Cornel West Surrogacy highlights a major problem with the Sanders' campaign's outreach strategy [View all]
Jonathan Capehart wrote a compelling piece explaining why Cornel West is not the right person to do outreach to the black community. If you haven't read it yet, I hope you will: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/01/22/how-cornel-west-hurts-bernie-sanders/?postshare=4561453490135953&tid=ss_fb
But beyond his failure as an influencer, the Cornel West surrogacy epitomizes a serious problem with the Sanders' campaign's outreach strategy, not just with regard to African Americans, but to a broader audience. They spend too much time and effort looking inward and not enough effort reaching outward - at least not reaching outward in an inclusive, thoughtful way.
The campaign and its supporters seem to be more about satisfying themselves than in reaching out to bring others in. It has the atmosphere of a clique, a "cool kids club" that is all about reinforcing how cool and correct the current members are. If you're not one of them, you are an "other." And if you don't jump on board immediately and wholeheartedly, you are promptly dismissed and subsequently dealt with only as a subject of derision and contempt. I have seen very little effort to find out what those who not already in the camp think or want. Instead we're all told what we SHOULD want, who we SHOULD support, who we SHOULDN'T support, why we're crazy to do otherwise and if we don't agree, WE are the problem because we just don't get it. If we don't "FEEL THE BERN," it's our loss, not the campaign's. And then with a "Screw you - we don't need you anyway" kiss-off, they turn back inward to talk amongst themselves, telling one another how great Bernie is, how enlightened they are and how awful and clueless everyone else is.
That is evident in the embrace of Cornel West. Dr. West is much more popular with white liberals than he is with African Americans who generally (with some exceptions, of course, since we don't ALL think alike) believe that, while he was once a substantial scholar he has deteriorated into a rather silly, shallow and petty figure. I suspect that many white folks think he's wonderful because they don't know too many black people and believe that he is unusually brilliant; however, black folk know all manner of brilliant people of color, so we're not all that impressed with Dr. West's erudite sounding but hollow pontificating.
Yet, despite his low regard in the black community, Dr. West was brought in to attract more blacks to the Sanders campaign. It obviously has not worked. We have made that clear. But instead of listening to us and respecting our view, Sanders supporters just tell us how much THEY like Dr. West. But frankly, who cares if THEY like him? He's not there to get their support - they're already on board.
That seems to be totally lost on the Sanders campaign and many of its supporters.
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