Grio Op-Ed: "I worked for Bernie in 2016. Here's why Black voters aren't feeling the Bern in 2020"

[StarfishSaver]

I was working as Bernie Sanders‘ 2016 national Black outreach director. One morning while doing early outreach in South Carolina my Facebook page blew up. I was pinged in messages that said, “Bernie Sanders does not support reparations ... I sent an email to the campaign leadership asking exactly what are we thinking? This lacks tactical savvy! There was zero response from any of them. Right after we got past Black Lives Matter protests, this was the message from the campaign? I was in for a long road and, somehow, I needed to get through to Bernie on this issue. That never happened. (He has since acknowledged that if Congress passes a study of reparations bill he would sign it.)
...
The hot take on Bernie is that he was too risky for Black voters. Meanwhile the patriarchal progressive Bernie zealot types believe that Black folks are uninformed voters that already have blind loyalty to any neoliberal candidate associated with the Democratic Party.

Blaming Black folks is never a good look, and they feed into moderate talking points every single time they say it. Both arguments about why Bernie struggles with Black voters are way off.
...
Black and indigenous people are the original progressive people of America. How do you call yourself a progressive without consistently acknowledging us? The problem is, as is the problem with most of the white progressive spaces, he took everything from the Black movement and forgot about the Black part.

Bernie simply didn’t do what was needed to take his energy, popularity, and email list to boost his Black support during the 2016 election and leading up to 2020. This is not an indictment against what he stands for, but rather the political will to implement necessary tactics to earn Black trust ... Bernie had 4 years to set up in Black communities and engage them with his message, organization, but he instead chose to do the same thing — only to get the same result. It’s political insanity.
https://thegrio.com/2020/03/31/i-worked-for-bernie-2020/

[mcar]

1. Kick

[PatSeg]

2. That pretty much sums up what I've seen

with Bernie Sanders, he really never changes or evolves. Not a good trait in a president.

[sheshe2]

3. Great article.

In the end, Bernie lost the Black vote when he was in the best position to get it.

[ucrdem]

4. Add to that the fact that "M4A" is basically a rejection of the ACA

and every time Bernie gets up and says "health care in America stinks!" the unspoken message I hear is "and so does Barack Obama."

Has he EVER said anything positive about the ACA?

[Catch2.2]

11. Not quite

Although Bernie Sanders didn't like some of the concessions that were made in the ACA, and even though he wants to go farther and push single payer/M4A, he does support the ACA.

"Sanders used his vast email list from the campaign to help organize support for Sunday's rallies in support of Obamacare, which stretched from an event led by House minority leader Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco to one featuring Sen. Elizabeth Warren in Boston."
https://www.npr.org/2017/01/15/509960559/democrats-rally-in-dozens-of-cities-to-oppose-obamacare-repeal



"After the election, some feared the Vermont independent would continue to torch Obamacare’s inadequacies, while turning his passionate followers against the Democratic Party.

But at least during the Obamacare repeal fight in Congress, Sanders was a team player. He brought crowds to dozens of rallies with Senate Democrats who had once opposed him. He shut a Republican attempt to expose Democrats’ divisions, despite the interest of some of his team. And, perhaps most importantly, he marshaled his resources and newfound star power in defense of Democrats’ top priority: showing what it might look like for his movement to be incorporated into the party apparatus, rather than having it try to knock down its gates."
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/7/16069112/bernie-sanders-obamacare-trumpcare

[ucrdem]

14. Yes I remember those rallies.

We discussed them here. As I recall when it came down to the wire and there was a televised debate before a crucial senate vote, Sanders promoted his own brand and someone else defended the ACA.

[Happy Hoosier]

5. Good article.... but I would add...

That if you pivot to a broader economic message every time you are asked about black issues, you are sending the message that you do not recognize the unique plight of black people in America.

The economic trouble of Appalachian coal miners and southern black families are just not the same. They have different roots.

[honest.abe]

6. "he took everything from the Black movement and forgot about the Black part."

That sums it up nicely.

[mdbl]

7. The point of the article is Bernie is not against working to fix issues affecting black folks

he made the mistake of not acknowledging them. A political miscalculation that should have been a no-brainer.

[heckles65]

8. I have heard a theory

that Black people aren't overly strong on radicals, because while White '60s radicals lived to do talk shows late in life, Black '60s radicals wound up dead or in exile. Not completely true, some White radicals wound up dead as well, but certainly color was a 'risk factor.' (I'm white BTW.)

Commentary welcome.

[DAngelo136]

10. Not True

Look at the present African American office holders; most if not many were activists and radicals. In fact, that's how they got into office in the first place.

