Interesting! You said several different things that I felt were too important not to discuss in detail. I ate, drank and breathed politics during the 2016 and have a lot of passion about that cycle, so sit back and pass the popcorn, this is going to be a long one.
You mentioned that Bernie did not appeal to you personally, and I just want to say this is fine if you don't feel the bern. It is your right to vote for who you feel best represents you. However, when you say that you don't see him making an effort to appeal to you, I would like to know what specifically you would want him to do differently. Appeal can be a very subjective quality, and message a a rather abstract concept. Is there a concrete action you saw from Hillary that made you more comfortable voting for her as a minority?
We are it seems in agreement at least that Hillary Clinton was a horrible candidate with one of the worst records out there, and I am glad that is an area where we have some common ground as sisters. However, let's take a moment to just sit back, and let that absorb. Her record was indeed atrocious. One of the most disturbing features of her record was the effect she and her husband had on the lives of minorities. Since you shared an AP article on how one black voter felt. I wanted to share an article from The Nation about the history of the Clinton family policy to black people.
https://www.thenation.com/article/hillary-clinton-does-not-deserve-black-peoples-votes/
Ultimately if Hillary's record is this severely damaged then what does this effectively leave us with as her appeal to minorities? While in Bernie Sanders I saw policy, with Hillary all I saw were platitudes, and I don't see how that would be a more effective appeal to any group.
Hillary walked around with hot sauce in her pocket and did some dancing, Bill Clinton sang the black national anthem and had some offices in Harlem, but I fail to see how they offered any substantive message to minorities, and certainly not one that was stronger than Bernie Sanders. I think the voters that Hillary got had more to do with familiarity and identity politics rather than a tangible message to minorities or anyone for that matter.
You linked me to a quote by a voter who said, "If all I hear about is 'the working class,' and it seems he's talking to just one segment, then it's easy to feel he's not talking to me."
I want to respond to that by sharing that I volunteered for Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016, and walked up and down the streets passing out literature in neighborhoods filled with my brothers and sisters. The amount of economic disadvantage I saw was very sad. It was a lonely walk, but along the way I did meet people who were interested in minimum wage increases, getting healthcare, schooling and having their social security expanded. Others felt that there was no point in voting, that they would be inevitably left behind no matter who was in office. Often I visited homes and nobody was there, everyone was out working late shifts. Sometimes they were completely empty houses that were foreclosed on or scheduled for demolition.
Whether the lady from Georgia you quoted falls into this category or not, the reality is that unfortunately many African-Americans and Hispanics do earn lower wages, and there is a higher poverty rate for us. There was a message for people who look like you and me within his campaign.
We need to look at what our representatives can do for us in terms of policy. That is the way that we make progress for minorities. Economic justice is a relevant issue to our communities, one that was not close to the heart of the Clintons-- who took jobs out of the community via NAFTA, and would have continued to do so with the TPP, meanwhile gutting welfare and locking up people for petty crimes they committed. The few good policies that Hillary had were tacked on only Bernie was in the race
Bernie was against the war on drugs and against the death penalty, policies which disproportionately punished minorities and the disadvantaged, as well as policies that received Clinton support. He also has condemned the wars that ripped apart many non-western countries throughout the middle east, Asia and South America. Other ways in which he is a champion for people who are different than him would be his progressive record on gay rights. He voted against Bill Clinton's Defense of Marriage Act/ DOMA, and defended gay soldiers in the military at a time where Don't Ask Don't Tell was in effect.
I think to characterize Sanders as only appealing to one demographic misconstrues his intent. Human and civil rights were a central part of his campaign. What Bernie Sanders believes is that economic reform is a method by which we can obtain equality, an example of this is when he called for an end to the private prison system to effectively stop slave labor.
Attacking greed is a means to an end with Bernie. Now we can agree or disagree about whether or not his ideas would work, but to say that Bernie did not have a message for minorities is I think not true.
You mention that Bernie was an old, white man, and asked if he could really identify with us. Yes, he can. I am sad to say that Bernie's family perished in the holocaust because of their Jewish background. He has personal experience living among the world's marginalized groups, that I cannot say for Hillary Clinton.
The ultimate demonstration that Bernie Sanders identifies with people of color is that he doesn't just talk about them, but put himself in physical danger to march with Dr. Martin Luther King for civil rights at time where people were being shot, mauled by police dogs, arrested and lynched for standing up to demand justice for all. He was also a member of ths Rainbow Coalition. He went to Standing Rock as well when our Native American brother and sisters endured waves of tear gas, were attacked by dogs, had eyes put out and their bones broken for protecting the piprline on their reservation.
Martin Luther King's dream was to live in a nation where people grow up judged "not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
The statement above applies to all of us. Just because Bernie physically does not look like you or me, does not mean that he is disconnected from our experiences. It should not matter what color Bernie is, or how old he is or if he is a man or woman. Age, color, gender, sexual orientation and religion must come after the policy.
