2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Black Leaders who support Hillary Slam Bernie Sanders on race issues [View all]MellowDem
(5,018 posts)and spent time with them as a more national politician, but I don't see how that makes her a good friend based on her track record.
It looks more like the opportunistic "friend" that tells you what you want to hear and then screws you over behind your back. And when a new kid comes to town, this "friend" is the one loudestly insisting that the new kid doesn't belong, and doesn't have the history that she does.
I think every politician will have supporters on the thousands of different platforms of social media that bother and annoy and belittle those they think are against them. I don't think it's right, but I don't think the politician can really do anything about that. Plenty of Clinton supporters are currently doing just that to young people, especially young women, because she is down in the polls with them. Clinton can't stop them, and in fact, can't even stop her surrogates from doing it. Even if she did decide to act.
I don't think the vast majority of voters know or care about obnoxious supporters on Internet message boards, because not many people frequent them, relative to the voting population. Some supporter straight up asking the politician whether Obama is a Muslim at a rally ala McCain 2008, that's what gets attention on supporters. Internet message boards are anonymous and there are plenty of straight up trolls as well.
If this is really one of the worst thing about Sanders, some of his supporters online, you'd think it would be something Clinton surrogates would bring up in their attacks. But, then it would open them up to every crank online that supports Clinton. I suspect it's why politicians don't really bring it up, that and they likely want those people's votes eventually.
And then there's the fact that the US is really segregated, and there are big cultural differences and can be little understanding between groups, and elections can very rawly expose those divisions that already exist. A lot of the same demographics that supported Obama now support Sanders among whites, and their feelings toward Clinton have not changed. They happened to be supporting the same candidate as many blacks that election, so the big differences that exist didn't get exposed as much, but other ones certainly did. And now it's happening again, just with a different mix of demographics. In some ways it allows for a little bit of honesty in how segregated we are as a country every 4 years, something that is otherwise ignored like the plague.