Politico: How Bernie Sanders Exposed the Democrats’ Racial Rift

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Your question is meaningless. It ignores the root of the issue itself.

Why did Bernie Sanders ignore the black vote? Because Bernie Sanders knew his dog whistle BS wouldn't fly in the south. That's what matters.

I mean your own post illustrates it. "Voting for him is a vote in their own best interest" is what he sold himself as and yet did nothing more than say he knew what was best for minority voters.

Come on.
Oh boy, my question is meaningless. Evidently not because below are quotes that give some explanations. I see why he failed in terms of campaigning, but I dont think so less of voters as to think they just needed more information from him campaigning down there. People know who he is, and didn't like him for a reason. My own post never asserted what was best for anyone by the way. Weak af.


One thing is Clinton's push for Pre K, not only would that help jump start education but provide much needed childcare for a lot of families. Free college doesn't mean a lot when you don't have the free time to go
That's true, towards the end of the democratic debates if felt to me that while Bernie was trying to help the poor, it didn't feel like he understood what it means to be poor in this day and age. At least, when you look past wall street and healthcare. I just want to add that specific issue resonates well from my experience with poor families. Which feels like my personal wheel house.

Sanders would be worse in that he had no real understanding of issues specifically relating to being a minority, and made no effort to really learn even after he was called out for it. He just assumed that everything would be solved for them if you fixed the socio-economic issues, ignoring that this does nothing to fix or at least offset the intrinsically race related issues that many minorities face. In other words, he tried to be color blind, which is bad because it ignores that the situation that white poor and middle class and black poor and middle class face aren't identical.
The problem with Bernie is his simplistic manner of approaching every problem as one rooted in income inequality. That's is not the reality. That is one piece of a complex puzzle of obstacles that minorities face. But Bernie's a classic Law of the Instrument/Hammer guy. He's got a hammer, and every problem looks like a nail.
He really did seem that way towards the end. A very one dimensional approach to the issues.
 
Why exactly did Hillary win so decidedly with minorities anyway?

I've been a Hillary supporter from the beginning of the primary, but I've always found this statistic a bit odd.

It's not really minorities especially like Hillary. Obama handily beat Hillary among minority voters in the 2008 Democratic Primary. What seems to be happening is that white Democrats and minority Democrats vote Democratic for different reasons. White Democrats vote Democratic for ideological reasons, they tend to be more vote based on White liberal ideology. Minority Democrats vote Democratic for identity politics based reasons, they feel there sense that Republicans are an anti-minority party of old racist White people, consequently, minority Democrats are less ideologically liberal than white Democrats. As a result, Hillary who is less ideologically liberal than Sanders more closely lines up with the ideological beliefs of minority Democrats.
 
Some supporters think that just because Bernie is a democrat that black people are going to vote for him. This guy is a random from Vermont. A lot of older black people see through the whole "revolution" bullshit. I dug around and it's true, he just isn't qualified to be president. While I like some things that Bernie has said I think what my mom told me is right. "Don't believe anything that the man says."

For example, I was asked who I'm voting for, and I said "I don't like any of them, but I'll probably vote for Hillary over any of them." A friend said "Well, he's going to make college free."

It's not that most black people need free college to succeed, we need communities that can support our will to get a better education first before doing so does anything.

For the majority of what Bernie Sanders says he will do, I can ask "Well, what is that going to do for black people?"
 
Bernie was selling a pretty large amount of radical change which I did agree with him on and still think will be necessary in the future, hopefully while the change can still come non violently.

But it's not hard to see why his ideas were such a hard sell for minorities who have already seen, experienced, and had much positive change with Obama and his policies that Hillary in general is very closer aligned with.

I mean yes the wage gap is only getting worse, my engineering degree barely keeps me above the poverty line with the U.S. capitolist ideals but that's not gonna matter when he didnt show nearly enough to convince minorities on issues like them getting executed every day with their murderers being defended and exonerated as one race related example.

I voted Bernie but the majority don't want radical change farther to the left after Obama. Most are pretty happy with it in the whole U.S. let alone the Democrats in particular.
 
Yes. Bernie dominated with young women and did significantly better with minority youth in comparison to older minorities. He had a racial problem but it was much, much more pronounced with older voters than with younger voters.

I wish I could find the source but I remember seeing a chart at one point that split things by age and race together - it may have just been for one particular state or it may have been national, I don't really remember, but it was pretty interesting because it showed that as any demographic aged they supported Hillary more. So Bernie still lost the black youth vote, but he had something like 30-40% whereas his older black support was something like 10-20%. Likewise he crushed it with the white youth vote, something like 80%, but his older white support was something like 50-60%. He won with Hispanic youth and lost with older Hispanics. This is all off of memory so I could be incorrect, but it would be great if someone else knows what I'm talking about and could find it.