Kamala Harris is a young woman of African and Indian descent, yet do I see her as a stronger ally for women and people of color than Bernie is? No. At this time I feel her prosecutorial record reflects less empathy for minorities and women than Bernie Sanders does. I say this because she opposed a bill that would have allowed every cop shooting to be investigated by an independent party and force them to wear body cams.
An area of concern for many African-American and Hispanic people is the possibility that they may suffer police brutality. My own father was arrested and assaulted by the police as a teen for his race, so this is a significant issue to me.
Kamala Harris also caved on the death penalty despite the numbers of black, Hispanic and poor whites who have been wrongfully convicted and sent to death row and later released. She presents herself as fighting against human trafficking, but the truth is that she jailed the women for working in the sex industy.
I understand and respect that you have not pledged support for Harris or any candidate as of yet, and I am in the same place. However, it is worth talking about Kamala Harris just as a reminder that being a woman or having a particular heritage does tot necessarily mean that someone will identify with you, and certainly not relevant to how one will govern. We cannot judge a book by its cover.
I think the only way to identify the content of one's character is not race, age or gender, but to examine a representative's voting record. And at the center of both Bernie's message and record what I saw was fairness and justice. If the positions he espouses and his record are not sufficient to show his support for minorities then I don't know what would be.
I realize also that you have a larger point, and that this is not meant to be solely a discussion about minorities, but that a candidate for the general is not necessarily a good primary candidate, and vice versa. Ultimately you don't think Bernie you can connect with enough people to get beyond the primaries, and minorities are a representation of this. You defined his candidacy as appealing to the military and young people.
However, I think we should not underestimate Bernie's potential to connect with a significant number of people. As you acknowledge, Bernie pulled huge crowds that far exceeded the size of Hillary Clinton's, and had more small donation contributors than Hillary.
I disagree that Hillary had more support from centrists and moderate Republicans overall. It would seem contradictory because Bernie also had the progressive wing of the party that Hillary lacked. However, Bernie had a tendency to do far better than expected when democratic primaries were open as oppsed to closed or semi-closed, meaning these were circumstances in which independent and Republicans voters had the ability to crossover and make their voice heard. An famous example being in the Michigan democratic primary, when Bernie defeated Hillary despite polling 20% behind initially and one of the factors is that he took over 70% of independent voters in this Rust Belt state.
While this an older article as well, I think it offers fascinating look into how Bernie potentially captures votes across opposite ends of the political spectrum while mantaining democratic socialist policies.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/...g-numbers-republicans-vote-bernie-sanders?amp
Bernie had a wider coalition than he is given credit for, voters in the north, the west, middle, young voters, independents, progressive voters, low-income and high. His campaign had a lot of promise, but unfortunately we did not witness a fair primary in 2016, and his campaign was derailed by the establishment.
I had not wanted to go there, but since you mentioned that Bernie voters pull a card of thr primary being rigged, I want to clarify that it is not a controversial statement that the primary was rigged against Bernie Sanders.
Under the circumstances of a rigged primary it is not possible for you nor I to talk with 100% confidence about how the results of the primary reflect the country as a whole and what most people really want.
The DNC was part of countless illicit activities during the 2016. Some actions, such as Hillary Clinton being allowed to break the Super pac laws with impunity, were very unlikely to impact who the people chose as their nominee. However, one of the more disturbing things we witnessed in the primar was a tactic of voter suppression, which could have impacted who the people ultimately chose as their nominee. I wanted make a statement like without any documentation.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cn...er-problem-polls-sanders-de-blasio/index.html
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/9550670/amp
https://www.gregpalast.com/placebo-...ia-bernie-using-old-gop-vote-snatching-trick/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...07c79ce3504_story.html?utm_term=.45e1e3cbbd88
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/08/bernie-would-have-won-california/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/9780128/amp
https://www.ricentral.com/news/stat...cle_dcf9f49c-55dc-11e6-a2a5-c3f9e8be3871.html
https://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRan...-the-arizona-primary-yesterday?media=AMP+HTML
I think we are getting ahead of ourselves to say that' "At the end of the day, it was us the voters who picked Hillary over Bernie, sometimes in significant margins," when not every voter who wanted to be heard was heard. It comes across as disingenuous to say that when our voting system failed more than once in 2016.
During the primary voter rolls were purged in unheard of numbers. Others who were registered democrats had their party affiliations inexpicable switched, making them ineligible to vote in the democratic primary. Indepedent voters who were eligible to vote were given provisional ballots/ placebo ballots that weren't counted. Results went missing from precincts, polling stations were closed down in a coordinated effort to keep people from casting ballots, and data was hidden amid requests for recounts and audits.
Maybe in spite of all of this corruption at the end of of the day voters would have still picked Hillary as you say, but there is also a possibility that had the waters not been so muddied Bernie could have become the winner. The fact that the DNC rigged the primary against him shows that they feared that he could have at least potentially won the primary, so they were going to make sure that this did not happen.
