Bernie Sanders
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders may be running neck-and-neck in the Democratic primary with Hillary Clinton, but he is not winning over Black voters.
According to The Washington Post, some Black voters are not “feeling the Bern.” The Post commissioned a poll of 1,100 Black people, which was conducted by Survey Sampling International, and found a lack of support for Sanders.
The poll showed Black voters favored Hillary Clinton over Sanders. Clinton scored a 72 on the favorability scale, while Sanders only scored 58.
Sanders, who has proposed free college education and universal education, policies popular with millenials, also performed poorly among younger Black voters. According to The Washington Post poll, Sanders scored a 60 on the favorability poll among Black voters aged 18-29, while Clinton scored a 66.
Although Sanders is a veteran civil rights activist and has often talked about the problems of the criminal industrial complex and police brutality, he has struggled to gain traction with Black voters. Last year, Black Lives Matter activists stormed the stage and disrupted his speech in Seattle. More recently, while speaking at a Black Forum in Minneapolis, panelist Felicia Perry accused Sanders of being afraid to use the term “Black.”
Sanders also faced criticism when he refused to come out in support of reparations, saying the issue would be “divisive” in Congress. Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates accused Sanders of not fully understanding the importance of reparations to Black people or the debt the country owes them.
“Sanders’s anti-racist moderation points to a candidate who is not merely against reparations, but one who doesn’t actually understand the argument,” wrote Coates in an Atlantic article. “To briefly restate it, from 1619 until at least the late 1960s, American institutions, businesses, associations, and governments — federal, state, and local — repeatedly plundered black communities. Their methods included everything from land-theft, to red-lining, to disenfranchisement, to convict-lease labor, to lynching, to enslavement, to the vending of children. So large was this plunder that America, as we know it today, is simply unimaginable without it. Its great universities were founded on it. Its early economy was built by it. Its suburbs were financed by it. Its deadliest war was the result of it.”
However, during a Democracy Now! interview, Coates later admitted he would choose Sanders over Clinton.
Clinton is counting on her long-term ties to the Black community to gain their votes. However, Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, has said that Black voters shouldn’t throw their weight behind Hillary Clinton. Alexander blamed Bill Clinton for supporting harsh drug sentencing in the 1990s and expanding mass incarceration of Black men.
According to CNN’s Poll of Polls, which amasses data from five other national polls, Clinton has a narrow lead over Sanders. CNN also said Clinton leads Sanders 56 percent to 32 percent in South Carolina, which is significant because about 30 percent of the state’s Democratic voters are Black. The Post said Sanders has done well in states like Iowa and New Hampshire which have large white populations.
Los Angeles-based political analyst and author Earl Ofari Hutchinson has always doubted Sanders’ ability to win over Black voters and secure the Democratic nomination.
“Hillary will be the Democratic Party nominee. She has the experience, name ID, the blessing of the party establishment, a mountainous campaign war chest, and will win the key primaries,” said Hutchinson in an interview with Our Weekly. “She will get nine out of 10 Black votes, because of her civil rights history, activism and Bill.”
The problem with this post is it fails to take into account social media, where the young people express their preferences for the candidates. MSM only considers opinions from establishment sources and young people have proven they will make the difference in this election, as they did in Obama's.
Marlen S. Bodden Oh, I'm aware 🙂 I was referring to the article appearing to make the point that Hillary is preferable to Bernie because of reparations despite Hillary not supporting reparations.
This article is so frustrating because it keeps perpetuating inaccurate talking points that turn the "Sanders will have trouble with black voters" prediction into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let's consider them in turn.
"Last year, Black Lives Matter activists stormed the stage and disrupted his speech in Seattle."
Okay…so, nothing about how he took the message to heart and began actively trying to engage with black voters on a scale that no other candidate is trying to do? No mention that he incorporated the goals of CampaignZERO–a BLM outgrowth–into his racial justice policy more completely than any other candidate?
"More recently, while speaking at a Black Forum in Minneapolis, panelist Felicia Perry accused Sanders of being afraid to use the term “Black.”
That just wasn't true, though. He had used the word "black" a heck of a lot that night. When someone shouted this, he responded by saying "I've said black 50 times tonight. That was 51." And according to local accounts, people cheered.
"Sanders also faced criticism when he refused to come out in support of reparations, saying the issue would be “divisive” in Congress. Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates accused Sanders of not fully understanding the importance of reparations to Black people or the debt the country owes them."
No mention of the fact that Hillary Clinton is equally unsupportive of reparations? What's the message here? Bernie doesn't support reparations, so vote for Hillary? That's just misleading and dishonest.
"Clinton is counting on her long-term ties to the Black community to gain their votes. However, Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, has said that Black voters shouldn’t throw their weight behind Hillary Clinton. Alexander blamed Bill Clinton for supporting harsh drug sentencing in the 1990s and expanding mass incarceration of Black men."
This is just a mischaracterization of her argument that reduces its potency. Alexander didn't blame Bill Clinton–she blamed Bill Clinton *and Hillary Clinton*. She also didn't limit it just to mass incarceration, it was also the evisceration of social safety-net programs that Hillary actively campaigned for.
I actually didn't know that Hillary has a "civil rights history"…where did that come from? Even Bill doesn't have a history in civil rights activism – they have been career politicians ever since they lived in Arkansas. Being on the board of directors of the Children's Defense Fund does not give you a "civil rights history" I'm sorry. And while they ran the country they made the lives of black Americans more miserable than ever – between aggressive sentencing rules and slashing access to financial support for families when they adopted the Republican platform for welfare "reform".