Well, they’re going to blame the white liberals if Bernie Sanders goes ahead and wins the caucus in Iowa and the primaries in New Hampshire, as the polls now indicate that he will do, perhaps easily.
You can take a look at the United Kingdom if you want a preview of how that is going to look and feel.
I suppose the big question is whether other parts of the Democratic base will rally to Sanders the way they rallied to Obama once he won in Iowa.
It’s a lot different this time around. Obama proved that he could win over white voters, which gave black voters confidence that he could win the general election. Sanders has to prove that he can win minority votes in the primary (and Iowa and New Hampshire won’t help him prove that) and that he can win moderates in the general. That’s a much harder trick to pull off.
It’s hard to convince people that you can do something before you actually have a chance to try, and it’s hard to simultaneously get the progressive left excited and keep moderates from freaking out.
This is especially hard because the Republicans play racial politics so nakedly and tenaciously. They will use evidence of support from minorities to attack and take away votes from whites.
But, I’ll tell you what. Winning the first two contests, especially if he does so resoundingly, is the best way to convince people that you’re a viable candidate.
And that’s true no matter what color you are or what ideology you espouse.
Near the end of a live barnburner of a speech by Bernie in Greensboro, NC
Let the progressive revolution begin. Do not be put off by wanker pundits. It is time!
It’s always been time.
Tell me how this time is different…
here’s the recording of the Greensboro rally.
This weekend Bernie Sanders was in South Carolina with Cornel West as a warmup speaker. West did not disappoint. In the middle of the swing between Benedict College (Columbia) and Winthrop University (Rock Hill in suburban Charlotte NC), Sanders talked with a smaller crowd in Florence SC. Florence is one of the major cities in Jim Clyburn’s district. I see this event as part of the vetting of Bernie that the Congressional Black Caucus is doing as well as a necessary swing for the primary calendar. I don’t expect any immediate endorsements (or any endorsements before SuperTuesday actually) out of this event, but I bet that the grapevine is busy sizing up Sanders’s chances with Southern blacks. Then the big challenge is Sanders’s being able to pull together a black-white-Hispanic labor coalition. That is something that has not happened since Hayes restored “home rule”. That is something that looks totally impossible given the amount of money, broadcast time, media time, and GOP candidate focus on whipping up wedge issues.
But at some point that Southern strategy of Nixon’s (actually Kevin Phillips’s ethnic labor strategy) becomes a vulnerability instead of a strength. It is the economic hopes and dreams that have been most been betrayed, not the failure to reverse Roe v. Wade or the failure to stop immigration, or the infringement on gun rights, or the absence of prayer in the public schools. At some point, movement conservative becomes vulnerable for providing the ideas that caused that failure.
That’s how that fusion happens when it happens. That really will be the test of just how good Bernie Sanders is. But it is a tough thing to do, and I am not optimistic of it happening in my remaining lifetime. Nonetheless, that possibility is still there.
I too thought West’s introductory speech was good. However according to the know-it-alls at dKos this sealed Bernie’s fate as being unacceptable to AA voters bc:
Completely understandable that AAs may not hold West in high regard after his criticism of Obama. Have no idea if that’s a fact or don’t have any skills to evaluate the claim because in white communities only an infinitesmal have any familiarity with white public intellectuals.
As West has endorsed Sanders for POTUS not sure where they got the idea that West wouldn’t have volunteered to appear at the rally. Or the idea that the Sanders’ campaign has the money to pay for introductory speakers.
As a Saturday morning speech on a college campus, it’s surprising that so many students chose to attend.
Sure are a lot of people that hang around dKos and post lots of dishonest anti-Sanders comments in diaries touting Sanders. It’s may be as ugly in the pro-Clinton diaries and guess at some point I might take a look.
I think the first point has a lot of merit. Friend of mine (AA) who was high up in Obama’s 2008 campaign in Nevada says that it is definitely a thing.
Understand it’s a thing for the AA/Obama political class, but pre-Obama, they didn’t much like West anyway. My question is if West carries any weight either positive or negative with regular people in AA communities? Also, while the AA political class has spent much time and effort protecting Obama, do they ask themselves how well AAs have fared economically and socially over the 6+ years?
The chart in this diary on income gains for the 99% over the past dozen years highlights how poorly almost all of us are doing. And we weren’t doing so well during the preceding two decades.
My WAG and anecdotal opinion: most AAs don’t even know who Cornel West is. However, most AAs at least at the middle to upper-middle class level are familiar with the class of radical that states that John Lewis and MLK and even Kwame Ture didn’t go far enough (for whatever reason, though many aren’t shy about the whole ‘sucking up to the white power structure’ explanation) in promoting black values and what we need is more Islam/black separatism/Weatherman-style radicalism/communism/etc.