That said, this isn't really surprising. White people tend not to think about how minority voters have seen the country improve over the course of their lives because of the course of their own lives it's gotten worse for them. Millennials, regardless of race, face a specific set of problems that made Bernie an attractive candidate for them, though obviously they also faced different issues within their cohort depending on their ethnic background, which is why Bernie still lost a lot of minority youth in the end, despite coming much closer. His problem was both a racial and age one and I don't know why some people on both sides here keep trying to claim it was only one or the other outside of scoring points.

This post is spot on.

Sanders would be worse in that he had no real understanding of issues specifically relating to being a minority, and made no effort to really learn even after he was called out for it. He just assumed that everything would be solved for them if you fixed the socio-economic issues, ignoring that this does nothing to fix or at least offset the intrinsically race related issues that many minorities face. In other words, he tried to be color blind, which is bad because it ignores that the situation that white poor and middle class and black poor and middle class face aren't identical.

I would agree that when he speaks of racial inequality issues, he doesn't seem to quite get it. But I also feel that posts like these kind of ignore that, afaik, his actual policies for criminal justice reform, which has nothing to do with economics, were the most radical of all three between him, O'Malley, and Hillary.
 
It was very disappointing how Bernie never really took the opportunity to connect how American capitalism was built by and continues to be upheld by racism. Shouldn't have been hard for any self professed socialist to do.

Which candidate for president has done this exactly? I don't think that's a failing unique to Sanders, but perhaps I missed one of the other candidates, especially the progressive ones, also make that specific connection.
 
his failure to answer Foreign Policy questions concerning countries in Latin America that concern Hispanic Americans who still have relatives in those countries...

Sanders ducked it because he wanted to avoid talking about Chavez, Maduro, Molares, Ortega or Castro.

he didn't know how to position himself in such questions during a Primary campaign and just dodged it when people who have know Sanders for decades now his real opinion on the Left in Latin American countries.


showing up only when a Primary contest happens is a minimalist thing to do. You gotta create ties and links with the communities in those other States during the span of a political career not just when the Primary calendar arrives.

Exactly, you running as a socialist, and people who have had socialism effect their lives want to know how you going to be different. Could have been a slammed dunk, but he told them "I don't have time for that, I am running for president".

I wouldn't be surprised if that alone is why he got blown out in California
 

Because Bernie Sanders addressed issues targeted at these groups during his campaign? Just some quick examples-

LGBT rights:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABaLhtchYfA

BLM:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Syln8IkOIqc

On immigration:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-immigration-reform_us_5640cb6ce4b0307f2cae2699

The only thing that Frozenprince said which could be argued is whether or not Sanders ignored the South. He kind of did. But for the rest, nah. You could say he didn't pitch his message to these groups effectively, but ignore? Come on.
 
Really good article. A bit depressing to read as a Sander's fan, but it's hard to ignore the truth.

I feel like the Sander's campaign failed for a lot of reasons, and journalists are going to spend forever trying to dissect it. Figure it out. I don't think it's any one thing, and at this point maybe I don't care too much anymore either. I'm ready to get in behind Hilary and watch Trump go down. In the end, avoiding that disaster is the best for everyone.
 
You guys are right, I shouldn't have posted at all, it's just a few months of building stress coming out.
Instead of taking it as a personal attack/assault, just listen and figure out why people were making a very different judgment than you were.

The divide here on age/race/class lines was stark.
 
You're missing the damn point. As always. As every Sanders supporter has since day damn one.

Bernie Sanders actively and openly ignored the South, Black, Latin and LGBT vote, because he didn't see it as important enough and his supporters continued to crap on these voting blocs the whole way.

If you can't see the political divide, I'm sorry, you're being willfully blind.

This. HRC has been courting these communities for a long time now. Bernie hardly showed up. He barely acknowledged them. Add to the fact that his campaign focused on issues that were way beyond the base issues these communities face.

It's hard to care about a white person's college debt when you are just worried about getting shot in the street.
 
It's not really minorities especially like Hillary. Obama handily beat Hillary among minority voters in the 2008 Democratic Primary. What seems to be happening is that white Democrats and minority Democrats vote Democratic for different reasons. White Democrats vote Democratic for ideological reasons, they tend to be more vote based on White liberal ideology. Minority Democrats vote Democratic for identity politics based reasons, they feel there sense that Republicans are an anti-minority party of old racist White people, consequently, minority Democrats are less ideologically liberal than white Democrats. As a result, Hillary who is less ideologically liberal than Sanders more closely lines up with the ideological beliefs of minority Democrats.

