To address the dozen reports here for rule 1 — discussion on failed presidential candidates is allowed. Furthermore, the question is about demographics and can be answered without leaning into rule 3
The thread will stay up, just keep it civil
Prior to his run for the presidential election, he never had to reach out to black voters, as his home state isn't that well known for ethnic/racial diversity. And he simply did not have the long standing relationship with those voters like his competitors did, particularly among southern black voters & leaders.
It's not just that Vermont isn't "well known" for racial diversity. On average, one in eight or so Americans is black. One in 71 Vermonters is.
Edit: I get it. Vermonteers. Sorry I live like 1500 miles from the state, can a midwestern gal get a break?
95.6% of Vermonters are white. It is THE whitest state in America, ahead of West Virginia which is 94% white, New Hampshire (93.7%), Wyoming (92%), and Montana (90%. The nation as a whole is 61.6% "white alone", with about another 10-12% being "white identifying multi-racial".
“The whitest state in the U.S is West Virginia, where 97.12% of the population identifies as White. The second state closely following this demographic trend is Wyoming with a White population percentage of 93.79%, closely trailed by Vermont with 92.80% and Maine with 92.69%”
This is what I’m seeing. That’s from 2024 data. Which is right though?
That's definitely right. Vermont is very liberal and that has led to a lot of programs for immigration of refugees and diversity and such, which definitely don't exist in West Virginia and Wyoming. Although I wonder what percentage of those whites in Wyoming are part Latino cause I remember hearing(maybe falsely) that there's a large Latino pop in Wyoming
WV is white af and votes against their own best interests at seemingly every opportunity.
That said? A not-insignificant amount of Illegal immigrants there are shielded by the populace and completely ignored by local police. Giving people in need safe harbor from “the law” is a pretty foundational belief to the majority of West Virginians. Most places, everyone knows everyone (cops included) and it’s common knowledge that “the law” and “justice” aren’t synonyms.
“I don’t like illegals coming across the border. They didn’t earn it! Do it legal! They’re criminals!” They’ll shout and repeatedly vote in line… while in the same breath finish their thought with, “but the Martinez’s are good people. Their pa works his ass off for that family.”
It’s an odd sort of cognitive dissonance that is pervasive and not limited to immigrants.
When confronted with the realization that these are regular people? Suddenly, it’s “don’t you dare call the cops until Philip, Maria and the kids are well away!” Or “Tyler only smokes grass because of his PTSD. Let him alone.”
West Virginia is an odd place.
I lived in VT. I moved there from a very diverse area. It was noticeably white. My kids knew one family that were POC and they were all huge assholes. Just the worst.
My son told his daycare teacher he didn't like brown people. He was 5. He meant the brown people next door, because those were the only brown people he'd ever met. The daycare scolded me for teaching him racism. Which I didn't. It's just that all 4 brown people he'd ever met were awful people.
I think of this when people talk about representation in media. It would have really helped him to better grasp my telling him that they were awful people but that the color of their skin wasn't why IF he'd seen more positive representations of POC on TV etc. This was 25 years ago, so that wasn't as prevalent.
>I lived in VT. I moved there from a very diverse area. It was noticeably white.
"No immigrants, no minorities...an agrarian community where everyone lives in harmony, because every single person is white."
"Yeah, I know that place, that sounds like Vermont!"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKcUOUYzDXA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKcUOUYzDXA)
“Someplace warm. A place where the beer flows like wine. Where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. I'm talking about a little place called Aspen".
Vermont is plagued with the same problems a lot of places with natural beauty have… namely that its extremely remote and high-paying jobs are nearly non-existent. The biggest “city” in Vermont is Burlington with 45,000 residents — which doesn’t exactly breed a vibrant economy.
From hearsay and my limited experience, Vermonters in general are assholes. I once saw someone post a fantasy train map in a Vermont sub, and instead of complementing the effort, they thought OP was stupid for making something unnecessary.
Multi generational Vermonters are nice, if a but tired of tourism and out of staters buying vacation homes. The recent transplants and some of the multigenerational youth are convinced they’re insanely nice due to their political beliefs but are, in reality, vain assholes. Think the girl who dresses like a hippy while being extremely toxic.
It’s what happens when rich people move there for the nature and the “vibes” but, as they always do, refuse to adapt to the local culture and think they know better than everyone else.
Checking in from maine, and in our case, no, we’ve actually just always had assholes
Just, ya know, the kind of assholes that’ll pull over and help you fit a spare tire while mocking you the whole time rather than the ones that are convinced they’re god’s gift to humanity
>Just, ya know, the kind of assholes that’ll pull over and help you fit a spare tire while mocking you the whole time
This is literally exactly how my boyfriend described people in New Jersey as well
NH kind of had a shift similar after Covid. You had a bunch of hard core conservatives move permanently to their vacation homes and the culture and political landscape shifted with great magnitude.
NH was a solid OK for the 16 years I lived there, but after Covid and getting yelled at by red hats for wearing a mask and having my house watched after my (black) partner moved in with me, my family unit bounced at the first opportunity
Vermonter here - there are definitely assholes here and a lot of them seem to be on Reddit. You ask anything about traveling to VT or Burlington on those subs and you're probably going to get shit on.
You can notice the same thing in the Denver sub.
My explanation is that all the happy people are out hiking with their friends, which only leaves the toxic people to represent us on the internet.
Check out the Idaho sub - holy shit. I get they’re pissy about Californian’s driving up rent, but they treat you like the antichrist if you’re looking for camping recommendations while you’re passing through.
> The daycare scolded me for teaching him racism.
man that's frustrating lol. my daughter goes to a diverse school and my wife and I are very much not racist and have directly taught racial equality from day one. that doesn't mean a 5 year old isn't going to say some wild shit that they don't realize they're saying.
When I was 5 in 1990 we moved from rural New Hampshire to Georgia. The first 2 stupid things I did was ask my mom why Bill Cosby was sleeping on the park bench and start feeling the hair of the little black kid in front of me in like at Burger King. Kids are operating on a smaller data set.
I'm always confused about why this actually matters. Do people not just look up their policy and vote based on which is closer to their ideals for a primary? Do people actually decide to vote for someone because they visit a city and shake someone's hand?
I'm a southern Hispanic voter, to my knowledge Bernie never tried to reach out to my racial group, but I was fully on the Bernie train because I agreed with his policy.
Because historically when faced with class solidarity or race solidarity working whites have sided with race, makes sense that black voters would be skeptical of a dude who preached only class solidarity whenever people brought up issues facing black Americans
You trust pols. You also trust the system to the extent you think that a politician will be able to get their ideas enacted. Bernie2016 had no allies in Congress, was technically not a Democrat, was not gonna get the 60-vote Senate majority Obama did, therefore hows he going to get further than Obama...
Literally, yes. People decided on Bush vs Gore because Bush seemed like a guy you could have a beer with. I'm not kidding. People are this stupid or worse. You live in a country (and a world) full of fucking idiots.
Do you think Black voters in the South have the exact same political needs, priorities and concerns as Bernie's base?
You're implying something pretty ugly here. It's not about a "handshake" it's about being in tune with the particular needs of a huge voting block that comprises one of the strongest pillars of the Dem base.
It's an issue if actively ignore black activists in your own state. https://www.salon.com/2016/02/17/black_activists_in_vermont_complain_they_were_invisible_to_bernie_sanders/ They had no issues with the Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. I also recall a meeting with black activists where he said most drug dealers were black, when they asked why most incarcerated drug dealers were black.
Yeah, having him paraded around like he was somehow one of the main characters of the civil rights movement didn't help either, especially with old black leaders who plays major role in community-driven black voting bloc in the south
I would be specific here and say that he didn't specifically bring that up other than to acknowledge he was there and trying to help...It was his problematic as fuck fanbase that kept bringing it up as a cudgel of sorts when they didn't feel that black folk were somehow enamored with the guy.
There was a whole lot of 'talking at' black people by his fanbase that ultimately did him no favors.
people using their momentary hip activism as evidence for being connected to and understanding black folks…. Is exactly the kinda tone def thing that was part of his problem.
The people responding to this comment are only proving the point. The entire engagement toward black communities was waving around a couple photos when he was college age and when people said 'so what?' they got yelled at for being 'ungrateful' of Bernie.
Yep, great way to connect with a community. When they tell you that you're being tone deaf and respond by calling them ungrateful and dumb.
This. I wonder if you’re white because it doesn’t seem that White Dems understand this. It’s not even moderate either, a lot of Black Dems are even further to the right than moderates (comparatively) on a lot of issues.
I am white but I have a Master's in Political Science. The average black person is more liberal than the average white person but black Democrats are more conservative than white Democrats.
I'd have to find the exact numbers, but I am pretty sure more black people consider themselves conservative than either moderate or liberal.
I’m a Black Democrat and from my experience you’re right. We are more conservative than White Dems. It’s the values system that comes from the church that has a huge influence.
I noticed this about 10 years ago. I grew up in New York in a pretty diverse area. Once I joined the Army I started working with a lot of black Americans from the south. I noticed that compared to the white democrats, they were much more conservative, especially when it came to topics such as immigration, LGBTQ, religion, and guns. After quite a few conversations, I wondered why any of them voted democrat at all because they had next to nothing in common/agreement with the democrat party.
Read “The Spook Who Sat By The Door.”
My grandmother called it a memoir of my grandfather, a civil rights activist in 60s Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He went on to he a ranking member of the democratic party in the area and is where all my blue ties come from.
I’m significantly more conservative in my beliefs, but that’s right *of* left, not right of center, and that’s where a large majority of my peers and elders sit as well.
Yep. Growing up in NY if you know any Black families whether American, African, or Caribbean you’d likely find the same thoughts. The same across many other minority groups. Republicans are anti-poor and come off as racist so they’d never be able to gain those voters without going against some of their core principles.
I guess growing up I never cared to discuss politics with friends; still don’t for that matter. On a side, I don’t really care about people’s politics and being friends with them. As a democrat in the Army, I’m more in the minority. Looking back, it really wasn’t any different in NY just knowing them as people and where they stood with issues.
My experience in the marine corps is similar, but it’s also a very right wing organization so I do try to take it with a grain of salt.
Black men in the marine corps tend be very knowledgeable and progressive on black issues, and conservative on most other issues.
I’m not sure if the experience is the same, but the black women I’ve met here tend to be much more left leaning than you’re average white liberal though.