Those people are viewed mostly how right-of-center-but-not-radical Christians view the real firebreathers of their movement: misguided but not completely off of the reservation. We don’t agree with their solution and don’t completely agree with their (somewhat accurate) view of the problem. But we understand where they’re coming from.
Won’t hurt or help Sanders among AAs. I could be wrong, though, but I’d be willing to bet a few Hamiltons that I’m not. Non-blacks might be a different story, though. How THAT will work out, I’m not willing to bet on.
When I say ‘they don’t know him’ I mean ‘they don’t know just what a firebreather he is’, much like most people don’t know how in the tank, say, John Travolta was for Scientology prior to Battlefield Earth. Cornel West is pretty famous, but his political activism kind of takes a backseat to his media fame.
I wasn’t talking about this person in particular — they largely agree with West anyway, and worked/volunteered for Kucinich in 2004. I meant this person’s acquaintances, family, and other peers. But maybe because she’s so plugged in she isn’t the best barometer. Still, I agree with fladem below that to many Obama isn’t just another pol, and they see the disrespect he gets in general.
“Also, while the AA political class has spent much time and effort protecting Obama, do they ask themselves how well AAs have fared economically and socially over the 6+ years?”
I think this kind of question, which has truth to it, will not be received kindly by some. First, there is the notion that Obama has not delivered for AAs. Second, there is an implication that someone like Sanders will look out for and deliver what Obama could not.
It’ll be interesting to see how Sanders can promise progress without criticizing Obama. He has an advantage in that he is not a Democrat but that will come across better if he makes it to the general.
Watch Sanders’ Greensboro speech. I thought he did an excellent job in addressing your question.
But as a white chick that was deeply offended by all the professional AAs that Bill Clinton threw under the bus and his racist drug/policing policies/legislation and welfare “reform,” what would I know? (None of which personally impacted me.) AAs still love the guy and I mostly loathe him.
Charles Blow considers the subject here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/14/opinion/charles-m-blow-bernie-sanders-and-the-black-vote.html
“But Sanders’s ability to win Obama’s supporters may have been made difficult by his associations. On Saturday, Sanders campaigned with Dr. Cornel West, who recently issued an endorsement of Sanders.
West’s critique of the president has been so blistering and unyielding — he has called Obama “counterfeit,” the “black face of the American empire,” a verb-ed neologism of the n-word — that it has bordered on petulance and self-parody.
“
This is opinion, not fact. More dispositive is the polling that Blow discusses which shows Clinton with a surprisingly dominant position with African-Americans.
Re. the outcomes for African-Americans during Obama’s Presidency, the Affordable Care Act has helped them as much or more than any other community. Here’s a long list of strong benefits they have gained:
http://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/facts/factsheets/2012/04/aca-and-african-americans04122012a.html#_ftn8
Re. the less positive outcomes for African-Americans since 2009, they appear to be paying sufficient attention to understand that their problems are chiefly caused by Republicans. It appears that they can sense this politically with the GOP’s nonstop monolithic opposition to the President on absolutely everything, and they can sense it personally with all the birth certificate/secret Muslim/palling around with terrorists/disrespecting police garbage slung Barack’s way.
Here’s an example of how Obama’s attempts to help African-Americans are being denied by GOP intransigence. From the ACA summary:
“Nearly two thirds (62 percent) of uninsured African Americans have incomes at or below the Medicaid expansion limit of 138 percent of federal poverty level. However, nearly six in ten uninsured African Americans with incomes below the Medicaid expansion limit reside in states that were not planning to expand Medicaid as of late June 2013.“
I believe about four states have come on board with various approved Medicaid expansions since June 2013, but the Republicans are still stupidly resisting expanding Medicaid in about two dozen States. With essentially all of those States under Republican control, we can see what lesson African-Americans are likely to take from that.
The Obama Administration’s Justice Department and other Agencies have also taken a number of actions which provide specific and direct relief to African-Americans.
iirc — Obama didn’t begin to gain traction with AAs until late 2007 and didn’t take off with SC AAs until Bill played the race card in NH and SC. Why should Sanders being doing better with AAs at this point in the election cycle than Obama did?
When do Democrats stop blaming first the Dixiecrats and then the Republican for failing to deliver a fairer deal to all the “have nots” regardless of color? Truman had the decency to order the military to integrate instead of not acting and blaming the Dixiecrats. LBJ had the decency to make Medicare color blind. As a federal-state partnership, states were never required to implement Medicaid and poorer states were slow to implement the more generous options available under the original Medicaid provisions, preferring to limit and restrict access to the most indigent. So, they aren’t doing anything new given the option for expanded Medicaid.