I wouldn't say it's quite that - both groups are liberal, but white liberals tend to have an outlook that is "economics first" while non-white liberals are more likely to take into account other factors that may, but not necessarily must be, tied to economics.
 
It was very disappointing how Bernie never really took the opportunity to connect how American capitalism was built by and continues to be upheld by racism. Shouldn't have been hard for any self professed socialist to do.

Sanders has proven to ironically not be that much of an expert on socialism.

Univision interview showed that.
 
Everyone seems to have gone in a different direction from what the article questions, and mostly the reason why I posted the article.

If this uncompromising, finicky, super liberal voting bloc continues to persist, it may cause unpleasant divisions in the Democratic party in the future. Therefore, what is the solution? What do these liberals want so that they would deign to support the Democratic party, without demanding the unreasonable?
 
You're missing the damn point. As always. As every Sanders supporter has since day damn one.

Bernie Sanders actively and openly ignored the South, Black, Latin and LGBT vote, because he didn't see it as important enough and his supporters continued to crap on these voting blocs the whole way.

If you can't see the political divide, I'm sorry, you're being willfully blind.

For reals suck my motherfucking dick
 
For reals suck my motherfucking dick
f9MFh.jpg
 
Which candidate for president has done this exactly? I don't think that's a failing unique to Sanders, but perhaps I missed one of the other candidates, especially the progressive ones, also make that specific connection.

None, because they're all capitalists and wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole. Bernie was the one who should have done it, though what he supports is really more social-democratic than socialism.

Sanders has proven to ironically not be that much of an expert on socialism.

Univision interview showed that.

Eh, I think he was just bluffing because he didn't want to talk about it. It wouldn't even be that hard to get around it - just say "I'm not a Marxist-Leninist", talk about Chavez being a new kind of caudillo, how what he wants to support is more like "Euro-socialism", boom you're done.
 
+ leaders in the Democratic Parties have built coalitions over years and decades of colaborations with various groups.

Sanders (Independent) spent the last decades huddled with his Vermont constituency and never thought of building a tradition coalition like many Democratic leaders have done.

Hillary has have had a head start since the 1970s but the funny thing is that Bernie was a Congressman + Senator for a way longer period of time than Hillary's Senatorial career
 
I read this yesterday but I'm glad somebody posted the article. Gives me life and describes perfectly how I felt during a significant portion of the primary. <3 <3 <3
 
It's not really minorities especially like Hillary. Obama handily beat Hillary among minority voters in the 2008 Democratic Primary. What seems to be happening is that white Democrats and minority Democrats vote Democratic for different reasons. White Democrats vote Democratic for ideological reasons, they tend to be more vote based on White liberal ideology. Minority Democrats vote Democratic for identity politics based reasons,they feel there sense that Republicans are an anti-minority party of old racist White people, consequently, minority Democrats are less ideologically liberal than white Democrats. As a result, Hillary who is less ideologically liberal than Sanders more closely lines up with the ideological beliefs of minority Democrats.
What does that even mean? Sanders idealogoy is based in part on whiteness?
 
I mean I get the idea that anyone seriously saying they are going to vote Trump just because their candidate isn't the nominee is silly. We get that. But I really don't see that happening after everyone falls in line to support Hillary.
 
No, it was both an age and race gap. Also, income.

From a Gallup poll released last month, among voters aged from 20 to 36:

Gallup Daily tracking polls conducted in April show Sanders bests Trump and Clinton among most millennial subgroups -- specifically, with both men and women, with whites and blacks, with all education and most income levels, with moderates and liberals, and with Democrats and independents. Trump does better than Sanders or Clinton among Republicans and conservatives.

It's not overwhelming, and, as the results of the primary have proven, not enough to make up for older people's votes, but, the claim that Sanders wasn't doing well with young minority voters is outright false.

Before California, taking only voters under 45, Sanders had an almost 20 point lead. What I'm saying is that age played a way more significant part in Sanders' loss than what the Politico piece, and a number of people on GAF, argued it did. And I'll stand by that.
 
For reals suck my motherfucking dick

hey guys Sanders supporters sure are about them issues huh

I for one am sure that Sanders went hard after the dick sucking crowd, but of course Hillary won them over in the largest numbers as well. You should have told your man to stop being such a shitty candidate.
 