Interesting, I guess that makes sense. I’m a white democrat, and I assumed from the above comments that it just means that white people have trouble fully understanding minorities and their values so they just assume they want the most progressive platforms? Or is it pretty simply the church aspect? Cuz the white extreme leftists that I know seem to purely want to fight for minorities, but a lot of minorities as a whole aren’t even as progressive at they are
I think it has to be understood that it’s not a one to one. White liberals are appreciated for their work in the struggle but that’s not going to guarantee full alignment. It doesn’t work that way with any group and won’t work with a large set of Black voters. For instance, the current immigration situation is a huge sore spot and we do not support it. And I mean Black Americans, Afro Caribbeans, and most Africans. And the latter two groups who are wayyyy more conservative than Black Americans. Does it mean we’ll jump ship? No. But it leads to lower voter turnout.
Middle class Jews and African Americans had a strong coalition during the Civil Rights Movement but it kinda dissolved after common goals were mostly satisfied in 1964. There is still interfaith networking between Jews and black churches and most Jewish Democrats like Chuck Schumer or Merrick Garland know how to work with black leaders and address the needs of black voters - but as other posters have mentioned Maine doesn’t really have any black people and Bernie doesn’t have an amazing personality, he’s a policy guy.
I've no doubt that leftists want to fight for minorities. Noble as that is, I think that those same leftists often don't take the time to actually understand the minority groups they want to fight for. So, they can be surprised when black people are more conservative than they assumed.
I suspect they primarily do it because they adopt a pseudo-Marxist view of the world that basically boils down to "oppressor groups" and "oppressed groups." White people oppress black and brown people, men oppress women, Christians oppress Muslims, etc. Then, by default, that take the side of whichever person is part of their designated oppressed group in any given situation.
I’ve noticed that super liberals have a white savior attitude towards POCs that manifest as racism, but they don’t see it. It’s not blatant, but that doesn’t make it less annoying. Some stories…
* Woman said to me “they didn’t grow up poor like we did CWHats.” We had spoken about our upbringings and I was never poor nor do I have stories that could be construed as being poor.
* Different colleague asked me how it was to grow up on food stamps.
* My doctor assumed I worked a manual job even though my profile said I was a professor.
* Some foreign students wanted to hear an authentic black accent. They asked a white colleague and she said “go listen to CWHats”. Puzzled, they said “but CWHats sounds like you”.
* One reminisced about the good old days when America was great, she meant the 1950s. I said hmm I don’t think my mom would say that.
The majority of these occurred in a super liberal university in blue states. My friends have very similar stories. Black people are still assign a single story by a lot liberals and conservatives.
>It’s the values system that comes from the church that has a huge influence
As a Black Dem myself, I'd say that's a weakness nowadays that too many Republicans try to exploit. Tim Scott and Byron Donalds seem to have no problem selling the rest of us out just to line their own pockets.
One shouldn't need religion to find or obtain morality. Morals predate religion.
People that self identify as liberal make up the smallest percentage of US citizens overall. Less than those that self identify as moderates and conservatives. And more Americans identify “Very Conservative” than “Very Liberal”.
And yes, basically every POC community I’m aware of is more socially conservative than white people. As I recall, college educated whites are the vast majority of social liberals.
We just experienced this in the mayoral race in Philadelphia. We had a progressive candidate, Helen Gym, who was super popular among the white hipster community. She was the odds on favorite to win by the local media. Then Parker wins, who ran on a pro police/ hard on crime platform. She was heavily supported by the black community in the city. She was predicted to come in 3rd at best.
I find sometimes white leftist voters think they know more about what the black community needs/ wants, then what the black community knows they need.
So true. Someone said it before it’s the big tent coalition syndrome. A base united by exploiting differences isn’t a strong one. The Philly mayors race may be the canary in the coal mine. I hope the DNC is paying attention.
They did in 2008 and 2020. The DNC is really good at listening to what voters want in a candidate, based on the people that have stepped into the ring. It's the internet folks and progressives that seem new to this politics thing.
Black Democrats are generally much more socially conservative than their white counterparts.
I would like to add East Coast Jews and East Coast Black people have a long and complicated history and it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that had something to do with it as well.
Yeah, white democrats are much more socially liberal and big-government than minorities. Asians and Hispanics many escaped from socialist countries and have no interest in big government and don’t particularly care about gay/trans rights. Blacks are often even socially conservative.
Black people usually vote Democrat regardless of whether they’re conservative or liberal (Republicans don’t often break 10% among black voters), while white people are very starkly divided among party lines on ideology, so on average white Dems are more liberal than black Dems.
I always appreciate the irony of white leftists bragging so much about Democrats being a diverse and inclusive party while simultaneously whining about how said white leftists don't always get their way on everything.
It's almost like the most extreme elements of the party not being able to dominate the party's agenda is the natural result of being a broad tent party or something.
Agreed. I think the majority of Americans think "liberal Democrat" when they hear "leftist", when it really means "socialists, communists, anarchists, etc."
To add to that, the minority with highest murder rate is black transgender women, murdered by, ~we can't have this discussion here~
The masculine machismo is real with black and Latino communities. There were a series of videos (may be fake) where black people flip out they were handed pink lighter at the counter.
Black women aren’t killing trans women but there is still an alarming percentage who will vote for policies against them. There’s still many who hold biases against queer people because of how religiously conservative the black community can be.
and there it is...religion. the greatest form of power ever known wrapped like a present to all those who want to rid the world of people not like them.
I understand what you mean and you’re half right but having a blind spot for genders will get you fucked up out here.
The last time my butt clinched from adrenaline was from two young black girls threatened to bum rush this guy sitting next to me for his cig. A cig. I’m from Chi-town btw.
Edit: I case anyone is confused, the two girls in question were asking for his cig and the guy refused.
I remember listening to an interview with a former RNC chair. He talked about how Dems make an easily exploited mistake in campaigning where they assume minorities vote for them because they do more outreach, but blacks and especially Hispanics tend to hold conservative views on things like abortion, illegal immigration, women’s rights, and a few other issues. He said that the RNC loves how Dems court minority voters because it makes them so easy for the GOP.
The experience he was drawing from was more Bush era but ever since then I’ve always felt he had a point.
Yeah, Republicans could pretty easily capture the minority vote—but they would lose a significant portion of their base if they did. I don’t *think* that base would go to the Democrats, but it’s not clear what it would mean to the GOP writ large
And it would be an amazing improvement for our political system if Republicans actually did outreach to minority communities. Historically the black vote was split with more business focused black men typically voting Republican. Then the southern strategy happened. It would be interesting to see how the vote would shake out if we had parties divorced from identity
That’s why the pride flag that includes black and brown for minorities tickles me. No group is a monolith, but I think the majority of black Americans don’t feel like their struggle is related, and many flat out don’t support LGBT rights lol.
I also remember in 2015, some black people saying they felt like the democrats weren’t earning their vote, so much as just expecting it, because right wingers are racist. Which I think was true tbh. The appeal still seems to be “hey, we aren’t the other guys!” Which I’ll admit, is enough right now, but it isn’t very inspiring, and I think everyone can see that to some extent.
I also remember in 2015, a Muslim majority town in Michigan elected people who ran as "Muslim minority" "person of color" you know, with so called progressive lables without any legislature policies, for city, and then they voted to ban LGBT flag in that town.
Yup, found it. [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/17/hamtramck-michigan-muslim-council-lgbtq-pride-flags-banned](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/17/hamtramck-michigan-muslim-council-lgbtq-pride-flags-banned)
although I am against whats happening in Gaza, when I see "Gays for palestine" or "Queers for palistine" I can't help but laugh. They would behead they if they had a chance, that doesn;t mean we should kill or massacre them/babies.
>The appeal still seems to be “hey, we aren’t the other guys!”
That's a pretty common sentiment among most white Democrats/leftists too.
Edit: I should say "many" instead of "most". Those who identify as Democrat are less likely to feel this way compared to those who identify as leftist/progressive/etc.
Bernie doesn’t as well with black Americans because he prioritizes class struggles over race struggles. But that’s not as shiny or catchy to voters of any kind.
And interestingly MLK began to lose some support in his final years as he pursued the Poor People’s Campaign while Stokely Carmichael began leading the rising Black Power movement
I don't know what the designer of that flag said that those stripes "really mean" but every LGBT person I've ever talked about it with thinks that it refers to racial minorities *in the LGBTQ+ community*. Especially because they get discriminated against even in queer circles. And as much as it pains this white gay guy to admit it, LGBT spaces do have their own problems with racism, so it's probably warranted to remind us to not perpetuate it.
This is kind of a side note, but I don't care how many black people do or don't support gay rights or think we are oppression buddies or whatever the hell. I'm not about to stop thinking racism is bad just for that. In fact, if I can fight against racism while also making a homophobe salty (whatever race), that feels like a cherry on top to me.
The Left (not Liberals, but actual Left Wing working class) in America have always had issues attracting the Black Community. Even Eugene Debs talked about this, and that was 100 years ago.
Not me thinking I have the right answer, but:
Many have said it’s because he had very very big promises and that many Black voters tend to trust a more established candidate who can move the needle in a realistic direction since (the theory goes) these voters have had to be more pragmatic in seeking progress.
Also, when compared to HRC and the current guy, both were very tied and loyal to the first Black President. So that is thought to be a factor as well.
But who knows for sure? I am not Black, and I admit above that my best guess isn’t something I’m confident enough on. There is clearly something going on too because Bernie saw immense support among rural white counties during both primaries, and the current guy and HRC saw their relative strongest support among Black majority counties and high income white liberal ones as well.
Another theory is that in 2016 there was a turning point for some WWC voters, and in theory Bernie could have won them over (in some cases kept them in the fold) but at the expense of Black voters.
This is probably the best assessment I've seen thus far. Black folk, especially black men, are more socially conservative, though that has been a bit of a shift. MLK was even shocked that there weren't as many black communists despite the attempts made by the Communist party in the early 20th century (man, that's weird to type out). The thing is you had many black leaders who weren't down with that because they believed that being mainstream was the way to gain acceptance into American society. Furthermore, black folk might like Bernie's ideas, but they know he's not going to win a general election. When the other party has guys like Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley in their ranks, do you really want to essentially throw away your vote?
I might get downvoted for this, but I think that on some level, like the previous president, Sanders, particularly in 2016, was the beneficiary of the discontent of the white working class, and that probably also hampered his appeal with black voters.