In the ACA, Obama and the Democrats essentially made Medicaid eligibility expansion mandatory. The original law told States which refused expansion that they would lose all Medicaid funding. Republican appointee Chief Justice Roberts killed this part of the law in the first ACA case heard by the Court, holding that States could reject expansion without penalty. And look at the two dozen States which have made the penny-wise, pound-stupid decision to reject expansion. Each and every State which has rejected expansion is controlled by Republican Legislatures and Governors.
The Republicans are entirely the problem here. Roberts and the GOP-controlled 112th and 113th Congresses have seen to it that President Obama and Congress had no meaningful ability to act in response.
I don’t like to be rude, but it might appear that way when I don’t respond to many of your responses to my comments. It is frankly boring that regardless of wherever I enter a discussion, you often turn it into a debate about the merits of the ACA. I get it that you think it’s awesome and groundbreaking. I don’t. You aren’t going to convince me otherwise and therefore, agreeing to disagree spares both of us these needless back and forth comments. Often way off the main topic of threads which others may not appreciate as well.
On another issue that a single sentence comment from me seems to have sparked a rather heated debate between you and AG. He will never acknowledge that in a society with high levels of various forms of bigotry, a libertarian political position is inherently racist, sexist, etc. In the little microcosm that he has carved out and lives and works in, and that he also holds out as some idealized way of being for all, they “all just get along.” Each following his/her own passion (and retaining their own personal biases and bigotries without interference from others) and succeeding well enough that he believes it is a perfect model for all society. Nothing you nor anyone else here can dissuade him that extrapolating from his lived experience to a model for society as a whole is a simplistic and terrible notion.
I understand and accept your points here. I’m anxious about the next election and the extreme danger that we are living under with the current radicalized Republican Party and conservative movement. That causes me to doggedly defend the ACA with factual information, because if conservatives consider it Worse Than Slavery and many liberals continue to badmouth its reforms, then the interest that you and I share in seeing the day when all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care will be undermined, because if Republicans take control of the Presidency and Congress in 2016, the imperfect reforms of the ACA will be repealed, tens of millions will lose access to health care, national health care costs will resume their sharp escalations, and single payer won’t be achieved in our lifetimes.
And thanks for your thoughts re. AG. This does help me understand his perspective. I’m hopeful with this last episode that I can avoid getting drawn into reacting to his trollings in the future. Our views are on the record, that’s for sure.
The results of the next election will be whatever they will be. It doesn’t serve those that long for a sharp change in direction to get anxious and stressed out over it. I’m not saying that we should be complacent, but elections really don’t turn on detailed information or complex thoughts and messaging. For the most part, regressives/conservatives have long done that better than progressives/liberals. They also have the advantage that people cart around a basket full of resentments, bigotries, and fear of change in their heads. Plus the majority of voters are rather ignorant and don’t make full use of their average intelligence which leads them to being easily confused or duped.
The moderating variable in US elections isn’t the voters that are easy marks for charlatans, but those that actually own most of the wealth, including all of us there serve them well. They aren’t monolithic, but they have more common interests than progressives and rightwing Republicans. They don’t give a hoot about most the social issues that drive voters on the left and right. They are, however, mindful of the potential for a mega-backlash if the rightwingers implement legislation from their draconian racist, sexist, etc. wishlist. So, those RWNJs are allowed plenty of rope to spew their crazy talk to keep the base happily trotting down to the polling station, but are confident that they can crush like a bug any of those that go too far.
These monied and powerful interests engage in far more complex analyses of the potential candidates that can be advanced to the final than voters do. For example, if the D can deliver 70% of what they want and the R can deliver 85%, they don’t automatically fall in line with the R. What’s the cost to them of getting that extra 15%? The cost to them of the 30% that the D offers the public and the 15% of what the R offers? That last one was too steep a price with McCain’s selection of Palin as VP.
They do seem to like the equations for themselves in a BushIII and ClintonII general election. Heads they win and tails they win. The one upsetting their apple cart isn’t Trump or Carson, but Bush. So far, he sucks on the campaign trail, but generally sucks less than the others. They have no choice but to keep Carson in the mix because that pacifies the fundie natives and letting them loose could result in an insurmountable lead for Trump or make Cruz (way too much of a crazy and arrogant wild card for them) viable. This Wednesday’s debate and/or the next one will likely determine where they place their chips.
No long discussion of this. Just wanted to point out that initial studies of the premium payment proposals for 2016 by insurers on the ACA-enabled health insurance exchanges in a dozen cities shows an average proposed rate increase of around 3%, much lower than the double-digit rate increases policyholders experienced before the ACA:
http://kff.org/health-reform/fact-sheet/analysis-of-2016-premium-changes-in-the-affordable-care-acts
-health-insurance-marketplaces/
I know your expectation is that sharp rate increases are coming in the future. That future has not arrived.