As the author pointed out, Indigenous people and Black folks were the first "progressives". They also were the first radicals (Think about it). Our people have a history of radicalism. From Nat Turner to Martin Delany and Frederick Douglass to Lucy Parsons and Hubert Harrison to Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis and Assata Shakur and everybody in between who I haven't mentioned.

Both Bernie and Biden represent a style of politics that is obsolete: the 60's radical and the accommodating Democrat. If not for the existential threat posed by the Trump presidency, neither man would be seriously considered as a serious candidate. While both men have made many positive contributions to their causes, the time has come for them to step off stage and let younger and better candidates shine. Of course they would be consulted for their wisdom and experience; something Trump is seriously lacking in any aspect of his life and it shows.

As a Socialist, I will be eternally grateful to Sen. Sanders for bringing Socialism back to the surface and making it possible for Socialists like me to operate in the open. But now is the time for the next stage of development and I fear that this is less of a movement than it is an ego trip disguised as a campaign. If you read the Democratic Platform of 2016, and listen to the discussions of the benefits of M4A, he's already won. To use a biblical reference, Moses had to give way to Aaron in order to lead his people to "The Promised Land". So too should Bernie and Biden.

[IronLionZion]

9. People might be feeling the burn a different way, from COVID fever

as they watch the sick and death count increase daily in cities and towns across America. M4A is a nice goal to have but nobody believes we'll get it any time soon. People losing their jobs and health insurance need something much faster.

[True Blue American]

12. Trump just turned down an extension

For extra time to sign up for the ACA after saying a couple of months ago he would be OK with it.

The simple minded fool does not remember what he said a minute ago. And Pence is worse because he knows what he is doing.

[nolabear]

13. You might look at the trending topic "Whoopie" on Twitter. The bros' racism and misogyny is stunning

[brer cat]

15. K&R

[Blasphemer]

16. I agree with a lot of this op-ed but not all of it

African-American voters are certainly perfectly comfortable with "socialism" (There was a survey several years back that showed they were more comfortable with it than other groups). So, progressive/socialist policies were definitely not the problem. My disagreement with the op-ed is that it understates the way that Bernie's brand of progressivism intentionally and vigorously excludes marginalized experiences that have nothing to do with class.

There is a reason he didn't listen to his African-American organizers. There is a reason his campaign rejected the overtures of African-American political and civil rights leaders in 2016. There is a reason he uses "identity politics" as a dog whistle. It was not just an oversight or bad strategy. His strategy is to focus on class, to the exclusion of all else. It is explicitly class-inequality first messaging. Connecting with African-American voters threatens that myopic worldview. His strategy was and is to win without the African-American vote because he did not want to accommodate experiences that are not rooted in class inequality. That didn't work out too well. He's not only lost African-American voters to Biden but also women.

The racist and misogynistic underbelly of his campaign is a direct result of this strategy. Someone wrote an article recently calling the progressive left a white male movement. It's not true, but Bernie's politics certainly makes it seem so. I have hope that people like AOC see this failure, take a lesson from it, and shift the progressive movement in a direction that allows it to build a broad coalition.

[The Magistrate]

17. That Is A Sound Point, Sir

It is rooted in Marxist belief. There the sole object is the class struggle of workers against capitalists. Everything else is subordinated to this because all other social ills, from racism and misogyny to homosexuality and religious excess, is held by Marxist doctrine to flow from the distortions capitalism imposes on human relations and behavior. There is therefore no social or cultural problem which cannot be fixed, and will not be fixed, by successful conclusion of the class struggle. Indeed, viewing struggles for women's liberation, for gay rights, to end racism, as the most important focus of any effort, is mere 'bourgeois sentimentality' which weakens the efforts to win the class struggle, and can even be seen as attempts to sabotage it. The description of homosexuality as a social ill is not mine, but the view of doctrinaire Marxists at the time 'Bernie' imbibed the doctrine, and criminalizing homosexuality has been a feature of Marxist regimes such as Castro's in Cuba. Marxist groups, especially on campuses, have over the last few decades learned they have to attach all these social issues to their agitation for class struggle, lest they find no membership at all. It is not possible to recruit young people to such groups nowadays if they do not strike postures in favor of feminism and anti-racism and gay rights. But look deeply enough, you will see this is always a means to recruit to the class struggle, which remains pre-eminent in the doctrine.





"From Bernie’s perspective, dropping out of a race once you have no chance of winning is peculiar behavior that can only be explained by the work of a hidden hand. For most politicians, though, it is actually standard operating procedure. Only Sanders seems to think the normal thing to do once voters have made clear they don’t want to nominate you is to continue campaigning anyway."





"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."

[betsuni]

18. K&R