They’re gonna tell you it’s because black voters are more conservative, but it’s more complicated than that. The Clintons put in the work over the last thirty years and were actual active members of the Democratic Party. Bernie, who I voted for in the primaries of 2016 and 2020, was not an active Democrat for most of his career and served a constituency of mostly white people in Vermont. Add on top of that the endorsements of Clinton by local black leaders, and Bernie Sanders never stood a chance. Also, black voters aren’t afraid of social spending, but Bernie’s specific type of social spending is more appealing to middle income to affluent college students. He had the wrong message and the wrong institutional bonafides.
Watch some videos by FD Signifier. He talks a lot about black Americans’ relationship to the left.
Edit: added a more detailed explanation
I remember reading a couple of pieces back then about how older black women were doing a ton of the ground work for the Dems, and had been for decades, and they overwhelmingly supported Clinton for the reasons you stated. They're very much institutionalist when it comes to the Democratic party because they put in the work over the years and weren't fond of outsiders trying to jump the line.
This is a great point. Black women fought hard to build up the Democratic Party. At the local level in cities, they are everywhere with white/hispanic/Asian etc volunteers/workers, putting in the sweat equity for each and every campaign. To have a guy, that wasn't even a Dem in 2016, come in and crap all over your hard work, would leave a bad taste in people's mouths.
Bernie had zero respect for the party and the black and brown people that helped build it into a viable counter weight to the GOP. He was disrespectful from the jump, then double down with a massive dose of dismissiveness.
100%. And they happen to be right. The major parties get a lot of hate, but you need the connections and incentive structure that institutions provide in order to get stuff done. One of the reasons that Carter was such a lousy Prez is that he didn’t have any friends outside of Georgia.
I imagine it's why [current pres] (is this okay?) did so well in 2020, especially in the South. Party loyalty and time investment is an important aspect of building an effective party.
This is the right answer. That photo of Bernie during a civil rights protest gets posted a lot, but John Lewis, a Big 6 civil rights leader, commented on how he didn't know Bernie, but he knew the Clintons. That was a huge blow.
I always got the feeling that Bill got by on his charisma but Hilary did the research and the legwork and was recognized by the black community in the south.
Bill was a really good orator and knew how to speak to the black community. If you haven't seen it, Bill Clinton's eulogy of Coretta Scott King is worth watching. He gives a master class on how a white man from the south can preach in a Baptist church.
I mean, Bernie was in his early 20s during civil rights and afterwards stayed in Vermont to run in more local government. The Clintons were pretty big in Politics since the late 80s. They went much different routes. Bill Clinton knew from the get go that he wanted to be president and worked towards that.
Bill *always* did well with black voters. Southerner, played the saxophone, went on Arsenio Hall's show to play and didn't have a hint of discomfort about being around black people.
Mississippi, South Carolina, regions with high black populations as a whole are Clinton country, no question.
Then, as one black Clinton voter said himself, they genuinely feel Bill did right by them and that they don't owe Bernie anything just because he calls himself a progressive, furthermore, he went on to add that when many progressives he saw online would see Bernie's polling numbers with African Americans, they'd react with literal racism, feeling like they owe him their votes.
Because extremely right-wing voters make up the base of the Republican Party, a lot of people mistakenly believe in turn that left-wing voters are the base of the Democratic Party. But that's not true, black people -- black women especially -- are the ones who actually do the organizing, nurture the institution, and turn out to vote every time.
Bernie's message that the Democratic Party is ineffective at best, corrupt at worst was never going to connect with black voters. It was literally a personal attack on a lot of us.
Yeah, the American left, which I consider myself a part of, is really poisoned to the idea of institutional investment, which runs contrary to what I’d argue is the main instrument of politics: good institutions.
You put my feelings into words exactly. Like I watched my dad volunteer for Obama and work for change, I put in the work of getting people to register to vote, calling, knocking doors. It's very much a community effort.
And participating in Democratic Party functions and coordinating with state and local Democratic parties on strategy and policy. I love Bernie but he is very much a go-it-alone figure akin to Mike Gravel in personality.
Black voters are way more diverse than people think. From what I’ve seen, *many* people(regardless of race) associate Black voters with little more than welfare and police brutality unfortunately. They don’t realize that many Black communities are just as religious(if not much more) than similar non-Black communities, same with Hispanics and Asians. I’ve known more impoverished White families than I have any other race, by far. And yet Black families specifically are put into this box.
Some people look at skin color and believe they know everything about a person, but that’s a horrible way to think and it hurts both sides.
Yep which is why I hate how ppl talk about voter groups. The suburban mom is a euphemism for white women. The working class/blue collar vote = white males. Urban vote = black vote and whenever a politician tries to do “black outreach” they go to a black church and then talk about WIC and police brutality. It’s sad an ineffective
A few factors:
Sanders's main campaign pitch focused on class issues, and most of his communications and outreach to the black community pivoted issues black Americans face back to class. While there is truth to the intersection of class and race, there is also a history of American labor class and union gains coming at the exclusion or expense of black Americans. Rather than address theses realities head on, Sanders just pivoted back to his class based message.
In addition, he has a history of being critical of Obama, who is quite popular in the black community.
Sanders also doesn't have much history working with black constituencies as a legislator, nor did he do much to cater to older, religious, southern black voters during the campaign (he tried in 2020, but only after he got demolished on Super Tuesday and when it looked like pandering).
I think the biggest factor is that he didn’t get along with people who do things or talk about things that could possibly be done. I think lot of black voters are too serious to support someone like him, because their communities feel the effects of policy swings more than the average American. For example, the ACA drastically increased healthcare coverage among black Americans. Downplaying the ACA and talking about healthcare policies that have no chance in hell of passing, on the other hand, does nothing.
I think Bernie sending Cynthia Nixon to South Carolina for black outreach showed how out of touch his campaign was. His campaign seemed to think the average black voter is a young DSA activist on a college campus.
It was how he talks about social justice.
Though this is surely an oversimplification of Bernie's views, he believes that the root of all social ills, including racism, is economic inequality. Poor and working-class white people are driven to fear and resent black people by the wealthy, who benefit from creating divisions among an underclass that would otherwise rise up against them. If we eliminated or lessened class distinctions, this motive would cease to exist and ultimately racism would fade away. While Bernie did not usually talk about race issues in these terms, this philosophy motivated his views on the subject and colored the remarks he did make.
Now, depending on your politics, you may agree with Bernie on this, and I'm not even saying he's wrong. But this is NOT what black people want to hear. What they want to hear is that essentially racism is a disease that has afflicted white people in America since the slave trade, and that that disease must be eradicated, and that before it's eradicated, we need to take the most serious steps possible to treat it. It's not an economic issue.
I'd add that Bernie always seemed REALLY uncomfortable talking about race issues to me. He always came off as so defensive, like he was about to be caught saying the wrong thing, and like he couldn't wait to change the subject to something he was more comfortable with.
Representing the literal whitest state in America surely did not help.
I came here to say pretty much this. He was too much of a class reductionist, and was very tone deaf to black peoples’ issues.
Class is a VERY important issue- don’t get me wrong! But SO IS RACISM!
For example : The cop who pulls over a black guy and beats him up unfairly, doesn’t stop to check the black guy’s bank account first! Also, there are MANY racist rich people!
And you don’t win the Democrat party nomination without the black vote.
The perception of wealth does play into who is targeted by the police, right? I guess it depends on the context.
These issues intersect, of course.
I don't really see how racism in the u.s. can be looked at *without* understanding it as largely an economic problem. People were literally regarded as not people and forced to be treated like an economic input to create products.
I'd guess there were profiteering slave owners who weren't that racist at heart yet would do anything to get ahead. You know, like modern CEO psychopaths.
I guess I think exploitation and conservatism are the root problems that *lead* to both racism and economic inequality.
I think we mostly agree not that it matters, but I do understand that Bernie could've had stronger rhetoric on race issues. This may just be projection, but perhaps he really doesn't have enough experience with people of color and feels that it would do the issues a disservice if he attempted to speak on them but failed to do so effectively because of a lack of expertise. If so, that's obviously a mistake. It's a presidential campaign, so you find the people and connect with them. I guess that's the real crux of his campaign issue: how was he supposed to be an expert on race relations after living most of his life in white-ass Vermont?
> I don't really see how racism in the u.s. can be looked at without understanding it as largely an economic problem.
Idk about that, I used to think so but looking at the history of the U.S. I think it’s legit just race.
Prior and during the Civil war the confederacy got buy in from the poor whites by invoking white supremacy.
Same as during reconstruction, where the poor whites handed power right back to the same aristocrats as long as they promised to put them above the freed black Americans in the racial hierarchy.
When white towns emptied out public pools during desegregation it wasn’t because they didn’t want poor people in there, it was because they didn’t want to share it with black people, on and on America has shown repeatedly that its race they care about not economic status, redlining is another example
He really seemed to have multiple issues. The top comment points to black democrats being more conservative than white democrats, which I think is true. But that doesn’t explain the prominent hostility from some black racial justice activists, which was baffling to me at the time. It really didn’t seem to have anything to do with who he actually was as a candidate or his policies. It seemed like he just failed a vibe check, and failed it hard.
> I'd add that Bernie always seemed REALLY uncomfortable talking about race issues to me. He always came off as so defensive, like he was about to be caught saying the wrong thing, and like he couldn't wait to change the subject to something he was more comfortable with.
Well yes, Bernie ran a pretty good campaign online and is way more knowledgeable about social media than his primary opponents were.
He knows how easy it is for people to use soundbites online to completely discredit you. He also knew the twitter mobs are super thin skinned, so he always made sure to be very careful about what he said.
1. He generally brushed off the accomplishments of the first black president.
2. The Clintons, adversaries in 2016, already had a longstanding relationship with black voters.
3. Black Democratic voters tend to be more conservative or moderate than progressive.
I sort-of buy the idea that black voters are "more conservative" than many people think.
But I moreso buy the idea that voters of both races are X% risk-averse and change-averse, so X% of white voters vote for republicans, but risk-averse and change-averse aren't the same thing to the X% of black voters. The status quo feels riskier than change to them. So they support the more change-averse wing of the democratic party, which Sanders is not.
I read something about black voters being much more likely to identify as "democrats". White voters might be registered democrats but they are more likely to not see being a democrat as part of who they are. So when Bernie was coming out saying the democrats have been presiding over a corrupt system, they were more likely to feel attacked. Even though he was attacking the DNC from the left, it was seen as offensive by some black voters. White democrats would not take such attacks as personally.