Aside: You two are among my most respected commenters here, for many reasons, among them the fact that you can strongly disagree without doing an Arthur Gilroy on each other.
And marie3 is spot on with regard to his epistemic bubble.
Barack Obama took off with Black voters the Night of the Iowa Caucus. Period.
Black people had been there, done that with Symbolic Runs for the Presidency.
Barack Obama had to prove that WHITE PEOPLE would vote for him.
When Barack Obama not only beat Hillary Clinton, but placed FIRST in 97% Iowa..
that was the test of faith Black people needed.
My mother, born and raised in the Police State known as Jim Crow Mississippi, could not believe it.
Neither could many others.
Barack Obama winning Iowa made his run go from the symbolic to the REAL.
Because Black folk, unlike you, know that the last time we’ve had full employment, was slavery.
We also know that because Black people are disproportionately employed in the PUBLIC SECTOR, the shedding of PUBLIC SECTOR JOBS BY GOP GOVERNORS, post 2010, has a great deal to do with our unemployment rate.
We also know that the GOP has never attempted or taken a vote on the President’s Jobs Bill, which would have helped alleviate unemployment.
Valid points except for your first sentence that also needlessly accused me of being an ignorant racist.
I appreciate that for the majority of Americans that took pride in electing Obama President, that it was doubly special for AAs. As it should be. For all my criticisms of Obama, I have never wavered from my opinion that his election was a positive step for all of us. Not once reconsidered the decision between Obama and Clinton or that maybe we made a mistake and would have been better off with Clinton.
However, that was then and this is now. Obama can never be erased from the history books as the first AA POTUS. And to his credit, his Presidency won’t go down as among the worst. But all the rationalizations, excuses, and blaming others by those that can’t bear any criticism of him won’t change his record and place him within the exalted ranks of the best. There’s no getting around the fact that in his first four years in office that 95% of all GDP gains went to the top 1% and it is there where his economic policy and staffing decisions had the greatest impact. Cut him some slack for having walked into a disaster facilitated by GWB and Clinton decisions, we could evaluate his record as being as good as that of his predecessor. Not something that ordinary Americans should take any pride in because GWB will go down as one of the worst Presidents.
Let’s also be fair that back in 2007 it was white folks and Oprah (and at some point Cornel West) urging AAs and all other liberals/Democrats to take a look at Obama. Not because of the color of his skin, but because of the content of his character, talents, and skills in comparison with the other candidates. Predominately white folks that early on refused to believe that a Black man couldn’t be elected POTUS in 2008. Many of the same people today urge liberals/Democrats, and yes, including AAs, to recognize that on economic and social issues, there is far more explicit differences today than there was in 2008.
Many women were angry that it was first a Black man that broke through the white-male POTUS ceiling. That too has historical antecedents. The bitter pill women were forced to swallow that Constitutionally gave Black men the vote over fifty years before women. That was wrong, but so too is the resentment among women that Obama and not Clinton won. He was the better candidate.
your sentence:
speaks for itself.
Like Black folks don’t know the economic conditions under which they suffer…
and, that we wouldn’t know the complete context of our lives……
but, I was not surprised by you writing that, because, it’s part of a pattern with you. a very obvious pattern.
Read carefully — the question was directed to the AA political class and not to “Black folks” as a whole population. (It is a pattern with you to always see racism when it isn’t intended or requires giant language or cognitive leaps to assert that it does.) I could pose the same question to the white GOP political class (somewhat trickier because the white vote by political party splits somewhere close to 57% to 43% GOP to DEM and not the 85% to 15% for AA voters), but they’ve already answered that question. They don’t care about low income and poor white people and make no pretense that they do or have any familiarity with the conditions that those people live under. Nor is there any need for them to do so as long as low income white voters can be duped with GOP racist dog whistles. Of course that comment betrays my lack of respect for white people too dumb to know on what side their bread is buttered. Still it’s those that manipulate them into voting against their own interests that are the evil ones.
There will always be certain misunderstandings between people of from different communities/cultures and the way they use language. We can either strive through communication for better understanding or throw gasoline onto a tiny spark to create a bonfire that destroys any chance of better understanding.
As my real life interactions with people of all ages and ethnicities (domestic and foreign) bear no relationship to the accusations that you’ve often hurled at me, I have attempted to clarify my comments as if the miscommunication in written form was mostly my doing. But some people (mostly white and older wealthy men and women) don’t like me, and that’s okay.
When white progressives, who tend to dominate blogs like Kos, stop saying Obama needs to be more like FDR all while not noting that many of FDR’s New Deal policies were explicitly designed to exclude people of color in order to keep Southern Democrats on board. Not to mention he traded away anti-lynching legislation.
