2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: The Racist Meme: The South Doesn't Count [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Bernie wasn't saying those voters don't matter. He is on the side of black voters more than HRC is in terms of his record.
He was saying that the contest wasn't decided on Super Tuesday.
We all agree that black votes everywhere count.
What it comes down to is, while Bill and Hill have won extensive black support and while black people have every right to vote for what ever wish to vote for, their votes do not prove that HRC is the superior candidate.
And it still remains a valid point that neither Clinton has done anything, in terms of their actual record, to EARN POC support. They have never been loyal to POC and never taken a single risk in your behalf.
In their Arkansas years, they never stood up to white supremacists in their state. Not once. They never made any significant effort to boost black voter registration.
There were no situations in the Nineties in which Bill and Hill could ONLY survive politically by kicking POC in the teeth in the ways they did.
Your community gained nothing in the Nineties from those two appeasing GOP racism on crime(all policing policies supported by that administration were expansions of institutional racism) and unemployment and "personal responsibility" (something neither Bill NOR his GOP partners had any moral authority to lecture anyone about)...OR from them agreeing with the GOP equation of blackness with welfare fraud and out-of-wedlock parenting.
There were NO moments at any point in the Nineties(before HRC's too-late-to-matter comments about Abner Louima)n when either Clinton was ever, in any meaningful way, on your side. Ever.
They made no significant efforts to revitalize the economy in any significantly POC areas of the country. About the only ways POC were able to get work in the Nineties were in the fast food industry(where the person who starts on the fry machine stays there for the next ten years)or in the military(the sector of the economy whose employees are most likely to die on the job).
As Senator from a state where being antiracist carries with it no political risks, HRC never spoke out against racism, social or economic(corporate capitalism is a form of economic racism, after all) and never did anything, even after we got a Democratic congress back in '06) to push through any measures through addressing institutional racism.
All of that is context, too.
You have shown those two massive loyalty, but the question remains:
If they did nothing for you in the Nineties, why would you think they'll reward your support NOW?