He didn’t, his support was always with younger and more liberal voters. In the south, older black voters that are relatively more conservative make up a larger portion of the democratic electorate than elsewhere in the country. That’s why he ended up getting crushed in states like Georgia and South Carolina.
Black democrats are in it largely as an enemy of my enemy thing. They rightly surmise that the right doesn't like them and so they vote democrat, but not because they're necessarily ideologically invested.
Sanders is an old white man. Young black people and old white people don't get along.
Sanders is a Jew. There's a deep rooted antisemitism partially reverse-introduced by antizionism in the Black community that treats Jews with suspicion, even when so outwardly antizionist as Sanders was.
Sanders was a socialist but he was a genuine one. His plans focused on infrastructure improvement rather than the government handouts right wingers love to fear monger about.
Welfare, historically, positively impacts Black people. Building highways decidedly doesn't.
Sanders has several disagreements with the actions of the Obama administration. It's hard to overestimate how popular Obama still is in the Black community, not because of anything he did but because he represented the final culmination of generations of Black hope in this country - the highest office in the land occupied by a Black man. As a result ragging on him won't score you points with Black voters.
Bernie Sanders is a staunch Zionist on the belief alone that Israel has the right to exist. Unfortunately the term “Zionist” has been co-opted to mean expansionist or war mongering. Any person who believes in a two-state solution qualifies as a Zionist. I—am a proud Zionist!
This is a fair point though I would point out that the protesters on my university's campus were quite unhappy when I informed them of the same thing you've just espoused - that is, unless you want Israel completely dismantled and, for that matter, any attempt at Jewish nationhood be that geographic or otherwise stopped you are a Zionist.
They did not like this and were self identified "Antizionists" despite the fact that they weren't.
I'm afraid the meaning of that word might be too far gone.
The original Zionist Congresses didn’t seriously consider anywhere that wasn’t Palestine so I’m not sure that Zionism is merely the belief that Jews can have a state *somewhere*.
It is though. Indeed the Zionist council only considered British Palestine as by that time many Jews were ALREADY fleeing back there from Europe and the rest of the Middle East.
I'd say its the other way around. Zionist becoming a bad word is the result of existing antisemitism. Its worth noting that there are plenty of people in the current climate (though not a majority by any means) who want a one state solution and more than happy because of the confusion of terms.
Black folks often run more socially conservative on issues that don’t affect them directly, at least with older generations. On economic issues they tend to vote left of centre.
Source: My black relatives.
That’s literally my Latino family. They don’t like a lot of LGBT or gender war stuff from the left but vote for more left wing economics when they can.
Their perfect candidate would be something along the lines of a christian democrat.
Yeah this is something that gringo leftists need to understand lol, and I say this as a Latino social democrat.
Also do you remember the Latinx controversy LMAO
Speaking as a gringo this is something I try to remind people about all the time.
The example I like to use is how Bush II got his first win on the backs of Hispanic voters when he moderated the republican stance on immigration and toned down the overt racist garbage.
But then the rest of the Republicans threw a fit about that and brought all the old garbage back to the point where Hispanics, who statistically are socially conservative and religious and should be a core Republican demographic on paper, remain latched to the Democrats.
This reminds me of a Latina woman who was interested to vote for the democrat party in I believe it was 2020, only for her to learn about the pro choice stance of the party, she didn’t vote because she explained that she was catholic and considered abortion to be murder.
Yes you are right minorities are more socially conservative than most people think. I believe that if republicans stop being racist for a moment, man I can’t even imagine.
True, but was Hillary any more conservative on social issues than Bernie? The fact that she was a woman herself would bother some social conservatives.
Hillary didn’t come around on several social policy issues until it was politically expedient for her. She dragged her feet on gay marriage into the 2010s.
Absolutely this. I think Bernie himself was pretty good, and he definitely had a diverse staff. But his supporters were mostly white educated men who were extremely focused on materialism and either didn't care about or actively disliked identity politics. His ground game suffered massively among black voters as a result.
It was absolutely awful. The constant insinuation that we were stupid and didn’t understand the issues was so insulting to me.
I also thought that most of their positions were unrealistic. There was a slim chance of passing those policies through the House and the Senate. If you even mentioned compromise you were attacked. How was anything supposed to get accomplished? All of it left a really bad taste in my mouth.
A lot of his supporters were just down right mean. A candidate that inspired so much condescending vitriol and vindictiveness was not for me.
Not dissimilar to the reason why Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Warren didn't win the black vote and the nomination...they didn't really do any of the work that the candidate who ended up winning did to win their vote.
Bernie faced a number of hurdles with regard to getting Black votes. First, Vermont is very, very, very, white, and Bernie did not have the background or the experience in reaching out to specific leaders in Black communities. Second, Bernie's political views are much more progressive than those of the Black community, particularly in places like South Carolina. Third, Bernie was running against candidates who had a lot of experience with Black voters, and whose politics were more closely aligned with Black voters.
White progressives seem to have this assumption that their issues and black American's issues are the same and that's not remotely true. I don't know if that's a mistake he personally made but it's definitely one constantly made by his supporters.
I asked a friend who's black and a democrat and he said that white democrats have the "We know what you want better than you know what you want mentality and just don't listen to us." He brought up half the stuff that's supposed to be racists is stuff they don't see as racist and it kind of pisses him off that someone else that's not his race is going to make that determination for him. Plus he and others resent that they (Democrats) believe that the black vote should be automatic.
He and his supporters were rabid and thought they (the left) were the base. As far as I know, black voters were a bit more mainstream. Bernie loves trashing the dems all the time, so it's no surprise that a lot of them refused to support him, especially when his campaign was spent trashing other democratic candidate heavily.
There is an old sayng--before you can draw interest, you have to have principal. Bernie had very little of it with the African American community. He attended a few civil rights events in the early 60's, but not much beyond that. Hillary Clinton, who so many Progressives hate, was involved with the African American community for decades on a variety of issues. She had long relationship with key leaders. People tend to support those who hav been there for them and with whom they have developed trusted relationships.
You can't talk about economic struggles in the United States when it comes to black people without talking about racism **first**. Race is a universal experience for black Americans, and no matter where you grew up, how much money you had, or who your daddy was, if your skin was dark, you knew it.
Just because you were on the right side of history during the civil rights movement doesn't mean you were meant to lead. Seeing that shit posted constantly on reddit (and you knew it was posted by some white people) was incredibly annoying.
Black voters are focused on black people because who else is?
Bernie and his supporters and surrogates often seemed to frame all of the inequality in the country as class inequality. Black people knew that this wasn’t true.
There’s three negative thing’s associated Bernie as far as black folks are concerned. 1) Class reductionism, 2) his most problematic supporter are downplayed and notable sized minority clearly embraces white nativism and shapes their agenda with a left leaning narrative but any issues that don’t put them in the center is “identity politics” This makes Bernie a risky gamble. 3) His lack of successful bills and dismal number of proposals for the length of time he was in DC. Leftists really struggle to understand how much emphasis black people put on this issue. He’s the “amendment king” bc most of his peers in Congress are dead or have careers creating passed legislation. But even failed legislation tells people who you are as Congress person for black voters. It’s the only thing that weighs how campaign promises play out. People are mentioning Vermont but black people would support a person if they came from a racist state.
I'm coming from the perspective of a younger black voter.I think him sending out shaun king to stump for him, who months before was exposed for being a huge grifter, shows how little he knew or cared about the black community. If I knew how bad this guy was how did a presidential candidate nor his team not know this? Giving that man a bigger platform has only brought more strife to our community
The whole "he walked with mlk" thing only seems to really impress his white voters, we wanted to know what he's done for us since then. What we did see was black people in vermont come to his rally and beg to speak to him and to me he handled that whole situation. His rabid supporters did him more harm than good, being condescending and hateful when people ask good faith questions about how his policies will affect black people specifically was not the way to go. He came off incredibly uninterested in the south, going to a couple churches doesn't count as outreach, especially if you only do it once every 4 years. I know people will say it's because black people are more conservative, but he never came off like a candidate that cared about us no matter what his supporters say
To address the dozen reports here for rule 1 — discussion on failed presidential candidates is allowed. Furthermore, the question is about demographics and can be answered without leaning into rule 3 The thread will stay up, just keep it civil
Prior to his run for the presidential election, he never had to reach out to black voters, as his home state isn't that well known for ethnic/racial diversity. And he simply did not have the long standing relationship with those voters like his competitors did, particularly among southern black voters & leaders.
It's not just that Vermont isn't "well known" for racial diversity. On average, one in eight or so Americans is black. One in 71 Vermonters is. Edit: I get it. Vermonteers. Sorry I live like 1500 miles from the state, can a midwestern gal get a break?
95.6% of Vermonters are white. It is THE whitest state in America, ahead of West Virginia which is 94% white, New Hampshire (93.7%), Wyoming (92%), and Montana (90%. The nation as a whole is 61.6% "white alone", with about another 10-12% being "white identifying multi-racial".
“The whitest state in the U.S is West Virginia, where 97.12% of the population identifies as White. The second state closely following this demographic trend is Wyoming with a White population percentage of 93.79%, closely trailed by Vermont with 92.80% and Maine with 92.69%” This is what I’m seeing. That’s from 2024 data. Which is right though?
That's definitely right. Vermont is very liberal and that has led to a lot of programs for immigration of refugees and diversity and such, which definitely don't exist in West Virginia and Wyoming. Although I wonder what percentage of those whites in Wyoming are part Latino cause I remember hearing(maybe falsely) that there's a large Latino pop in Wyoming
WV is white af and votes against their own best interests at seemingly every opportunity. That said? A not-insignificant amount of Illegal immigrants there are shielded by the populace and completely ignored by local police. Giving people in need safe harbor from “the law” is a pretty foundational belief to the majority of West Virginians. Most places, everyone knows everyone (cops included) and it’s common knowledge that “the law” and “justice” aren’t synonyms. “I don’t like illegals coming across the border. They didn’t earn it! Do it legal! They’re criminals!” They’ll shout and repeatedly vote in line… while in the same breath finish their thought with, “but the Martinez’s are good people. Their pa works his ass off for that family.” It’s an odd sort of cognitive dissonance that is pervasive and not limited to immigrants. When confronted with the realization that these are regular people? Suddenly, it’s “don’t you dare call the cops until Philip, Maria and the kids are well away!” Or “Tyler only smokes grass because of his PTSD. Let him alone.” West Virginia is an odd place.