When FDR gets a pass on those compromises while Obama is excoriated for the compromises he made it comes across to me like a double and, as I have said in the past, if it comes across that way to me I would think it would come across that way many of the African Americans who are party of the Democratic coalition
Maybe we “ignorant” progressives are referencing more the boldness and progressivism of FDR and his team without constantly mentioning some of the ugliness in some of the bargains.
OTOH — the law of the land in FDR’s time was “Plessy v. Ferguson” which no Congress was ever willing to tackle. There was no national civil rights act or voting rights act. There are lots of things and rights that we take for granted as having always existed that didn’t exist in FDR’s time.
Did FDR retain Hoover’s Secretary of the Treasury (Andrew Mellon) or Chairman of the Federal Reserve? No. In the “First New Deal,” he took on the banksters and we won.
Since you enjoy picking nits — consider this:
Francis Perkins – Secretary of Labor (first woman member of the cabinet and one of the great women of this country, but I need not list everything we today can be thankful for her having championed because I’m sure you’re well informed on that):
Maybe the anti-communist members weren’t as rabid in 1939 as they became a decade later, but they were plenty rabid enough. Perkins didn’t bow to their demand and if there were calls for her to resign, she ignored them. Principled and tough.
Thomas Vilsack – Sec Agriculture
Within hours of that clip appearing, Vilsack forced Sherrod to resign and Obama had issued a statement denouncing Sherrod’s comments (as falsely presented by
Breitbart).
Vilsack and Obama succumbed to pressure from Andrew fucking Breibart. (Just as Obama and congressional DEMs succumbed to pressure from that pimp O’Keefe wrt ACORN.) Not even informed much less principled and tough.
Pardon us for appreciating team FDR’s boldness and toughness and not mentioning the required compromises that today would be completely intolerable when we would appreciate a similar level of boldness and toughness today and are quite capable of dealing with absolutely necessary ugly compromises to get things done. (And no — holing up with big pharma and health insurers to craft the ACA and locking out knowledgeable medical professionals and activists is sleazy, not bold.)
Compromises FDR made it seems that many white progressives who tend to dominate the blogosphere always have an excuse on why the were necessary. For the record I believe they were but I also believe that some of the compromises Obama made were as well. For example the compromises he made to get the stimulus pushed through. Compromises that included a hefty portion of it being tax breaks.
As far as FDR taking on those evil Wall street guys he appointed Joseph Kennedy the first chairman of the SEC, a Wall Street insider if there ever was one.
As far as how the Obama administration crafted the ACA I have said before that I think the Obama team over-learned the lessons of the failures of Clinton’s efforts back in 1994 where industry wasn’t really included and Congress was shut out and as a result the effort didn’t even make it out of committee. Because of that it was a flawed process. Still it ended up with a bill. One that isn’t perfect but one that is a start.
Two of the African Americans who worked for me at the time went to Obama’s inaugural. Their screen captures were both pictures from the event.
In the heart of the African American community in Tampa is a laundry mat/convenience story that is kind of a community gathering place. It features a large painting of Obama easily visible from the street.
It will dawn on people at some point just how good a candidate Obama was. He could relate to White moderates, but had a powerful connection with the African American community.
I wonder if the West thing is inside baseball. But I would be damn sure not to give any offense to Obama supporters: to many he is not just another politician.
Barack Obama is on the “Hall of Fame” wall in the Beauty/Barber shop.
And, he always will be.
Not all commenters on dKos are expressing independent opionions, first of all. And information wars have lots of strange (and often trolling actors). It gets ugly when folks take the bait.
Cornel West is a liberal religious scholar known best to academic communities and those who have seen his appearances on PBS shows. He was transparently a warm-up act for Bernie’s appearance to stir up some passion in the audience. He seemed to do that at Benedict College.
One of the questions that I am beginning to ask about the South Carolina appearances is, “Exactly who are these white South Carolinians that are filling Sanders’s venues?” My assumption are that they are what’s left of the whites in the South Carolina Democratic Party, white progressives, and whites who are curious about what Bernie has to say. That really doesn’t tell me a lot analytically.
What is clear to me is that Sanders is being vetted heavily by Clyburn. I find that very interesting given the experience Obama had in South Carolina in 2008. The Big Dog’s behavior then might just weigh a little bit heavier with African-Americans in South Carolina than Cornel West’s criticism. We will see.
I also sense that Clyburn’s vetting is key to Congressional Black Caucus support, which might indicate that Clinton is shakier than it appears because of the record of the New Democratic platform with respect to African-Americans. Clintoo will be associated with Rahm Emanuel in Illinois and Terry McAuliffe in Virginia, for example. Those relationships will rub off for good or bad. Is the Congressional Black Caucus in play?
