Berning Bridges 2
Elie Mystal has a theory as to why minorities are not feeling the Bern. Those excerpts convey her main point.
Can I just throw out there the possibility that Sanders is under-performing with minorities because Sanders is doing something wrong?
(snip)
It is insulting to minorities to suggest that most of the things we hoped could be accomplished under Barack Obama can be done now… if only we put an old white guy in charge. Immigration reform! Justice for Trayvon! An economic recovery that works for all! Everything is possible again, as long as it’s a white guy leading the charge!
Do please read the entire piece. She says much more.
I think she has a point.
I’ve mentioned before in these electrons that the lefties I find most irritating are the purists, the ones who, if they don’t get the whole loaf, every crumb including the one still left in the loaf pan, get all up in a huff and take their ball* elsewhere–the sort of folks who voted for Nader because there wasn’t a bit of difference between Bush and Gore.
Though Sanders is a good and decent person and he and Clinton are conducting as principled a campaign against each other as we have seen in some time–a minuet compared to the Republican dog fight in a latrine–too many Sanders supporters behave like officious sneering jerks. They’ve even earned their own nickname.
Officious sneering jerks may not win friends, but they sure as hell influence people.
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*Yeah, I know it’s a mixed metaphor.
It’s my blog and I can mix what I want to.
You would mix too if it happened to you.
March 3, 2016 at 12:05 pm
That’s reasonable. I also think familiarity/ubiquity really helps Clinton. I’m interested to see if the latest result completely takes the air out of the Sanders voters and a general collapse occurs. Victory, you know, sometimes makes the supporters behind by an insurmountable lead pack it in. It’s human nature.
I’m not a Bernie Bro.
March 3, 2016 at 12:59 pm
Frankly, I could support either one philosophically. Indeed, Sanders’s economic views are close to my own.
Nevertheless, I don’t think Sanders could win in the general election and I like to vote in the real world. I don’t blame him for the antics of some of his supporters. Furthermore, my estimation of Clinton has improved significantly in the light of her conduct after the 2008 election. As the loser, she showed a lot class in accepting Obama’s overtures to bury the hatchet and join forces.
I also think that Sanders’s reducing everything to economics is flat-out wrong. His economics are good, but he fails to recognize that racism and bigotry are separate and very real things that must be addressed directly. True, economics and racism are related, but one need only look at the history of FDR’s New Deal to see that economic policy is not inherently racially equitable.