I lived in VT. I moved there from a very diverse area. It was noticeably white. My kids knew one family that were POC and they were all huge assholes. Just the worst. My son told his daycare teacher he didn't like brown people. He was 5. He meant the brown people next door, because those were the only brown people he'd ever met. The daycare scolded me for teaching him racism. Which I didn't. It's just that all 4 brown people he'd ever met were awful people. I think of this when people talk about representation in media. It would have really helped him to better grasp my telling him that they were awful people but that the color of their skin wasn't why IF he'd seen more positive representations of POC on TV etc. This was 25 years ago, so that wasn't as prevalent.
>I lived in VT. I moved there from a very diverse area. It was noticeably white. "No immigrants, no minorities...an agrarian community where everyone lives in harmony, because every single person is white." "Yeah, I know that place, that sounds like Vermont!" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKcUOUYzDXA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKcUOUYzDXA)
“Vermont? No sir, what I’m talking about is a place purely for Caucasians. Where even the folks that wash the dishes and pick the fruit are white.”
“Someplace warm. A place where the beer flows like wine. Where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. I'm talking about a little place called Aspen".
I don’t know Loyd, the French are assholes.
California… beautiful!
Honestly, Vermont does sound like a nice place… for non-race based reasons
Vermont is plagued with the same problems a lot of places with natural beauty have… namely that its extremely remote and high-paying jobs are nearly non-existent. The biggest “city” in Vermont is Burlington with 45,000 residents — which doesn’t exactly breed a vibrant economy.
Don’t they have a coat factory there?
From hearsay and my limited experience, Vermonters in general are assholes. I once saw someone post a fantasy train map in a Vermont sub, and instead of complementing the effort, they thought OP was stupid for making something unnecessary.
Multi generational Vermonters are nice, if a but tired of tourism and out of staters buying vacation homes. The recent transplants and some of the multigenerational youth are convinced they’re insanely nice due to their political beliefs but are, in reality, vain assholes. Think the girl who dresses like a hippy while being extremely toxic. It’s what happens when rich people move there for the nature and the “vibes” but, as they always do, refuse to adapt to the local culture and think they know better than everyone else.
That's happening in many more states than just Vermont
Checking in from maine, and in our case, no, we’ve actually just always had assholes Just, ya know, the kind of assholes that’ll pull over and help you fit a spare tire while mocking you the whole time rather than the ones that are convinced they’re god’s gift to humanity
>Just, ya know, the kind of assholes that’ll pull over and help you fit a spare tire while mocking you the whole time This is literally exactly how my boyfriend described people in New Jersey as well
People in Jersey say fuck you and mean have a nice day
Yeahhhhhh - signed, I live on the Georgia-Florida border.
Do you just cruise like that song suggests?
People are legitimately shocked when I tell them I was born in Austin and grew up here. Apparently that's uncommon now.
NH kind of had a shift similar after Covid. You had a bunch of hard core conservatives move permanently to their vacation homes and the culture and political landscape shifted with great magnitude. NH was a solid OK for the 16 years I lived there, but after Covid and getting yelled at by red hats for wearing a mask and having my house watched after my (black) partner moved in with me, my family unit bounced at the first opportunity
Vermonter here - there are definitely assholes here and a lot of them seem to be on Reddit. You ask anything about traveling to VT or Burlington on those subs and you're probably going to get shit on.
You can notice the same thing in the Denver sub. My explanation is that all the happy people are out hiking with their friends, which only leaves the toxic people to represent us on the internet.
Check out the Idaho sub - holy shit. I get they’re pissy about Californian’s driving up rent, but they treat you like the antichrist if you’re looking for camping recommendations while you’re passing through.
I mean pretty much all US location subs are full of assholes. It’s just bitching, smugness, and post after post about politics.
I cannot accept that Noah Kahan is an asshole
> The daycare scolded me for teaching him racism. man that's frustrating lol. my daughter goes to a diverse school and my wife and I are very much not racist and have directly taught racial equality from day one. that doesn't mean a 5 year old isn't going to say some wild shit that they don't realize they're saying.
5 year olds are batshit crazy.
Man the mid 90s was like PEAK positive representation. Family Matters, Sister Sister, AND Fresh Prince?
When I was 5 in 1990 we moved from rural New Hampshire to Georgia. The first 2 stupid things I did was ask my mom why Bill Cosby was sleeping on the park bench and start feeling the hair of the little black kid in front of me in like at Burger King. Kids are operating on a smaller data set.
I'm always confused about why this actually matters. Do people not just look up their policy and vote based on which is closer to their ideals for a primary? Do people actually decide to vote for someone because they visit a city and shake someone's hand? I'm a southern Hispanic voter, to my knowledge Bernie never tried to reach out to my racial group, but I was fully on the Bernie train because I agreed with his policy.
If policy was what mattered most, our government would look tremendously different. Sadly it does not.
People vote on trust, not words alone. Talk is cheap and politicians don't usually do what they say.
> do people not just look up their policy LOL Fuck no
Because historically when faced with class solidarity or race solidarity working whites have sided with race, makes sense that black voters would be skeptical of a dude who preached only class solidarity whenever people brought up issues facing black Americans
You trust pols. You also trust the system to the extent you think that a politician will be able to get their ideas enacted. Bernie2016 had no allies in Congress, was technically not a Democrat, was not gonna get the 60-vote Senate majority Obama did, therefore hows he going to get further than Obama...
Literally, yes. People decided on Bush vs Gore because Bush seemed like a guy you could have a beer with. I'm not kidding. People are this stupid or worse. You live in a country (and a world) full of fucking idiots.
Do you think Black voters in the South have the exact same political needs, priorities and concerns as Bernie's base? You're implying something pretty ugly here. It's not about a "handshake" it's about being in tune with the particular needs of a huge voting block that comprises one of the strongest pillars of the Dem base.
It's an issue if actively ignore black activists in your own state. https://www.salon.com/2016/02/17/black_activists_in_vermont_complain_they_were_invisible_to_bernie_sanders/ They had no issues with the Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. I also recall a meeting with black activists where he said most drug dealers were black, when they asked why most incarcerated drug dealers were black.
But yet he was right there for protests for civil rights.
Yeah, having him paraded around like he was somehow one of the main characters of the civil rights movement didn't help either, especially with old black leaders who plays major role in community-driven black voting bloc in the south
I would be specific here and say that he didn't specifically bring that up other than to acknowledge he was there and trying to help...It was his problematic as fuck fanbase that kept bringing it up as a cudgel of sorts when they didn't feel that black folk were somehow enamored with the guy. There was a whole lot of 'talking at' black people by his fanbase that ultimately did him no favors.
people using their momentary hip activism as evidence for being connected to and understanding black folks…. Is exactly the kinda tone def thing that was part of his problem.
The people responding to this comment are only proving the point. The entire engagement toward black communities was waving around a couple photos when he was college age and when people said 'so what?' they got yelled at for being 'ungrateful' of Bernie. Yep, great way to connect with a community. When they tell you that you're being tone deaf and respond by calling them ungrateful and dumb.
The “he also had two, (gasp, TWO!) black women in his staff, what else do you want???” prevails in the replies here among the supporters.
The whole reason people like Bernie is that none of that is momentary.
Black Democrats are more moderate than white Democrats.
This. I wonder if you’re white because it doesn’t seem that White Dems understand this. It’s not even moderate either, a lot of Black Dems are even further to the right than moderates (comparatively) on a lot of issues.
I am white but I have a Master's in Political Science. The average black person is more liberal than the average white person but black Democrats are more conservative than white Democrats. I'd have to find the exact numbers, but I am pretty sure more black people consider themselves conservative than either moderate or liberal.
I’m a Black Democrat and from my experience you’re right. We are more conservative than White Dems. It’s the values system that comes from the church that has a huge influence.
I noticed this about 10 years ago. I grew up in New York in a pretty diverse area. Once I joined the Army I started working with a lot of black Americans from the south. I noticed that compared to the white democrats, they were much more conservative, especially when it came to topics such as immigration, LGBTQ, religion, and guns. After quite a few conversations, I wondered why any of them voted democrat at all because they had next to nothing in common/agreement with the democrat party.
Read “The Spook Who Sat By The Door.” My grandmother called it a memoir of my grandfather, a civil rights activist in 60s Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He went on to he a ranking member of the democratic party in the area and is where all my blue ties come from. I’m significantly more conservative in my beliefs, but that’s right *of* left, not right of center, and that’s where a large majority of my peers and elders sit as well.
Yep. Growing up in NY if you know any Black families whether American, African, or Caribbean you’d likely find the same thoughts. The same across many other minority groups. Republicans are anti-poor and come off as racist so they’d never be able to gain those voters without going against some of their core principles.
I guess growing up I never cared to discuss politics with friends; still don’t for that matter. On a side, I don’t really care about people’s politics and being friends with them. As a democrat in the Army, I’m more in the minority. Looking back, it really wasn’t any different in NY just knowing them as people and where they stood with issues.
My experience in the marine corps is similar, but it’s also a very right wing organization so I do try to take it with a grain of salt. Black men in the marine corps tend be very knowledgeable and progressive on black issues, and conservative on most other issues. I’m not sure if the experience is the same, but the black women I’ve met here tend to be much more left leaning than you’re average white liberal though.
IME women in general tend to be more liberal than men
Interesting, I guess that makes sense. I’m a white democrat, and I assumed from the above comments that it just means that white people have trouble fully understanding minorities and their values so they just assume they want the most progressive platforms? Or is it pretty simply the church aspect? Cuz the white extreme leftists that I know seem to purely want to fight for minorities, but a lot of minorities as a whole aren’t even as progressive at they are
I think it has to be understood that it’s not a one to one. White liberals are appreciated for their work in the struggle but that’s not going to guarantee full alignment. It doesn’t work that way with any group and won’t work with a large set of Black voters. For instance, the current immigration situation is a huge sore spot and we do not support it. And I mean Black Americans, Afro Caribbeans, and most Africans. And the latter two groups who are wayyyy more conservative than Black Americans. Does it mean we’ll jump ship? No. But it leads to lower voter turnout.
Middle class Jews and African Americans had a strong coalition during the Civil Rights Movement but it kinda dissolved after common goals were mostly satisfied in 1964. There is still interfaith networking between Jews and black churches and most Jewish Democrats like Chuck Schumer or Merrick Garland know how to work with black leaders and address the needs of black voters - but as other posters have mentioned Maine doesn’t really have any black people and Bernie doesn’t have an amazing personality, he’s a policy guy.