However, Bernie's ideas definitely won a victory, and people don't just want a third term of Obama and to remain in the center, because every serious candidate in the democratic primary be it Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Tulsi Gabbard, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, is signing onto his ideas because they are overwhelmingly popular with the people, medicare for all, 15 dollar an hour minimum wage, expansion of social security, tuition-free colleges, progressive tax reforms. These are issues that are important enough that democrats wishing to rise had better address them. Bernie may have lost the battle, but he is winning the war.
Lastly you told me to keep in mind that Bernie made the DNC his enemy and set the democratic party on fire. You are saying that as if it is a statement of the obvious, but I genuinely do not know what you mean by this. All of the evidence that I have seen indicates that Bernie is an ally to the democratic party.
Bernie has voted alongside democrats, supported their legislation, chaired their committees and campaigned for them for his entire political life, and continues to do so. He is a member of the democratic caucus, was given a thank you card by Hillary Clinton in praise of his commitment to crusading with her for healthcare reform in 1993, was on the committee that wrote the Affordable Care Act, and is currently the chair of the Democratic Outreach committee. He has even come the aid of democrats who were not his supporters, such as Clinton-backer Andrew Gillum to help him gain the nomination in Florida.
If anything it was was the democrats who shot themselves in the foot, and set their own party on fire with their blatant corruption. Bernie was an independent who joined the democratic party. What is the matter with that? Hillary is a former republican I would like to remind you, as was Lincoln Chaffey who also ran in the 2016 primary. This is so for some of today's contenders. Elizabeth Warren is a former republican, and I believe Tulsi Gabbard is as well. Bernie acknowleding that he is a political outsider should not be an incendiary thing. If anything it was a feature that the public was intrigued by, people like Bernie and Donald Trump who were not the same old establishment players.
Bernie's real crime was that he wasn't bought off like most of congress, and expressing a desire to get money out of politics. This did not sit well with big money donors. Bernie was not a yes-man for the democratic party, nor was he harming it, what stood for was reforming the democratic party.
It was the DNC that tried to destroy Bernie, not the other way around, because they wanted to be corrupt. It was the DNC fed anti-Bernie Sanders stories to publish, strategized to smear his religion and even spread false news stories that Bernie sanders supporters threw a violent riot. The Clinton campaign called the white house to even block Bernie's legislation. The DNC funneled away donations to Hillary that should have been distributed evenly with Bernie, other candidates who opposed Hillary and down ticket races. Debbie Wasserman Schultz restricted the debates to keep Bernie from gaining exposure, suspended his access to data without investigation, and even personally threatened Bernie, promising that he would never win. She also cut off funding to democratic representatives who dared to publicly express support for Bernie. And I could go on and on.
This was not about the people, nor about the party, this was about crowning a queen, and God forbid an eldery, mostly unknown senator from a small state get in the way of the royal chariot with this talk about the peasants.
Bernie did not set the democratic party fire. Though he would have been justified in doing so with their rampant illegal behavior. He was gentle towards the DNC if you consider what he could have done alternatively if he was really vengeful.
He kept his campaign against Hillary Clinton issue-based. He did not attack her character or bring up her scandals. He endorsed her at the end of the primary and campaigned for her. He did so even in the face of criticism from his own supporters, as Hillary was viewed (with good reason) as being corrupt and antithetical to his message. If Bernie were to run in 2020 and be attacked on the basis of where his loyalties lay, critics would be better justified attacking him fom from outside of the establishment democratic party than within.
If he wanted to damagee democratic party he could have brockered the Democratic Convention in a floor fight-- he had the right to do so because in spite of the DNC rigging the primary, Hillary still lacked the 1,237 delegates necessary for her nomination to be uncontested.
Bernie could have refused to endorse Hillary altogether as Ron Paul did with Romney in 2012. He could have even run as a third party candidate, splitting the liberal vote up and giving Trump an overwhelming landslide. Bernie chose not to do that. He protected the democratic party to point of falling on his sword.
His conduct is extremely gracious when compared with Hillary Clinton's in the 2008 primary. She ran a racist and bitter campaign against Barack Obama. Her campaign tweeted out photographs of Obama visiting Kenya and wearing traditional African clothes to cast doubt on Obama's citizenship and allegience. It was the very same image that was later used by the birther movement. She also ran the racist 3:00 AM ad, implying that America's children would not be safe if her opponent (Obama) was selected instead of her.
When Hillary was questioned as to why she remained in the primary when it was no longer possible for her to win, she alluded to the assination of Robert F Kennedy and the California primary. Yes, Hillary Clinton stooped so low that she would throw out clues about her opponent being murdered to get ahead. Yet it was Bernie Sanders' conduct was somehow outrageous?
Bernie also gave his endorsement to Hillary with no expectation of obtaining anything in return but that Hillary be true to his policies and message. What we saw by contrast in 2008 was not concern for party unity and the American people, but only selfishness. Hillary Clinton endorsed Obama and campaigned for him, but it was for a price. She became Secretary of State, which is I think the biggest mistake Obama ever made--- but I digress.
Bernie may not be liked by loyal/establishment democrats--he never was, he was not an outsider. He was a scourge. However, saying that he killed his support and basically set the democratic party is something I can't let stand.