What does that even mean? Sanders idealogoy is based in part on whiteness?

It has nothing to do with Sanders, it has to do with why minorities vote Democrat instead of Republican. Minorities who vote Democrat do so for different reasons that for why white Democrats vote Democrat.
 
Did Bernie ever mention giving funding to HBCU's? Nope.

What manner of helping racial communities beyond fucking Wall Street did Bernie ever give?

Bernie regularly said that black folks need lifting out of poverty as if he equated poverty with being black when the majority of us are middle class.

Thinking about it, I was dumb to ever support him. The wool left my eyes when it was far too late. Oh well. Let this be a lesson.

Where's that article that was posted in the BCT months ago that gave reasons why black voters mostly weren't feeling the Bern? It had everything you could want in it.
Here it is http://m.dailykos.com/stories/2016/...the-way-they-do-and-advice-on-how-to-win-them
 
No, it was both an age and race gap. Also, income.

You're totally wrong about income. The last time this was examined Bernie Sanders supporters on average had less income than Hillary or the 3 remaining Republican candidates.

It was Kaisich who had the problem of getting support mostly from affluent people only.

It's not really minorities especially like Hillary. Obama handily beat Hillary among minority voters in the 2008 Democratic Primary. What seems to be happening is that white Democrats and minority Democrats vote Democratic for different reasons. White Democrats vote Democratic for ideological reasons, they tend to be more vote based on White liberal ideology. Minority Democrats vote Democratic for identity politics based reasons, .

I'll stop you right there. We don't. History has proven time and again neither hispanics or brown folk (let alone Asians) gravitated heavily towards a minority candidate by default.

The specific reasons our diverse if strictly looking at interparty voting.
 
Well im a minority, i voted for Bernie. My parents voted for HRC because she seemed more pragmatic and they still remember the Clinton 90s.

I just don't believe a word she says, and just cause she was part of the boom 90s don't mean shit to me.

But hey GAF HRC fans say she will be the second coming for blacks so we shall see. I don't buy it and all the hotsauce in the world wont make me.
 
My generation voted as a protest for their first big election and we got George Bush Jr as President and everything that came with him.

So yeah, I don't think protest votes are good. Grow up.
 
i like trash vitriol as much as the next person, but lets just slay calm man

instead of saying "suck my motherfucking dick", maybe go with sommit like "you got any evidence to back up such a ridiculously wide claim?"
 
None, because they're all capitalists and wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole. Bernie was the one who should have done it, though what he supports is really more social-democratic than socialism.



Eh, I think he was just bluffing because he didn't want to talk about it. It wouldn't even be that hard to get around it - just say "I'm not a Marxist-Leninist", talk about Chavez being a new kind of caudillo, how what he wants to support is more like "Euro-socialism", boom you're done.


True. Though it wouldn't surprise of he only had a truly surface level understanding of socialism. Frankly most of his ideas were basically surface level quality
 
I'm an older, black life-long Dem. I think there's not any simple reason that Bernie lost big among black voters, but rather a combination of different mistakes, along with Hillary's well-executed strategy to get those voters to go for her instead. And while I agree with some white Sanders supporters that black voters went against their own interests in this primary (we certainly aren't immune to that!), I think that the way the Sanders camp handled this was a grave mistake. No one wants to be talked down to. No one wants to be counted out. Whether white liberals like it or not, black voters are a powerful force in Democratic primary elections.

As a Sanders supporter, I tend to agree. I don't think Bernie thought they had much of a shot and did very poorly in the south when they could have done better.

I think it would be short-sighted to think because Bernie didn't win, that what he cared about regarding his platform wasn't broadly popular (it absolutely is). I think even just a couple of his proposals making their way into the dem platform (and not just lip service), could be huge for the party long term.
 
Well im a minority, i voted for Bernie. My parents voted for HRC because she seemed more pragmatic and they still remember the Clinton 90s.

I just don't believe a word she says, and just cause she was part of the boom 90s don't mean shit to me.

But hey GAF HRC fans say she will be the second coming for blacks so we shall see. I don't buy it and all the hotsauce in the world wont make me.

Well good, glad to see that bullshit brought up again.
Thanks for your contribution.
 
Why exactly did Hillary win so decidedly with minorities anyway?