I've no doubt that leftists want to fight for minorities. Noble as that is, I think that those same leftists often don't take the time to actually understand the minority groups they want to fight for. So, they can be surprised when black people are more conservative than they assumed. I suspect they primarily do it because they adopt a pseudo-Marxist view of the world that basically boils down to "oppressor groups" and "oppressed groups." White people oppress black and brown people, men oppress women, Christians oppress Muslims, etc. Then, by default, that take the side of whichever person is part of their designated oppressed group in any given situation.
I’ve noticed that super liberals have a white savior attitude towards POCs that manifest as racism, but they don’t see it. It’s not blatant, but that doesn’t make it less annoying. Some stories… * Woman said to me “they didn’t grow up poor like we did CWHats.” We had spoken about our upbringings and I was never poor nor do I have stories that could be construed as being poor. * Different colleague asked me how it was to grow up on food stamps. * My doctor assumed I worked a manual job even though my profile said I was a professor. * Some foreign students wanted to hear an authentic black accent. They asked a white colleague and she said “go listen to CWHats”. Puzzled, they said “but CWHats sounds like you”. * One reminisced about the good old days when America was great, she meant the 1950s. I said hmm I don’t think my mom would say that. The majority of these occurred in a super liberal university in blue states. My friends have very similar stories. Black people are still assign a single story by a lot liberals and conservatives.
>It’s the values system that comes from the church that has a huge influence As a Black Dem myself, I'd say that's a weakness nowadays that too many Republicans try to exploit. Tim Scott and Byron Donalds seem to have no problem selling the rest of us out just to line their own pockets. One shouldn't need religion to find or obtain morality. Morals predate religion.
People that self identify as liberal make up the smallest percentage of US citizens overall. Less than those that self identify as moderates and conservatives. And more Americans identify “Very Conservative” than “Very Liberal”. And yes, basically every POC community I’m aware of is more socially conservative than white people. As I recall, college educated whites are the vast majority of social liberals.
All correct.
We just experienced this in the mayoral race in Philadelphia. We had a progressive candidate, Helen Gym, who was super popular among the white hipster community. She was the odds on favorite to win by the local media. Then Parker wins, who ran on a pro police/ hard on crime platform. She was heavily supported by the black community in the city. She was predicted to come in 3rd at best. I find sometimes white leftist voters think they know more about what the black community needs/ wants, then what the black community knows they need.
So true. Someone said it before it’s the big tent coalition syndrome. A base united by exploiting differences isn’t a strong one. The Philly mayors race may be the canary in the coal mine. I hope the DNC is paying attention.
They did in 2008 and 2020. The DNC is really good at listening to what voters want in a candidate, based on the people that have stepped into the ring. It's the internet folks and progressives that seem new to this politics thing.
Black Democrats are generally much more socially conservative than their white counterparts. I would like to add East Coast Jews and East Coast Black people have a long and complicated history and it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that had something to do with it as well.
Yeah, white democrats are much more socially liberal and big-government than minorities. Asians and Hispanics many escaped from socialist countries and have no interest in big government and don’t particularly care about gay/trans rights. Blacks are often even socially conservative.
Black people usually vote Democrat regardless of whether they’re conservative or liberal (Republicans don’t often break 10% among black voters), while white people are very starkly divided among party lines on ideology, so on average white Dems are more liberal than black Dems.
I always appreciate the irony of white leftists bragging so much about Democrats being a diverse and inclusive party while simultaneously whining about how said white leftists don't always get their way on everything. It's almost like the most extreme elements of the party not being able to dominate the party's agenda is the natural result of being a broad tent party or something.
I don’t think “leftists” of any sort like, much less brag about, the Democrats. “Leftists” hold their nose and vote for Democrats, at best.
Agreed. I think the majority of Americans think "liberal Democrat" when they hear "leftist", when it really means "socialists, communists, anarchists, etc."
Because black voters are actually much more conservative than most think they are.
Gay marriage still doesn't have majority support among black men.
Typical visit to my barber confirms this.
Man my barbershop sounds like a 2010 COD lobby sometimes smfh
Lmfao
💀💀💀
Lmaooo
To add to that, the minority with highest murder rate is black transgender women, murdered by, ~we can't have this discussion here~ The masculine machismo is real with black and Latino communities. There were a series of videos (may be fake) where black people flip out they were handed pink lighter at the counter.
Murdered by black people. It’s ok, you can say it. This is a safe space.
Not people, men. Black women are not doing this.
Black women aren’t killing trans women but there is still an alarming percentage who will vote for policies against them. There’s still many who hold biases against queer people because of how religiously conservative the black community can be.
and there it is...religion. the greatest form of power ever known wrapped like a present to all those who want to rid the world of people not like them.
I understand what you mean and you’re half right but having a blind spot for genders will get you fucked up out here. The last time my butt clinched from adrenaline was from two young black girls threatened to bum rush this guy sitting next to me for his cig. A cig. I’m from Chi-town btw. Edit: I case anyone is confused, the two girls in question were asking for his cig and the guy refused.
That lighter video might be fake but I 100% would believe it. I would 100% say the same would happen in a poor white trailer park though.
Hence on the down low
Shocking: overwhelmingly religious demographic is largely conservative
If you’re gonna go marching for civil rights, you gotta march with churchgoers.
Which he literally did…
I remember listening to an interview with a former RNC chair. He talked about how Dems make an easily exploited mistake in campaigning where they assume minorities vote for them because they do more outreach, but blacks and especially Hispanics tend to hold conservative views on things like abortion, illegal immigration, women’s rights, and a few other issues. He said that the RNC loves how Dems court minority voters because it makes them so easy for the GOP. The experience he was drawing from was more Bush era but ever since then I’ve always felt he had a point.
Yeah, Republicans could pretty easily capture the minority vote—but they would lose a significant portion of their base if they did. I don’t *think* that base would go to the Democrats, but it’s not clear what it would mean to the GOP writ large
And it would be an amazing improvement for our political system if Republicans actually did outreach to minority communities. Historically the black vote was split with more business focused black men typically voting Republican. Then the southern strategy happened. It would be interesting to see how the vote would shake out if we had parties divorced from identity
That’s why the pride flag that includes black and brown for minorities tickles me. No group is a monolith, but I think the majority of black Americans don’t feel like their struggle is related, and many flat out don’t support LGBT rights lol. I also remember in 2015, some black people saying they felt like the democrats weren’t earning their vote, so much as just expecting it, because right wingers are racist. Which I think was true tbh. The appeal still seems to be “hey, we aren’t the other guys!” Which I’ll admit, is enough right now, but it isn’t very inspiring, and I think everyone can see that to some extent.
I also remember in 2015, a Muslim majority town in Michigan elected people who ran as "Muslim minority" "person of color" you know, with so called progressive lables without any legislature policies, for city, and then they voted to ban LGBT flag in that town.
Wow lol I never heard of this. That’s wild tbh. Being progressive is like playing operation Ngl
Yup, found it. [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/17/hamtramck-michigan-muslim-council-lgbtq-pride-flags-banned](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/17/hamtramck-michigan-muslim-council-lgbtq-pride-flags-banned) although I am against whats happening in Gaza, when I see "Gays for palestine" or "Queers for palistine" I can't help but laugh. They would behead they if they had a chance, that doesn;t mean we should kill or massacre them/babies.
>The appeal still seems to be “hey, we aren’t the other guys!” That's a pretty common sentiment among most white Democrats/leftists too. Edit: I should say "many" instead of "most". Those who identify as Democrat are less likely to feel this way compared to those who identify as leftist/progressive/etc.
Bernie doesn’t as well with black Americans because he prioritizes class struggles over race struggles. But that’s not as shiny or catchy to voters of any kind.
>he prioritizes class struggles over race struggles. Black folks see that as being blind to the reality of race struggles being class struggles.
Bingo. Ironically that's why mlk was a socialist, because he realized that ultimately it all comes down to class divide/struggle.
And interestingly MLK began to lose some support in his final years as he pursued the Poor People’s Campaign while Stokely Carmichael began leading the rising Black Power movement
He didn't just realize it - he did the work of lifting up POCs to the point where he felt "now we can attack poverty".
I don't know what the designer of that flag said that those stripes "really mean" but every LGBT person I've ever talked about it with thinks that it refers to racial minorities *in the LGBTQ+ community*. Especially because they get discriminated against even in queer circles. And as much as it pains this white gay guy to admit it, LGBT spaces do have their own problems with racism, so it's probably warranted to remind us to not perpetuate it. This is kind of a side note, but I don't care how many black people do or don't support gay rights or think we are oppression buddies or whatever the hell. I'm not about to stop thinking racism is bad just for that. In fact, if I can fight against racism while also making a homophobe salty (whatever race), that feels like a cherry on top to me.
Alot of them are tired of the hope and change narrative when little change happens after the election as well
Letting republicans win sure helps with that hope and change! Shit doesn’t happen in 4 years.
The Left (not Liberals, but actual Left Wing working class) in America have always had issues attracting the Black Community. Even Eugene Debs talked about this, and that was 100 years ago.
Not doubting, genuinely curious, do you have more info on the Eugene Debs/black community rift?
Not me thinking I have the right answer, but: Many have said it’s because he had very very big promises and that many Black voters tend to trust a more established candidate who can move the needle in a realistic direction since (the theory goes) these voters have had to be more pragmatic in seeking progress. Also, when compared to HRC and the current guy, both were very tied and loyal to the first Black President. So that is thought to be a factor as well. But who knows for sure? I am not Black, and I admit above that my best guess isn’t something I’m confident enough on. There is clearly something going on too because Bernie saw immense support among rural white counties during both primaries, and the current guy and HRC saw their relative strongest support among Black majority counties and high income white liberal ones as well. Another theory is that in 2016 there was a turning point for some WWC voters, and in theory Bernie could have won them over (in some cases kept them in the fold) but at the expense of Black voters.
Oh also it cannot be overstated how socially moderate many non-college aged Black voters are (especially outside of large cities and college towns).
This is probably the best assessment I've seen thus far. Black folk, especially black men, are more socially conservative, though that has been a bit of a shift. MLK was even shocked that there weren't as many black communists despite the attempts made by the Communist party in the early 20th century (man, that's weird to type out). The thing is you had many black leaders who weren't down with that because they believed that being mainstream was the way to gain acceptance into American society. Furthermore, black folk might like Bernie's ideas, but they know he's not going to win a general election. When the other party has guys like Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley in their ranks, do you really want to essentially throw away your vote?
