Bernie Sanders could not, and will not be able to, get racist White Americans to stop voting against

[Grey Lemercier]

44. I have not attacked progressives ever, I have simply said that doing away with identity politics is

not only immoral, but a guaranteed loser in elections. I also refuse to allow you to conflate 3rd-way neoliberal economics with identity politics. That is, IMHO a thinly veiled attempt to promote a RW meme that attacks the base of the party, ie., us minorities.

Sanders got thumped by Hillary in the primary. he would have gotten hammered in the general election. Bernies does not single-handedly represent progressivism in the USA and he certainly has made some really dodgy comments, especially after the election.

Bernie trashed Hillary with a RW meme:

"That's just the truth. Running against the most unpopular presidential candidate in history, the Republicans have just won the White House.”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=8387036



The results are now final: Clinton wins popular vote by nearly 3 million

http://www.businessinsider.com/popular-vote-trump-clinton-2016-12?r=US&IR=T&IR=T

Hillary Clinton secured nearly 3 million more votes than President-elect Donald Trump in the final popular vote tally, which by Wednesday morning was certified in all 50 states and Washington, DC.

The Democratic presidential nominee ended up with more than 65.84 million votes, compared with the more than 62.97 million ballots cast for the president-elect.

Of course, Trump won the Electoral College and thus the presidency by pulling off narrow wins in traditionally Democratic states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, while Clinton ran up higher vote totals than President Barack Obama did in the 2012 election in states like California, Texas, and Arizona.

Clinton's popular vote total fell just short of Obama's 2012 result, by fewer than 75,000 votes. Trump secured the most votes of any Republican presidential candidate in history.

In terms of overall percentage, Trump's 2.1% loss in the popular vote was the third-lowest mark for a victor in the past 49 elections. Trump's share of electoral votes ranked 46th out of 58 elections.

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Sanders slams identity politics as Democrats figure out their future

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/bernie-sanders-democrats-identity-politics-231710

Bernie Sanders said Monday that the path to success for Democrats has to be through more than just identity politics, adding that it’s simply not enough for the party to base its appeals on diversity.

“It’s not good enough for someone to say, ‘I’m a woman! Vote for me!’” No, that’s not good enough. What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the fossil fuel industry,” the Vermont independent senator and former Democratic presidential candidate said in a not-so-subtle rebuke to Hillary Clinton.

Sanders spoke during a book tour stop in Boston, according to video and a transcript of his answer, and was answering in response to a question about advice for an aspiring politician who wants to become the second Latino senator.


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Bernie Sanders still says class is more important than race. He is still wrong

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/22/bernie-sanders-identity-politics-class-race-debate

It appears that in the aftermath of a monumental but nonetheless failed presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders remains most comfortable in the spot that made him a loser: trying to separate class and race.

Sanders has never been wrong about the damaging roles establishment politics and economics play in the lives of millions of Americans. Even so, he’s long struggled with acknowledging that focusing on class alone won’t make this country better for many who are struggling. That the revolution cannot be colorblind if it were to truly make this country better for all of the disenfranchised.

At a speech in Boston on Sunday, the Vermont senator advocated “going beyond identity politics,” declaring, “The working class of this country is being decimated — that’s why Donald Trump won. And what we need now are candidates who stand with those working people, who understand that real median family income has gone down.”

Yes, it has. But Sanders, like the others parading this pedestrian punditry in the aftermath of the news that most white people voted for Donald Trump, is missing the point while continuing to promote the very ideas that sunk him during the primary. He lost many potential voters of color because we know colour-blind economic policies alone will not change certain realities of racism in America. They might “make America great again”, but only for people who have always had it pretty good.

In October, when asked in a New Republic profile how uncomfortable he appeared talking about race, he answered, “OK, see, this is an issue I’m not really – what I don’t want to do is get into me.” When told that it wasn’t about him per se, Sanders said, “It’s a complicated answer. It’s a good question, but I prefer not to get into it right now.”

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Why Black Voters Don’t Feel the Bern
Sanders’ debate stumble on race issues and Hillary’s sure-footed answer help explain why she’s getting most of the African-American vote.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/why-black-voters-dont-feel-the-bern-213707

When it came to most issues at the Democratic debate in Flint Sunday night, Bernie Sanders was his usual crusty, confident self. But when CNN’s Don Lemon asked a seemingly innocuous question—“What racial blind spot do you have?”—the senator from lily-white Vermont stumbled, reaching for an ancient bromide from his long-ago Brooklyn childhood. "When you're white, you don't know what it's like to be living in a ghetto, you don't know what it's like to be poor," Sanders said.

Social media erupted. “He knows that all Black people don't live in ghettos, right?” Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post tweeted. MSNBC’s Joy Reid was also flummoxed. “Of course, many white Americans know exactly what it's like to ‘live in the ghetto.’ Many, including immigrants have, do and did,” she tweeted. “Most African-Americans are not poor. The AA poverty rate is too high, of course, at about 28%, but that's not most or all.”


Hillary Clinton, by contrast, responded to the same question with a detailed account of her lifelong journey in racial awareness, pushing most of the right buttons. She invoked “the talk” that African-American parents need to have with their kids and white parents don’t--“scared that your sons or daughters, even, could get in trouble for no good reason whatsoever like Sandra Bland and end up dead in a jail in Texas." She talked of spending time with Trayvon Martin’s mother, and how it taught her the need “to tear down the barriers of systemic racism that are in the criminal justice system.” She reminisced about her days as a young law student working for her mentor, Marian Wright Edelman, the founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, who had sent her into the Deep South to expose racial discrimination in schools and in jails during the civil rights era.

The different answers somehow encapsulated what has happened so far in this campaign. Clinton has clobbered Sanders in states, mainly in the South, with large African-American populations, propelling her to what may be an insurmountable lead in delegates. Bottom line, Hillary Clinton has street cred on the racial issue that Bernie Sanders lacks.


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