Bernie Sanders Blew It By Failing To Connect With Black Voters
The Bernie Sanders campaign blew the Democratic nomination because of a defeatist attitude about the black vote, particularly in a failure to “win the hearts of black progressives.”
Team Sanders wrongly assumed that Hillary Clinton had a lock on the black vote, merely because she was better known in that community then the Vermont senator, a report published by Fusion suggested.
The Fusion article based on interviews with key Sanders’ staffers claims that the campaign’s lackluster outreach to the African-American electorate spelled doom for Bernie’s attempt to pry the presidential nomination away from Clinton.
“Those former staffers described a campaign that failed to give its black outreach teams the resources they needed, that never figured out how to connect to black audiences, and that marginalized black media. In the process, the campaign missed a chance to capitalize on a revolutionary message that otherwise might have appealed to black voters frustrated with the current political order…It takes outreach. But several former members of Sanders’ black outreach team told me the campaign didn’t believe pulling black voters from Clinton was a real possibility; the white vote, the staffers said, was the campaign’s priority.”
Our chat with former Bernie Sanders staffers about how he lost black voters: https://t.co/VpC3YUCS2X pic.twitter.com/qvkg8x56TQ
— Splinter (@splinter_news) July 11, 2016
Describing Sanders himself as “sincere to the core,” an outreach official with the campaign claimed that “he felt that neither campaign manager Jeff Weaver nor other high-ranking figures thought Sanders could overcome Hillary Clinton’s appeal to black voters.”
In which might be considered a self-fulfilling prophecy, Hillary Clinton wound up “clobbering” Bernie Sanders in state after state during the primary season insofar as the black vote was concerned.
Much to the dismay of Bernie Sanders supporters, the self-described socialist officially endorsed Hillary Clinton for president on July 12 during a joint appearance in New Hampshire. Sanders previously declared that he would contest the nomination all the way to the upcoming convention in Philadelphia.
Bernie Sanders has repeatedly stressed that his main priority is defeating Trump in the November general election, although Trump shares Bernie’s opposition to trade deals — such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership — that often send U.S. jobs overseas and undermine America’s manufacturing base. Both anti-establishment candidates also opposed the Iraq War (for which Hillary Clinton voted), as well as condemning the undue influence of Wall Street and other lobbyists on politics.
In April, one Democrat strategist argued that 40 percent of the Sanders vote could gravitate to Trump in part because of the trade issue.
In an interview on Fox News Sunday today, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort vowed that “we’re confident that the combined Trump/Pence ticket is going to be very appealing to moderates, conservatives, and, frankly, liberals who were supporting Bernie Sanders because of his campaign against the rigged system, the rigged Wall Street system, the rigged political system, the rigged trade system.”
In the run-up to the decisive California primary, which Bernie Sanders lost to Clinton, the Washington Post outlined how Bernie blew a golden, as it were, opportunity, even though his campaign seemed to benefit from enthusiasm, momentum, and social media traction.
“According to interviews with the candidate, his advisers, allies and other Democrats, Sanders fell short because of missed opportunities, a failure to connect with key constituencies and stubborn strategy decisions. Perhaps the campaign’s biggest mistake was not realizing early on that Sanders could win. That led to a slow start, both in building the infrastructure needed to run a national campaign and in Sanders’s own presence among voters who knew little about him.”
Do you think that Bernie Sanders missed an opportunity to win over back voters that would have enabled him to win the presidential nomination?
[Photo by Craig Ruttle/AP]