Kind of hard to win Iowa when you’re not doing the work: http://iowastartingline.com/2015/09/12/is-the-sanders-campaign-missing-an-opportunity-in-iowa/
The post-Obama Democratic Party is a lot more ideologically coherent than the New Deal Democrats — or the New Democrats for that matter. Almost everyone in the party by-and-large believes in sexual and racial equality, the benefits of multiculturalism, secularism, the merits of international diplomacy, Keynesian economics, scientific analysis in government, and capitalism with restraints*.
I don’t think that anyone other than the super-partisan deadenders and/or netroots will really mind whether Clinton or Sanders win after a few months, as long as those wins don’t come as a result of dirty tricks.
*Obviously, the devil’s in the details. I’ve been coming down pretty hard on Clinton and the establishment for the past few months for not going all-in on stimulus. And she’s definitely further to the right on foreign policy than I’d feel safe. However, I think that her positions stem from tactical positioning (debts are scary and baaaad, we must look strong overseas!) rather than base ideological opposition.
Go Bernie.
I absolutely cannot believe that Sanders brought in Cornel West to introduce him in SC. How tone deaf is he?! That is a move that almost seems calibrated to LOSE him support from African Americans.
I’m a black from a middle/upper-middle class background and family. This is completely anecdotal and, crucially, I don’t have any real connection with poor or working-class blacks. I can’t tell you how often I heard ‘Hotchkiss’ when fucking Primary Colors came out on home video. I grew up with poor and working-class whites and Latinos, but most of the blacks I knew on at least at the acquaintance level fit the stereotype of being middle-class blacks or outright bourgeois. Same for when I was in the military — though since I was in the Naval Nuclear Power program, almost every black that I worked with in the service was at least on the edge of middle class and had the attendant sensibilities.
And I’ll say to you: regarding West and other black radicals’ criticism of Obama as a centrist sell-out who is mostly a token for sublimated white privilege, it won’t really matter. It’s sort of like N-word privileges. A lot of middle and upper-middle class blacks don’t like that word at all, but if a fellow black says it even in a crude or inappropriate context they’ll usually let it slide. My auntie, bless her heart, loves Obama and cried when he was elected. However, she’s also smart enough to realize that even above and beyond the white opposition he’s experienced that he’s not perfect on policy — there’s room for criticism, even vituperative criticism, from black radicals that would offend her less than it was coming from a white radical. She wouldn’t agree with a lot of it, being a politically moderate conservative Christian (who hugely supports gay rights and abortion, I know), but knows where commentators like West are coming from. My mom, who is biracial, is politically more to the left and makes no bones about Obama mostly squandering opportunities in the first two years. She’ll openly defend Obama on his own terms in front of non-liberal non-blacks, but in front of liberals or other blacks criticizing him — as long as it’s kept ideological and not cultural — it isn’t a ‘get out of my house you fucking toad’ landmine. She voted for Nader in 2000 and 2004, though it was for Obama in 2008 and 2012. Sanders is tailor-made to get her vote, though she’ll vote for Clinton without too much complaint.
My auntie isn’t exactly keen on Sanders (though she loves her some Clinton, both of them!) and she’ll be exactly the kind of person Sanders needs to reach if he doesn’t want to go down in flames in 2016. But getting an endorsement from West or activists like him? Meh. Doesn’t help nor hurt him.
Like I said, purely anecdotal and I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up hurting Bernie among working-class and poor blacks. But if you asked me to put down money for it, I’d vote for ‘won’t help or hurt him’.
It also depends on who the Republicans nominate, though, doesn’t it? If it’s Trump, I would think an awful lot of people are going to be motivated to vote against him regardless of whether it’s Clinton or Sanders that they’re voting for. Even if it’s a question of criticizing Obama, it’s Cornel West vs. the Lord High Birther himself, Donald Trump.
have you ever heard cornel west speak in person?
Yes. In Providence at a Coalition of Essential Schools (Ted Sizer’s people) where he keynoted, and told us for 45 minutes how we were doing it wrong.
interesting. what did you think of his critique? my point, re: the Sanders event, was it’s one thing to talk about Cornel West in connection to what one may have heard about his criticism of Obama. it’s another thing to hear him speak. incisive mind and a preacher heritage (father and grandfather) [doesn’t come across on the radio]. btw heard him at Riverside Church late fall 2001. a white new yorker asked him what he thought about post 9/11 living in NY with the ongoing terrorism threat warnings. one sentence reply: [along the lines of] now you know what it’s like.
Newton’s third law of motion:
For every action there is an equal and opposite re-action
This would be my first law of motion in politics.
It is not just what will happen to Bernie if he wins Iowa and New Hampshire, it is what will happen to Clinton.
