016 - 4:30pm
Well said.
by Michael Maiello on Thu, 07/14/2016 - 5:16pm
Agreed, and this is one of the problems an unknown has when running for president. When Obama said Hillary was likable enough it was seen as a slight but in a way it's true with every faction of the democratic party. Hillary and Sanders may have mostly voted the same on black issues, most of the time good and occasionally not so good. But when black leaders needed help they could go to Hillary and she'd expend some effort to help. Maybe not as much as they wished but she was there. Sanders just voted.
All the major environmental organizations know Hillary and consider her a friend. Not BFF's, not as much as they'd like but likeable enough. We could go to Hillary for help and she'd do something most of the time. Sanders just voted right most of the time.
With the LGBT community, with the Hispanics, abortion rights groups etc. she's always been there and been likable enough.
No one can jump up one year and run for president. No matter how good the rhetoric is people and especially the leaders of the factions in our diverse democratic coalition are going to ask, "Where were you 5 or 10 years ago when I needed your help?" It takes years to build a level of trust, to build relationships, with each and every faction. Good words during one campaign aren't enough.
Hillary has always been there and she's always been likable enough with every faction. That's how she built a broad based coalition to support her for president.
by ocean-kat on Thu, 07/14/2016 - 4:59pm
Hal, you are not listening.
1. Sanders never felt the need to reach ou to the black community during his time in Congress. He began the campaign as an unknown quantity.
2. The most recent action black people think of when they hear the name Bernie Sanders is that he felt Obama was not doing a good job and should be challenged for the Presidency.
If he is not astute enough to realize that blacks ( and apparently most Latinos) did not have a positive opinion of him, he was not qualified to be President.
3. When the bulk of the Congressional Black Caucus went for Hillary, the Sanders campaign labeled them traitors. John C. Lewis, a Civil Rights icon, was a target of the Sanders campaign.
So we have a candidate who did not make connections to the black community, criticizing President Obama, and topping it off by calling a legend in the black community a traitor. Does none of this point out gross errors made by Sanders?
4. Sanders paid little to no attention too black community outreach. Funding of black outreach was nonexistent His campaign gave out an overwhelming number of tickets to whites compared to blacks during a campaign event at an HBCU. Does that seem like a smart idea?
5. Then we get to the DNC platform committee and TPP. The bulk of the DNC did not want to embarrass the President by putting a plank for the TPP in the party platform. Sanders and his supporters were too tone deaf to make a compromise. The TPP can be struck down by the next President. Sanders wanted to create division where none was necessary.
So what could Bernie have done after not forming relationships in Congress and calling for a challenge to a President popular in the black community? Sanders could have actually focused speeches and finances to target black voters. This is not rocket science. Sanders went out of his way to dampen enthusiasm for his campaign in the black community.
6. Hillary worked to form bonds with the mothers of black youths killed by police.
7. Hillary sent campaign workers to aid the Mayor of Flint to make connections in D.C.
8. A lawyer for the Clinton campaign is working on legal efforts to fight voter suppression.
Sanders offered nothing but rhetoric on issues of race. Sanders and his supporters never sent a message that they cared about racism. The supporters were more upset that Black Lives Matter interrupted Bernie.
I know that this information, that I have supplied many times before will have no impact on you. You read an article that noted the dismissive nature of Bernie's appeal to black voters, and you still ask what Bernie could have done differently. Clueless.
What could Bernie have done differently? Everything like talking to black members of Congress and not calling for a President popular in the black community to face a primary challenge. He could have changed his behavior up to and including actually funding black community outreach.
Because none of this data will "stick", we be having this same conversation in the future. You simply will never understand why Bernie lost the black vote.
by rmrd0000 on Thu, 07/14/2016 - 3:13pm
Previously you criticized me for allegedly not accepting the fact that blacks didn't support Sanders even though I obviously "accepted" that fact. Now you complain that I "will never understand why Bernie lost the black vote."
My questions to you were what DO YOU BELIEVE he could have done differently and would it have made a difference. You have answered those questions. Thank you.
by HSG on Thu, 07/14/2016 - 10:28pm
Hal the reason that I do not believe for one second that what I posted will stick with you is because you took nothing from the Fusion article. The article began by noting that Hillary did not have the black vote captured. The article then went to to point out that Sanders did not craft his message to issues dear to the black community. According to Fusion, black staffers assigned to black outreach were ignored. In addition, funding for black outreach was minimal. After reading the article, you still had no clue about what Sanders could have done differently. It is impossible to read the Fusion article and come away without any clue of how Sanders could have done better. I conclude that you are not taking the issue of Sanders and his pathetic approach to the black community seriously.
We will have this same discussion in the future because you still don't comprehend what went wrong.
by rmrd0000 on Thu, 07/14/2016 - 11:02pm
Hal, Bernie never showed any desire to attract any of the captured or assimilated demographics in the democrat party whether Black of Dagblogger. His target audience was disaffected White middle class liberals and his task from the beginning was to invigorate what would have been a dreary boring coronation of the Red Queen. When young people from the real Left and independents swelled his ranks by the millions he seemed to briefly have delusions of grandeur but his early capitulation shows he didn't really want to represent them either.
I think that Black folks are a bit wiser and more aware about how our system works so why should they chase rainbows with a phony ringer who would have brought them back to the Clintons, why waste the effort. It is telling that it was BAR that tagged Sanders as the sheepdog as soon as he began his phony Socialist rant.
by Peter (not verified) on Thu, 07/14/2016 - 4:34pm