Which is why he will have to compromise with establishment Democrats, but looking at his voting record, he's full of being able to maintain his ideological positions while compromising with the rest of the Democrats and with Republicans when it's possible.

Things like voting for Obamacare, but pushing it in his direction by getting in $11B in funding for community health centers. Maybe that's not a huge accomplishment, but it's him working with Democrats and moving things in his ideological direction.

This is a really terrible post.

A) you're just willfully ignoring that Bernie has worked for civil rights for literally decades, and was just relatively unsung about it. You don't just get to say "oh, lol old white guy from new england, look, he dresses like some ivy league preppy with his dumb button down collars, obviously he's just looking to pick up some cred with the brothers without putting in the effort. If you want to say his mistake was that he's not good at marketing, well, yeah, that's 100% obvious. But to act like he's just some johnny-come-lately is... clintonian revisionism.

B) you're also acting like Hil is the norm here rather than the extreme outlier. Hardly anyone the democrats have nominated has every had this decades-long track record of national-level exposure in these things. In fact, the ones who DO have that exposure tend to get run out the race early due to the way the primaries are stacked.

I didn't read europd's comment as implying you had made that smear even though he was responding to you.

I certainly meant it about the Berniebro smear in general, not anything you said.

AA voters are rightfully skeptical of claims that the revolution will happen if only they help to elect this, that, or the other person. It's entirely possible that, because of past disappointments, they have more trust in HRC's incrementalism than they do in Bernie's revolution.

My gut tells me that this explanation is too facile, but it's an interesting take.

Of course Bernie shouldn't win black votes just because he supported black people, but he did campaign for Jesse Jackson in 1988, caucusing with the democrats for the first time to do so, and JJ won the primary in Vermont.

His whole platform and voter enthusiasm is based around not being another obama/clinton establishment compromiser. He will get the real **** done like single payer! None of this watered down republican lite insurance industry give-away Obamacare stuff.

Oh and the whole logical premise behind his campaign is already a joke. Turnout is noticeably down in both Iowa, NH and Nevada relative to 2008 on the democratic side. I mean some of us thought it was joke all along, that a 74 year old socialist from vermont was going to build a broader coalition than a once in a generation political talent like Obama, and succeed where he failed.

Except no one can move the goal posts on your assumptions. First, it was explained that African Americans vote left leaning and Bernie supporters expected African Americans to vote for him because he's even further left so Bernie supporters are arrogant and racist for assuming so. Now that got walked back to it's just unspoken but assumed that Bernie supporters just think blacks are lazy as in the stereotype of blacks being laz-abouts because they don't vote for Bernie. The only constant here is that working class whites have racism in the bones or something.

Hey maybe it could they sincerely think blacks are just lazy, but I suspect not, and I guess we won't know as long as Dvault plays the jump to conclusions game.

Right. I don't think Bernie deserves anyone's vote any more than anyone else, but criticizing him for being a poser and just "showing up" to get Al Sharpton's stamp of approval is outright propaganda.

I don't know what his clothes have to do with anything. I'm not really in any position to litigate Sanders involvement in the civil rights movement but the total score seems to be some black and white photos versus guys like John Lewis not remembering him at all and basically took a crap on him as a poser. So one the one hand you have pictures and "he did it in an unsung way" and on the others you have like the literal hero of the movement saying he's a phony. To say Bernie Sanders "worked for civil rights for literally decades" is Bernie revisionism, full stop. Like he was certainly involved in leftist activist circles but to call him active in the civil rights movement is belied by the fact no one who was around at the time wants to help him tell the story.

You can talk to black civil rights leaders in Vermont. They don't have flattering things to say about him:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...e-sanders.html

Maybe John Lewis is in the tank for Clinton so he's full of it, and I dunno, and maybe those black civil rights leaders in Vermont have an inexplicable axe to grind. I dunno. But therein lies the problem: you call it a 'marketing problem,' I think anyone engaged in non-Orwellian Bernie-speak would say he doesn't have his bonafides in place with a huge core constituency of the party due to whatever the reasons and now we're at the back-biting and recriminations phase (e.g., blame the lazy black voters).

the same way that some members of the lgbt community can

as far as paragraph 2. not "just a thought", but a "good thought", and you are getting to one of the core issues. but you are missing a point in one of dvaut's posts, in that the black community, as a whole, is "more conservative than your average dem" when it comes to many social issues. the democrats only owned the huge majority black vote after the gop essentially kicked them out.

they are no friends of the lgbt community, no friends of the latino community, and tend to be more religious (especially so amoungst southern blacks). amoungst other things.

and they don't trust (and rightfully so), someone from the outside telling them "what is best for them." nobody does, really.