As of this moment Hillary Clinton has run the worst campaign in modern political primary history. No candidate who was ever over 40% in either Iowa or New Hampshire has ever lost the lead in either state the year before the voting.
Until now.
If the polling today is accurate, the pressure on Biden to get in is to explode. Bernie is winning. But Clinton is also losing. And the latter has to be scaring the shit out of everyone in the Democratic Party establishment.
The best mind in primary politics, Jeanne Shaheen, is running Clinton’s campaign. I know, because I had dinner with her, how important Clinton is to her personally. These people are smart.
But they are screwing up massively.
It is truly stunning.
The only parallel I can think of is Ted Kennedy.
any thoughts about why they are screwing up ?
You didn’t ask me, but I touched upon it in with this comment.
Long story short, Clinton is running the 1992 Democratic playbook. The 1992 playbook’s crucial assumption that progressivism is on its own merits not enough to win the primary, let alone general election. So the best thing to do is find one or two issues that you’re really good on, elide the liberal portions of your platform, and do your best to convince moderates and even conservatives that you’re not scary and won’t do anything to really upset the train. It was built for an electorate in which the Democrats were fighting for their lives in the South and in which California and the Northeast were just starting to shed their Republican leanings. It was built for an electorate that was 75% non-Hispanic white and where Republicans were still extremely competitive for the Latino and Asian vote.
It’s a bit too early to say how that will go, but I doubt it will work unless Sanders fails to make headway with racial minorities. 2008 and especially 2012 already provided a powerful counter-example to that idea in the General Election and the Democratic primary electorate is significantly more to the left. And of course there’s always the possibility that Hillary Clinton goes ‘fuck up’ and tries to outflank Bernie Sanders from the left — hell, if she endorses MMT and Sanders doesn’t, she automatically gets my vote.
Hillary Clinton goes ‘fuck this shit’, not ‘fuck up’. That’s one hell of a Freudian slip.
Addendum: one of Sanders’ chief economic advisers is Stephanie Kelton, one of the foremost figures in the MMT movement. That doesn’t mean that he himself is post-Keynesian, of course. He might just see her as a useful liberal totem and/or feminist token. Nonetheless, that already gives him a huge leg up over Clinton in my eyes.
very interesting, thank you.
What the heck is MMT?
good question, but i looked it up [modern?] monetary theory. if have time later will find a link
it doesn’t seem to be that ground breaking, we’ve been doing it I think since the 70s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_monetary_theory
Don’t sweat the details.
It will save us all.
I don’t know. These people are smarter than I am by a good measure.
But the ads here are worthless.
One tidbit: Clinton apologized about the email server after a focus group uncovered that people didn’t like her response.
So a friend tells me this is everything you need to know. People around Clinton knew she was making a mistake, but the only way to convince the inner circle was to do a focus group.
Another story. In NH there was a special election in a State House seat. As expected, both party candidates got significant national support. O’Malley offered to go door to door with the candidate – and did so.
This pissed the Clinton people off. How DARE that candidate take any other help but that from Clinton.
I still think Hillary is going to win. But these stories make me scared about her in a general election.
In my experience hubris rarely goes unpunished in Iowa and New Hampshire.
I’m pretty firmly in the “Clinton supporter” column, and this stuff is freaking me out a little bit. I’m really starting to hear echoes of how she blew the nomination in ’08, and, while I don’t have any serious problems with Sanders’ policy proposals, I’m having a hard time seeing him as a good enough politician to win a general election.
Then again, if Hillary can’t even beat him….
I’m with you, pillsy.
I’ve made no secret of my hardass support for Hillary, but if Bernie can pull it off … well, that’s what horse races are for.
I’m STILL for Hillary and will be until she wins or loses. But there won’t be any PUMA in my household.
very interesting.
They aren’t screwing up. They’re doing the best they can with the candidate they have to work with.
Younger voters with little to no experience or memory of Bill Clinton as POTUS and therefore, don’t have a pre-existing cognitive schema that interferes with their ability to evaluate candidate Hillary. To their eyes and ears, all her well honed parsing and triangulating looks and sounds inauthentic and nothing but a marketing campaign for a crappy sequel. But that doesn’t faze team Clinton because while younger people buy movie tickets, they don’t vote in great numbers.
To secure the nomination, all she needs is the older and wealthier sector of Democratic primary voters plus AAs. After that, other Democrats will get in line, AAs will stay in line, Independents will split 49% to 47% in her favor.
I’m personally more interested in Nevada (a state Dems can win as opposed to SC) and there are similar issues in play though the cross membership of Latinos in unions might give Sanders an edge he lacks in SC.
As a middle class latino I basically care most about the racial bias assumptions people make about me in my daily life more than immigration. This obviously includes police as Latinos are killed at ~75% the rate of blacks by them.