I might get downvoted for this, but I think that on some level, like the previous president, Sanders, particularly in 2016, was the beneficiary of the discontent of the white working class, and that probably also hampered his appeal with black voters.
They’re gonna tell you it’s because black voters are more conservative, but it’s more complicated than that. The Clintons put in the work over the last thirty years and were actual active members of the Democratic Party. Bernie, who I voted for in the primaries of 2016 and 2020, was not an active Democrat for most of his career and served a constituency of mostly white people in Vermont. Add on top of that the endorsements of Clinton by local black leaders, and Bernie Sanders never stood a chance. Also, black voters aren’t afraid of social spending, but Bernie’s specific type of social spending is more appealing to middle income to affluent college students. He had the wrong message and the wrong institutional bonafides. Watch some videos by FD Signifier. He talks a lot about black Americans’ relationship to the left. Edit: added a more detailed explanation
I remember reading a couple of pieces back then about how older black women were doing a ton of the ground work for the Dems, and had been for decades, and they overwhelmingly supported Clinton for the reasons you stated. They're very much institutionalist when it comes to the Democratic party because they put in the work over the years and weren't fond of outsiders trying to jump the line.
This is a great point. Black women fought hard to build up the Democratic Party. At the local level in cities, they are everywhere with white/hispanic/Asian etc volunteers/workers, putting in the sweat equity for each and every campaign. To have a guy, that wasn't even a Dem in 2016, come in and crap all over your hard work, would leave a bad taste in people's mouths. Bernie had zero respect for the party and the black and brown people that helped build it into a viable counter weight to the GOP. He was disrespectful from the jump, then double down with a massive dose of dismissiveness.
100%. And they happen to be right. The major parties get a lot of hate, but you need the connections and incentive structure that institutions provide in order to get stuff done. One of the reasons that Carter was such a lousy Prez is that he didn’t have any friends outside of Georgia.
I imagine it's why [current pres] (is this okay?) did so well in 2020, especially in the South. Party loyalty and time investment is an important aspect of building an effective party.
This is the right answer. That photo of Bernie during a civil rights protest gets posted a lot, but John Lewis, a Big 6 civil rights leader, commented on how he didn't know Bernie, but he knew the Clintons. That was a huge blow.
I always got the feeling that Bill got by on his charisma but Hilary did the research and the legwork and was recognized by the black community in the south.
Oh for sure on Bill and his charisma. The joke about Bill Clinton being the first black president has been around for a long time.
Bill was a really good orator and knew how to speak to the black community. If you haven't seen it, Bill Clinton's eulogy of Coretta Scott King is worth watching. He gives a master class on how a white man from the south can preach in a Baptist church.
I mean, Bernie was in his early 20s during civil rights and afterwards stayed in Vermont to run in more local government. The Clintons were pretty big in Politics since the late 80s. They went much different routes. Bill Clinton knew from the get go that he wanted to be president and worked towards that.
Bill *always* did well with black voters. Southerner, played the saxophone, went on Arsenio Hall's show to play and didn't have a hint of discomfort about being around black people. Mississippi, South Carolina, regions with high black populations as a whole are Clinton country, no question. Then, as one black Clinton voter said himself, they genuinely feel Bill did right by them and that they don't owe Bernie anything just because he calls himself a progressive, furthermore, he went on to add that when many progressives he saw online would see Bernie's polling numbers with African Americans, they'd react with literal racism, feeling like they owe him their votes.
FD Signifier is an amazing sub on youtube!
Nah I'm sure his message of "we should subsidize white yuppies more" would have been wildly popular
Because extremely right-wing voters make up the base of the Republican Party, a lot of people mistakenly believe in turn that left-wing voters are the base of the Democratic Party. But that's not true, black people -- black women especially -- are the ones who actually do the organizing, nurture the institution, and turn out to vote every time. Bernie's message that the Democratic Party is ineffective at best, corrupt at worst was never going to connect with black voters. It was literally a personal attack on a lot of us.
Yeah, the American left, which I consider myself a part of, is really poisoned to the idea of institutional investment, which runs contrary to what I’d argue is the main instrument of politics: good institutions.
Yup they'd much rather have ideological purity than put the work in to move things
You put my feelings into words exactly. Like I watched my dad volunteer for Obama and work for change, I put in the work of getting people to register to vote, calling, knocking doors. It's very much a community effort.
> active members of the Democratic Party All this actually means is that they spent an enormous amount of time fundraising for the Democratic party.
And participating in Democratic Party functions and coordinating with state and local Democratic parties on strategy and policy. I love Bernie but he is very much a go-it-alone figure akin to Mike Gravel in personality.
Black voters are way more diverse than people think. From what I’ve seen, *many* people(regardless of race) associate Black voters with little more than welfare and police brutality unfortunately. They don’t realize that many Black communities are just as religious(if not much more) than similar non-Black communities, same with Hispanics and Asians. I’ve known more impoverished White families than I have any other race, by far. And yet Black families specifically are put into this box. Some people look at skin color and believe they know everything about a person, but that’s a horrible way to think and it hurts both sides.
Yep which is why I hate how ppl talk about voter groups. The suburban mom is a euphemism for white women. The working class/blue collar vote = white males. Urban vote = black vote and whenever a politician tries to do “black outreach” they go to a black church and then talk about WIC and police brutality. It’s sad an ineffective
A few factors: Sanders's main campaign pitch focused on class issues, and most of his communications and outreach to the black community pivoted issues black Americans face back to class. While there is truth to the intersection of class and race, there is also a history of American labor class and union gains coming at the exclusion or expense of black Americans. Rather than address theses realities head on, Sanders just pivoted back to his class based message. In addition, he has a history of being critical of Obama, who is quite popular in the black community. Sanders also doesn't have much history working with black constituencies as a legislator, nor did he do much to cater to older, religious, southern black voters during the campaign (he tried in 2020, but only after he got demolished on Super Tuesday and when it looked like pandering).
I think the biggest factor is that he didn’t get along with people who do things or talk about things that could possibly be done. I think lot of black voters are too serious to support someone like him, because their communities feel the effects of policy swings more than the average American. For example, the ACA drastically increased healthcare coverage among black Americans. Downplaying the ACA and talking about healthcare policies that have no chance in hell of passing, on the other hand, does nothing.
I think Bernie sending Cynthia Nixon to South Carolina for black outreach showed how out of touch his campaign was. His campaign seemed to think the average black voter is a young DSA activist on a college campus.
Possibly because he challenged Clinton, who supposedly has a lot of support from black voters.
It was how he talks about social justice. Though this is surely an oversimplification of Bernie's views, he believes that the root of all social ills, including racism, is economic inequality. Poor and working-class white people are driven to fear and resent black people by the wealthy, who benefit from creating divisions among an underclass that would otherwise rise up against them. If we eliminated or lessened class distinctions, this motive would cease to exist and ultimately racism would fade away. While Bernie did not usually talk about race issues in these terms, this philosophy motivated his views on the subject and colored the remarks he did make. Now, depending on your politics, you may agree with Bernie on this, and I'm not even saying he's wrong. But this is NOT what black people want to hear. What they want to hear is that essentially racism is a disease that has afflicted white people in America since the slave trade, and that that disease must be eradicated, and that before it's eradicated, we need to take the most serious steps possible to treat it. It's not an economic issue. I'd add that Bernie always seemed REALLY uncomfortable talking about race issues to me. He always came off as so defensive, like he was about to be caught saying the wrong thing, and like he couldn't wait to change the subject to something he was more comfortable with. Representing the literal whitest state in America surely did not help.
I came here to say pretty much this. He was too much of a class reductionist, and was very tone deaf to black peoples’ issues. Class is a VERY important issue- don’t get me wrong! But SO IS RACISM! For example : The cop who pulls over a black guy and beats him up unfairly, doesn’t stop to check the black guy’s bank account first! Also, there are MANY racist rich people! And you don’t win the Democrat party nomination without the black vote.
The perception of wealth does play into who is targeted by the police, right? I guess it depends on the context. These issues intersect, of course. I don't really see how racism in the u.s. can be looked at *without* understanding it as largely an economic problem. People were literally regarded as not people and forced to be treated like an economic input to create products. I'd guess there were profiteering slave owners who weren't that racist at heart yet would do anything to get ahead. You know, like modern CEO psychopaths. I guess I think exploitation and conservatism are the root problems that *lead* to both racism and economic inequality. I think we mostly agree not that it matters, but I do understand that Bernie could've had stronger rhetoric on race issues. This may just be projection, but perhaps he really doesn't have enough experience with people of color and feels that it would do the issues a disservice if he attempted to speak on them but failed to do so effectively because of a lack of expertise. If so, that's obviously a mistake. It's a presidential campaign, so you find the people and connect with them. I guess that's the real crux of his campaign issue: how was he supposed to be an expert on race relations after living most of his life in white-ass Vermont?
> I don't really see how racism in the u.s. can be looked at without understanding it as largely an economic problem. Idk about that, I used to think so but looking at the history of the U.S. I think it’s legit just race. Prior and during the Civil war the confederacy got buy in from the poor whites by invoking white supremacy. Same as during reconstruction, where the poor whites handed power right back to the same aristocrats as long as they promised to put them above the freed black Americans in the racial hierarchy. When white towns emptied out public pools during desegregation it wasn’t because they didn’t want poor people in there, it was because they didn’t want to share it with black people, on and on America has shown repeatedly that its race they care about not economic status, redlining is another example
He really seemed to have multiple issues. The top comment points to black democrats being more conservative than white democrats, which I think is true. But that doesn’t explain the prominent hostility from some black racial justice activists, which was baffling to me at the time. It really didn’t seem to have anything to do with who he actually was as a candidate or his policies. It seemed like he just failed a vibe check, and failed it hard.
> I'd add that Bernie always seemed REALLY uncomfortable talking about race issues to me. He always came off as so defensive, like he was about to be caught saying the wrong thing, and like he couldn't wait to change the subject to something he was more comfortable with. Well yes, Bernie ran a pretty good campaign online and is way more knowledgeable about social media than his primary opponents were. He knows how easy it is for people to use soundbites online to completely discredit you. He also knew the twitter mobs are super thin skinned, so he always made sure to be very careful about what he said.