What conclusions am I jumping to? The racist nature of those posts? Guilty I guess.

Here are the posts in question:

If you didn't see this as extremely dismissive of black political agency and entirely paternalizing -- hey, blacks have no good reasons to support Clinton over Bernie, just these ones I made up that sound alarmingly lazy -- I guess we agree to disagree. I think the meaning here was entirely plain, although I agree you sort of have to know things about how white people have talked about blacks and their voting choices over time. I agree if we play the Raised by Wolves: Veil of Ignorance game well then of course they meant nothing at all, just happenstance that their argle bargle mapped perfectly onto old racist stereotypes and tropes. Happy accident I guess. When will white people catch a break from annoying people knowing things about how whites have historically talked about blacks, can we just start from scratch and let bygones be bygones in fairness to well-meaning whites here, etc. etc.

And conservatives like Bill Clinton were pretty big winners by being the most left alternative available and picking up people who were generally to his right, but alienated on social issues.

Well, guys like Rubio can pick up some generally liberal people who are against abortion.

In the primaries, minority/LGBT who are fiscally or militarily conservative will be a boost for Hillary. It's not the whole picture of course, but part of why I think that while Bernie is still a dog, if he beats Hillary, he will win the general. She's his hardest competition.


Same way a lot of working class people in general don't like (well, passionately hate) the people they consider elitist liberals.

John Lewis has contradicted himself on the clintons' involvement in the movement as well, FWIW. But regardless, you're still papering over Bernie's actual work in congress, not just for the civil rights of blacks, but for other groups as well.

If they want to criticize him, going after him for "not checking with his major constituents" seems like a bad move since his constituents are 1% black. It seems that a guy who gets a 97% rating from the NAACP probably overdelivers in this area. And look at that criticism, they are basically arguing over tactics, not strategic goals.

Sure, I agree. Of course a lot of this is a discussion about tactics moreso than strategic goals. I think the larger point is that the Clintons have made it a priority in their career to flatter black voters, and build strong networks with black political leadership the same way GOP voters woo evangelical Christians or gun owners or whatever.

Sanders voters want to say, well, forgive him for not bothering with that, Vermont hardly has any black people. And I get it, to a point, but you can't show up and run for President and just assume you can make up 30 years of cachet building with a lunch and a plea to understand Bernie knows what's best for blacks -- so fall into line. That's not how these things work and more than that, it's the old paternalist trope at work -- white liberals flying down from wherever expecting blacks to be thankful a nice white savior showed up to save them from worse options. I get that circumstances are such that Bernie had Burlington to run and civil rights wasn't a paramount concern and that being a Vermont Congressman and Senator doesn't put you at the forefront of issues important to black voters. You don't get to choose your lot in life sometimes but IF Sanders wanted to be President, to win a Democratic nomination, of the real party -- the party that's like, 25-30% AA voters -- it's absurd to blame black voters for Bernie's low name recognition and inability to identify what he's ever done for them. Bernie could have made black outreach a priority and didn't. That's Bernie's fault.

Of course this is all sort of getting into tactics and retail politics and it's sort of divorced from explicitly policy and outcomes from policy, but like, all the other political interests in the world (gun owners, evangelicals, the Chamber of Commerce, whatever) expect to get pandered to and politicians to flatter them and network with them, but when black people do it and reward politicians with fealty (e.g., John Lewis and the Clintons), oh heavens no, clutch the pearls, something really lazy and bad has happened. GTFO with that I say, blacks are just behaving like everyone else. Like, Bernie Sanders had no chance to court John Lewis during their decade in Congress together or whatever? Almost inconceivable. Of course that's all tactical but it's just common ****ing sense for politicians with ambition. Credit to Bernie, maybe, for being modest enough to not imagine a future where he needed black voters to win -- but yeah, GTFO of her with the notion that's black people's fault.

But that's the same thing Bernie has continued to do on issues of race, issues that Clinton is stronger on. She doesn't pivot every question back to income inequality, so when she talks about Flint or Rice or whatever the issue of the day is, she comes off more authentically in tune with black voters concerns.