I've been a Hillary supporter from the beginning of the primary, but I've always found this statistic a bit odd.
It hasn't really garnered that much attention in the media, but an incredibly strong ground game and Clinton speaking with the mothers of black victims of police violence certainly helped.
 
hey guys Sanders supporters sure are about them issues huh

I for one am sure that Sanders went hard after the dick sucking crowd, but of course Hillary won them over in the largest numbers as well. You should have told your man to stop being such a shitty candidate.
There is a whole bunch of Sanders being shit on in here, especially when his followers are compared to a diseased limb that should be removed before it spreads. Ugh
 
Bernie or bust is the more important takeaway for me.

I have been trying to explain to people that if the movement isn't outright racist, then at least the people proclaiming it don't give a crap about minorities. I have two Hispanic toddlers. The concept of a Trump presidency is so terrifying to me I don't have the luxury of even entertaining a bust. When I express this to busters they tell me they don't care.

The past few weeks I have felt more disregard and uncaring about me and my family because of race then I have from my republican friends. The fact that these people hide in the progressive movement is deeply unsettling to me.
 
Well im a minority, i voted for Bernie. My parents voted for HRC because she seemed more pragmatic and they still remember the Clinton 90s.

I just don't believe a word she says, and just cause she was part of the boom 90s don't mean shit to me.

But hey GAF HRC fans say she will be the second coming for blacks so we shall see. I don't buy it and all the hotsauce in the world wont make me.

how much condescension can be in one post?

let's find out...

(starts licking)
 
if the "future of the democratic party" is just going to be a bunch of cynical jerks, i'm not going to want any part of it.
 
From a Gallup poll released last month, among voters aged from 20 to 36:

It's not overwhelming, and, as the results of the primary have proven, not enough to make up for older people's votes, but, the claim that Sanders wasn't doing well with young minority voters is outright false.

Before California, taking only voters under 45, Sanders had an almost 20 point lead. What I'm saying is that age played a way more significant part in Sanders' loss than what the Politico piece, and a number of people on GAF, argued it did. And I'll stand by that.

The data you're citing shows a 24-point favorability spread for White millennials between Sanders and Clinton versus 7- and 2-point spreads for Blacks and Hispanics of the same age group, respectively.

I'm not sure why you're using it to support the assertion that age divide between their constituencies was greater than the racial one.
 
From a Gallup poll released last month, among voters aged from 20 to 36:

It's not overwhelming, and, as the results of the primary have proven, not enough to make up for older people's votes, but, the claim that Sanders wasn't doing well with young minority voters is outright false.

Before California, taking only voters under 45, Sanders had an almost 20 point lead. What I'm saying is that age played a way more significant part in Sanders' loss than what the Politico piece, and a number of people on GAF, argued it did. And I'll stand by that.
You can see where Sanders' support was clustering on this map- http://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/national-results-map

There's a pretty clear pattern there.
 
You're missing the damn point. As always. As every Sanders supporter has since day damn one.

Bernie Sanders actively and openly ignored the South, Black, Latin and LGBT vote, because he didn't see it as important enough and his supporters continued to crap on these voting blocs the whole way.

If you can't see the political divide, I'm sorry, you're being willfully blind.

Outside of the South, which he absolutely did ignore because he knew he couldn't get any traction there, it's not really accurate to say he "ignored" those groups, so much as he didn't really know how to effectively weave his actually pretty thorough platform for dealing with many of their issues into his stump speech, because he's intellectually and rhetorically one-dimensional.
 
Outside of the South, which he absolutely did ignore because he knew he couldn't get any traction there, it's not really accurate to say he "ignored" those groups, so much as he didn't really know how to effectively weave his actually pretty thorough platform for dealing with many of their issues into his stump speech, because he's intellectually and rhetorically one-dimensional.

Which is functionally the same as ignoring them.
 
It hasn't really garnered that much attention in the media, but an incredibly strong ground game and Clinton speaking with the mothers of black victims of police violence certainly helped.

Yep. Clinton ground game was incredible.

Sanders basically had next to none.
 
Bernie or bust is the more important takeaway for me.

I have been trying to explain to people that if the movement isn't outright racist, then at least the people proclaiming it don't give a crap about minorities. I have two Hispanic toddlers. The concept of a Trump presidency is so terrifying to me I don't have the luxury of even entertaining a bust. When I express this to busters they tell me they don't care.

The past few weeks I have felt more disregard and uncaring about me and my family because of race then I have from my republican friends.

Do you remember PUMA? When Clinton supporters refused to vote for Obama back in 2008? Not trying to shit on Clinton supporters here--just saying--when there's a close primary or one that is hotly contested, stuff like this happens frequently.

It's not going to tank things. And for people bringing up Nader--Gore lost Florida because tens of thousands of democrats voted for Bush.
 
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