That’s an incredibly tall hill for Sanders to climb. He may or may not be able to do it — Hillary Clinton won, what, 2/3rds of the Latino Democratic Primary vote in 2008?
Nevada is a must-win state for the Democratic Party, however. And if Sanders significantly underperforms there then it’s a real question as to whether we should go with him or Clinton.
As far as SC goes… I agree that Democrats will probably not win it anytime soon (Obama lost it by 9% in 2008, 10% in 2012; Kerry by a whopping 17%), but it’s still important to at least try to compete there. If Bernie Sanders’ cocktail of economic progressivism can’t at least drive the margin down to at least 6% in 2016, we’ll know for sure whether we should make a full-court press for the South from then on or whether we should let urbanization and Latino immigration do the dirty work.
We might be pleasantly surprised in, say, 2028. The population of non-black/whites is exploding and all of the white growth has been in the major cities. Knock on wood.
I believe this, but we also have to survive until then.
We’re one splendid and noble loss away from a final triumph.
Have been all my life.
Why say BLAME the White Liberals?
Why not ask the question..
in the two states where retail politics is still very important..
Why can’t Hillary Clinton close the deal with those folks?
THAT is the question that should be keeping Democrats up at night.
And, I don’t even like Bernie Sanders.
This is why we needed Sanders in the race. If Clinton is in fact not nearly as strong a candidate as many had hoped, it’s much better to find this out now while there is plenty of time to do something about it (her fixing the problems and/or Sanders or somebody else getting the nomination.) 2016 is a year when I’m not going to be bothered at all about voting for the lesser of two evils, because the greater evil is SO CATASTROPHICALLY greater. Nothing matters remotely as much as just winning the damn election.
I like Bernie but I’m not convinced he’s a strong general election candidate, either (as much due to age as anything else.) O’Malley was a huge disappointment (deservedly so given his track record in Baltimore.) Biden is the answer to a question nobody asked. So at the moment I’m feeling jittery. I’d like to see somebody a lot more plausible than Biden jump in, but who?
There’s a joke here about the whitey tape, I just know it.
Walker is going to do a speech, in Las Vegas, no less, about how he’s going to expand his anti-unionism for the rest of the country, if elected.
In LAS VEGAS.
UH HUH.
I seem to recall Giuliani had a fool-proof plan of using the Florida primary as a back-stop.
It’s extremely early but I have a bad feeling about Hillary as a campaigner. I’m getting a very Martha Coakley vibe from the campaign.
To blame us, they have to admit we exist and matter. I’m OK with that.
Very curious post Booman.
It seems to suggest the support of black Democrats is up for grabs.
It’s not.
His “problem” can be summed up in two words…Hillary Clinton.
He has to prove he can and he will defeat her.
At what point will he convince Democrats? I don’t know.
But he has to if he wants to win the support of Democrats generally and black Democrats in particular.
There is no other way.
yeah. A lot of hysteria going on.
The fact that Bernie is in the race means he has a non-zero chance of gaining the nomination … so does Jim Webb. I’m not holding my breath on Jimmy.
I’ve been trying and for the life of me, I can’t think of 10 people who voted for Obama who will now vote for an R, no matter who gets the nomination. Furthermore, I can’t think of 10 people who voted for Obama who don’t intend to vote.
Clinton has a firm grasp on the “black vote”. Bernie will get every bit of it if he wins the nomination. And NO I don’t think they’ll stay home. Not with the racists running on the other side.
Clinton has a firm grasp on the “Hispanic vote”. Bernie will get every bit of it if he wins the nomination. And NO I don’t think they’ll stay home. Not with the racists running on the other side.
Clinton has a firm grasp on the “moderate/liberal” white vote. Bernie will get every bit of it if he wins the nomination. And NO I don’t think they’ll stay home. Not with the racists running on the other side.
Note the cut and paste on the three above paragraphs? If Bernie can change the Democratic dynamic then Good on Him. Hillary has to play by the same rules as all the other primary candidates. So does Jim, Bernie, and whatshizname from MD.
When a legit poll shows Trump receiving significant numbers of votes that Obama received, I’ll start worrying.
Until then: Bring on the Popcorn!!!!
voters will stay home
I don’t think so.
Whatever else he might be good for or bad for, Trump has guaranteed that the general population knows there is a campaign going on. This is not 2012 with stealth candidates until Super Tuesday.
I’m with Errol on this one. Bernie is squarely in line with my politics, and I will absolutely vote for him in the general but I live in blueish rural county in purple Wisconsin, and a lot of our Democratic structure is very moderate. I think the socialist label will be absolute poison for a lot of folks here. They won’t be willing to pull the lever for a Republican, but they won’t pull it for a self avowed socialist either.