Bernie chooses not to sell it that way, but whether you call it tactics or strategy a foreseeable consequence of pretty much ignoring racial issues from 1980-present in favor of a laser-like focus on income inequality is that black people might vote for a candidate who speaks to their concerns directly.

Maybe? Why don't you ask them? I suspect you'd end up with people having reasons why blacks support Clinton, but that they should weigh them differently which is to say, the normal thing you'd expect from people asking why people are voting for Clinton or for Bernie, and incidentally the same things we say about Republican candidates.

We scoff at a Yalie putting on cowboy boots and cutting sage to appeal to the True American, but learning the lyrics to a song to appeal to the True African American is just the way the game is played? The answer is obviously both. Politicians do preformative things to signal to people that their part of their group and curry favor and politicians enact policies in favor of a group but the former doesn't logically follow from the latter as evidenced by the Republican theater acting that goes on. Even at the worst, you assume that blacks are following for the Clinton performance when they should be supporting Bernie's policies then you're doing the exact same thing that Democrats make fun of Republican voters falling for.

That is to say there is a whole range of possibilities of legitimate disagreement of why or should more African Americans vote for Clinton or Bernie which aren't racist.

Fair enough, having free public university education means people might not spend more on private university education. Guilty, Bernie, guilty.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/darrensands/...hbc#.is6WByEEk

That's a lie.

From the New Hampshire debate, Sanders' words:

I thought you were more caught up with what has been going on in the primary. The reason I made the comment is because you wrote that Sanders is looking at the AA vote like some of his less enlightened supporters are. Well his less enlightened supporters have been smeared as racist, sexist, etc...aka BernieBros even when there hasn't been much to back it up. The Clinton campaign stirred more into the pot by saying they hope that kind of rhetoric doesn't become a part of the Sanders campaign, etc. They want to portray Sanders and his campaign as racist,sexist, etc.

Sanders’s plans make Republicans look serious

Do his voters care beyond what they may get from the pot?

I don't think that Bernie is racist. But as others point out, he certainly has spent less time meeting black voters than the Clintons. And he tends to view social problems first and foremost through the lens of income inequality, which likely strikes many AA voters as a roundabout way of addressing racism, etc.

It may well cost foreign jobs and a higher minimum wage may also put some people out of work, but this is concern trolling.

TPP is supported by wall street and large corporations who are looking out for big business interests in the US and abroad and not in support of the poorest workers foreign countries.

TPP does things like keeping people in poor countries from buying generic medicine so that they can also pay an insane amount for medicine, which is why Doctors Without Borders opposes it.

Whatever you think the results will be, Sanders doesn't think he's against foreign workers because he's not supporting big businesses movement into countries where workers are not protected and that's why he supports things like HR 644 which bans the import of goods manufactured by slave labor and people like Rubio and Cruz vote against it.

It's why Sanders supports the immigrants and immigration, but not guest worker programs where employers can have workers deported creating a system of indentured workers like in Qatar.

It's why, when the IMF sent money to Suharto, he protested to the former Goldman Sach's executive turned Bill Clinton treasurer that he should enforce rules protecting workers in Indonesia.

It's why he went to Costa Rica to protest CAFTA along side the workers you claim he opposes.

If you want to argue that the trade deals NAFTA and beyond have been a boon to the working class on the whole, including other countries, go ahead. Maybe you're right. But the now common attacks on Bernie for being xenophobic are complete BS.

Those were not claims made by Bernie Sanders though.

He's published his tax rates and they're barely any different than Hillary's which are barely higher than what they are now. Up to $200k/year they're the same. Then up to $5M/year they are like 5% more, then after that like 10% more.

Whether or not that raises a lot of money or spending it domestically increases growth by whatever percent, well, get 10 economists and you'll get 10 answers.

Right, that's fine, but that's a lot different than implying that Sanders is just pretending.

Well, I don't, not in the general case, but that is an EXTREMELY relevant response when the specific objection you quote is that he is "not checking with his major constituents."

lol

I'm not saying anything is black people's fault. I'm saying you don't need to make it out that Bernie has no civil rights experience to explain why some black people would rather vote for Hillary. "he doesn't have the network" is perfectly cromulent.

I mean I know Hil gets drilled on the goldman speeches for cash thing a lot but that doesn't make Bernie a single-issue candidate.