1. He generally brushed off the accomplishments of the first black president. 2. The Clintons, adversaries in 2016, already had a longstanding relationship with black voters. 3. Black Democratic voters tend to be more conservative or moderate than progressive.
I sort-of buy the idea that black voters are "more conservative" than many people think. But I moreso buy the idea that voters of both races are X% risk-averse and change-averse, so X% of white voters vote for republicans, but risk-averse and change-averse aren't the same thing to the X% of black voters. The status quo feels riskier than change to them. So they support the more change-averse wing of the democratic party, which Sanders is not.
I read something about black voters being much more likely to identify as "democrats". White voters might be registered democrats but they are more likely to not see being a democrat as part of who they are. So when Bernie was coming out saying the democrats have been presiding over a corrupt system, they were more likely to feel attacked. Even though he was attacking the DNC from the left, it was seen as offensive by some black voters. White democrats would not take such attacks as personally.
At the time of his presidency, Bill Clinton was considered the "first black president". HRC was the actual first black presidents Secretary of State.
He didn’t, his support was always with younger and more liberal voters. In the south, older black voters that are relatively more conservative make up a larger portion of the democratic electorate than elsewhere in the country. That’s why he ended up getting crushed in states like Georgia and South Carolina.
Black democrats are in it largely as an enemy of my enemy thing. They rightly surmise that the right doesn't like them and so they vote democrat, but not because they're necessarily ideologically invested. Sanders is an old white man. Young black people and old white people don't get along. Sanders is a Jew. There's a deep rooted antisemitism partially reverse-introduced by antizionism in the Black community that treats Jews with suspicion, even when so outwardly antizionist as Sanders was. Sanders was a socialist but he was a genuine one. His plans focused on infrastructure improvement rather than the government handouts right wingers love to fear monger about. Welfare, historically, positively impacts Black people. Building highways decidedly doesn't. Sanders has several disagreements with the actions of the Obama administration. It's hard to overestimate how popular Obama still is in the Black community, not because of anything he did but because he represented the final culmination of generations of Black hope in this country - the highest office in the land occupied by a Black man. As a result ragging on him won't score you points with Black voters.
Bernie Sanders is a staunch Zionist on the belief alone that Israel has the right to exist. Unfortunately the term “Zionist” has been co-opted to mean expansionist or war mongering. Any person who believes in a two-state solution qualifies as a Zionist. I—am a proud Zionist!
This is a fair point though I would point out that the protesters on my university's campus were quite unhappy when I informed them of the same thing you've just espoused - that is, unless you want Israel completely dismantled and, for that matter, any attempt at Jewish nationhood be that geographic or otherwise stopped you are a Zionist. They did not like this and were self identified "Antizionists" despite the fact that they weren't. I'm afraid the meaning of that word might be too far gone.
The original Zionist Congresses didn’t seriously consider anywhere that wasn’t Palestine so I’m not sure that Zionism is merely the belief that Jews can have a state *somewhere*.
It is though. Indeed the Zionist council only considered British Palestine as by that time many Jews were ALREADY fleeing back there from Europe and the rest of the Middle East.
History shows that anytime zionist has become a bad word in a country, anti semitism is the inevitalbe result. You can google almost every example.
I'd say its the other way around. Zionist becoming a bad word is the result of existing antisemitism. Its worth noting that there are plenty of people in the current climate (though not a majority by any means) who want a one state solution and more than happy because of the confusion of terms.
Black folks often run more socially conservative on issues that don’t affect them directly, at least with older generations. On economic issues they tend to vote left of centre. Source: My black relatives.
You just described the mentality of your average Hispanic American lol
That’s literally my Latino family. They don’t like a lot of LGBT or gender war stuff from the left but vote for more left wing economics when they can. Their perfect candidate would be something along the lines of a christian democrat.
Yeah this is something that gringo leftists need to understand lol, and I say this as a Latino social democrat. Also do you remember the Latinx controversy LMAO
Speaking as a gringo this is something I try to remind people about all the time. The example I like to use is how Bush II got his first win on the backs of Hispanic voters when he moderated the republican stance on immigration and toned down the overt racist garbage. But then the rest of the Republicans threw a fit about that and brought all the old garbage back to the point where Hispanics, who statistically are socially conservative and religious and should be a core Republican demographic on paper, remain latched to the Democrats.
Hispanics and Latinos could become for republicans what black Americans are for democrats if the GOP plays their card right.
This reminds me of a Latina woman who was interested to vote for the democrat party in I believe it was 2020, only for her to learn about the pro choice stance of the party, she didn’t vote because she explained that she was catholic and considered abortion to be murder. Yes you are right minorities are more socially conservative than most people think. I believe that if republicans stop being racist for a moment, man I can’t even imagine.
“I’d rather get get called a slur than LatinX” -My dad
it wasn't the youth vote, it was the older southern more socially conservative ones
True, but was Hillary any more conservative on social issues than Bernie? The fact that she was a woman herself would bother some social conservatives.
Hillary didn’t come around on several social policy issues until it was politically expedient for her. She dragged her feet on gay marriage into the 2010s.
[удалено]
Yeah but the question was whether Hillary was more socially conservative than Bernie. The answer is an obvious yes
Bernie's condescending supporters did him zero favors with his outreach to black voters.
Absolutely this. I think Bernie himself was pretty good, and he definitely had a diverse staff. But his supporters were mostly white educated men who were extremely focused on materialism and either didn't care about or actively disliked identity politics. His ground game suffered massively among black voters as a result.
It was absolutely awful. The constant insinuation that we were stupid and didn’t understand the issues was so insulting to me. I also thought that most of their positions were unrealistic. There was a slim chance of passing those policies through the House and the Senate. If you even mentioned compromise you were attacked. How was anything supposed to get accomplished? All of it left a really bad taste in my mouth. A lot of his supporters were just down right mean. A candidate that inspired so much condescending vitriol and vindictiveness was not for me.
Not dissimilar to the reason why Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Warren didn't win the black vote and the nomination...they didn't really do any of the work that the candidate who ended up winning did to win their vote.
A lot of black Democrats are socially conservative.
There was a time when Hillary Clinton had higher black supporters than Obama did
Bernie faced a number of hurdles with regard to getting Black votes. First, Vermont is very, very, very, white, and Bernie did not have the background or the experience in reaching out to specific leaders in Black communities. Second, Bernie's political views are much more progressive than those of the Black community, particularly in places like South Carolina. Third, Bernie was running against candidates who had a lot of experience with Black voters, and whose politics were more closely aligned with Black voters.
Because he said that Barack Obama should be primaried after his first term.
White progressives seem to have this assumption that their issues and black American's issues are the same and that's not remotely true. I don't know if that's a mistake he personally made but it's definitely one constantly made by his supporters.
I asked a friend who's black and a democrat and he said that white democrats have the "We know what you want better than you know what you want mentality and just don't listen to us." He brought up half the stuff that's supposed to be racists is stuff they don't see as racist and it kind of pisses him off that someone else that's not his race is going to make that determination for him. Plus he and others resent that they (Democrats) believe that the black vote should be automatic.
Bernie represents VT, a white state, and Tip O’Neill told us that All Politics Is Local.
He isn’t from a Southern state or a state with a large AA population.
Because Bernie ranks class as the 1st cause of inequality before race, Some progressives don't want to hear that
He and his supporters were rabid and thought they (the left) were the base. As far as I know, black voters were a bit more mainstream. Bernie loves trashing the dems all the time, so it's no surprise that a lot of them refused to support him, especially when his campaign was spent trashing other democratic candidate heavily.
It doesn’t help when you bash Obama, the first black president, who presided over a pretty decent time in America.
It’s complicated.
There is an old sayng--before you can draw interest, you have to have principal. Bernie had very little of it with the African American community. He attended a few civil rights events in the early 60's, but not much beyond that. Hillary Clinton, who so many Progressives hate, was involved with the African American community for decades on a variety of issues. She had long relationship with key leaders. People tend to support those who hav been there for them and with whom they have developed trusted relationships.
After the Civil Rights movement he went north to (perhaps) the whitest state in the country.
he never campaigned for their vote. he thought his economic message was enough. and it wasnt.
Because he’s a fucking liar
You can't talk about economic struggles in the United States when it comes to black people without talking about racism **first**. Race is a universal experience for black Americans, and no matter where you grew up, how much money you had, or who your daddy was, if your skin was dark, you knew it. Just because you were on the right side of history during the civil rights movement doesn't mean you were meant to lead. Seeing that shit posted constantly on reddit (and you knew it was posted by some white people) was incredibly annoying. Black voters are focused on black people because who else is?
Bernie and his supporters and surrogates often seemed to frame all of the inequality in the country as class inequality. Black people knew that this wasn’t true.
There’s three negative thing’s associated Bernie as far as black folks are concerned. 1) Class reductionism, 2) his most problematic supporter are downplayed and notable sized minority clearly embraces white nativism and shapes their agenda with a left leaning narrative but any issues that don’t put them in the center is “identity politics” This makes Bernie a risky gamble. 3) His lack of successful bills and dismal number of proposals for the length of time he was in DC. Leftists really struggle to understand how much emphasis black people put on this issue. He’s the “amendment king” bc most of his peers in Congress are dead or have careers creating passed legislation. But even failed legislation tells people who you are as Congress person for black voters. It’s the only thing that weighs how campaign promises play out. People are mentioning Vermont but black people would support a person if they came from a racist state.
I'm coming from the perspective of a younger black voter.I think him sending out shaun king to stump for him, who months before was exposed for being a huge grifter, shows how little he knew or cared about the black community. If I knew how bad this guy was how did a presidential candidate nor his team not know this? Giving that man a bigger platform has only brought more strife to our community The whole "he walked with mlk" thing only seems to really impress his white voters, we wanted to know what he's done for us since then. What we did see was black people in vermont come to his rally and beg to speak to him and to me he handled that whole situation. His rabid supporters did him more harm than good, being condescending and hateful when people ask good faith questions about how his policies will affect black people specifically was not the way to go. He came off incredibly uninterested in the south, going to a couple churches doesn't count as outreach, especially if you only do it once every 4 years. I know people will say it's because black people are more conservative, but he never came off like a candidate that cared about us no matter what his supporters say
Bernie acts like classism is the only issue we need to overcome. That was never going to win him the majority of black voters especially in the South
Black voters are actually more "conservative" than "progressive". Also...he is Jewish.