Voters: "We're really excited about Sanders, Trump, and Carson!"
Media: "That's cute. Here's some speculation about Biden and Bloomberg."
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) September 27, 2015
And this won’t help the Media Village Idiots get focused, but kudos to my senior Senator. Wesley Lowery, at the Washington Post, “Elizabeth Warren just gave the speech that Black Lives Matter activists have been waiting for“:
In a Sunday speech on racial inequality, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called for broad policing reform — including de-escalation training and body cameras for all police officers — and likened the current Black Lives Matter movement to the civil rights movement that won black Americans the right to vote in the 1960s.
“None of us can ignore what is happening in this country. Not when our black friends, family, neighbors literally fear dying in the streets.” Warren said. “This is the reality all of us must confront, as uncomfortable and ugly as that reality may be. It comes to us to once again affirm that black lives matter, that black citizens matter, that black families matter.”…
“Economic justice is not — and has never been — sufficient to ensure racial justice. Owning a home won’t stop someone from burning a cross on the front lawn. Admission to a school won’t prevent a beating on the sidewalk outside,” Warren declared. “The tools of oppression were woven together, and the civil rights struggle was fought against that oppression wherever it was found — against violence, against the denial of voting rights and against economic injustice.”
Warren’s address, delivered at the Edward Kennedy Institute in Boston, was perhaps the most full-throated endorsement to date by a federal lawmaker for the ongoing protest movement, and it drew immediate praise from some of the most visible activists…
benw
I dislike Weigel, but that’s pretty funny. Lizzy Warren is killing it, as usual.
Arclite
DAYUM. Warren hits it out of the park.
Such a shame she doesn’t want to be prez. Still glad she’s in government doing things no one else has the balls to do.
Steeplejack
Oops! I’m here for the late-night SMBD thread. I think I got the nights confused. I’ll just see myself out.
Sorry about the weals from the whip. I wanted to make a dramatic entrance and got a little carried away. One of you totally looked like a sub.
Time Travelin'
I enjoy Elizabeth Warren.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Make a note, my safe word is “Ow!”
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: Odd. Local PBS showed “Scandal in Belgravia” at noon today. It was far better than the football offerings.
ruemara
And with that, she wins my vote. Someone like that I’d be volunteering for during the primary. They get it. Alas & alack, she is not running.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Noted.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
A fine figure of a woman.
Yatsuno
@efgoldman:
And the reason why he keeps sinking himself with minority voters is that he keeps going back to his old playbook. When he does mention racial justice these days it’s more an afterthought than anything.
Prediction: He wins Iowa and New Hampshire. After that it’s nothing but Hillz.
@efgoldman: To be fair, if she were going to do it she needs to pull the trigger now. She’s in her late 60s and regardless of how healthy she is the stress of the campaign will age her. It sucks but that’s where we are.
Omnes Omnibus
@ruemara: Metric shit tons of wonderful people don’t run for president. We need good people everywhere in government. Not just at the Presidential level.
Yatsuno
@Omnes Omnibus: Yup. In fact it’s time to start focusing on taking back some state legislatures and governorships. Democrats do okay on the national level but neglecting state and local elections is criminal. That needs fixing. No more conceding races regardless of how hopeless it seems because, well, it just might not be.
Having said that, Washington’s jungle primary kept a really good Democrat from running for the open seat when Doc Hastings left. He just might have awakened the very dormant Hispanic vote where I live.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: Ummmm…. Stuff….
Frank Bolton
@Yatsuno: Sanders can still win even if he tanks with blacks. He’d just have to get 60% of whites and 2/3rds of Latinos and Asians. Which is what Clinton got and almost won with in 2008.
While I feel that Clinton’s current strength with blacks is largely an unearned gift that he might not (probably will not) be able to wrest from her, his fumbles won’t necessarily hurt his numbers with non-black racial minorities as long as he presents himself as a superior alternative to Clinton on immigration, education, and government spending.
One of the uglier secrets about this country: if someone cares about mass incarceration or police brutality in the United States at all, chances are that they’re black or a progressive. If someone cares about immigration and the ugly post-Trump rhetoric of it all, chances are they’re Latino, Asian, or a progressive. Racial underclass solidarity in this country, once you shoo out the leftists, is by-and-large a coincidence or a temporary confluence of tribal self-interest. As the Irish and Italians can tell you.
benw
@efgoldman: Look, I don’t want to start yet another Bernie fight thread, but he never said that. The “Bernie says that making the economy more fair will fix racism” meme probably won’t ever die, but it is not true. Along with the “Bernie can’t instinctively understand racial issues because VT is 95% white” meme, it’s here to stay. Here’s the campaign webpage that makes it clear that physical, legal, and political oppression of minorities are just as bad as economic oppression. And here’s an article (yes, it’s Slate) on the relationship between Bernie’s campaign and BLM.
So yeah, I think Sanders is decent guy who wants a lot of what progressives want, and does NOT think that economic justice is the only thing that matters.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, and I don’t think Warren’s “style,” for lack of a better word, is suited for the presidency. But it’s perfect for the legislative branch.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m thinking of dueling Irene Adlers, her and Natalie Dormer. So hard to choose.
Omnes Omnibus
@Frank Bolton:
I am going to start laughing until I weep now.
@Steeplejack: Oh my. I mean….
gwangung
@benw:
But he has such poor message discipline that this is not what gets out through his spokesman and supporters. (And his backtracking on his apology to black activists didn’t help).
Frank Bolton
@Omnes Omnibus: What’s so funny about that? That’s what Clinton got in 2008 and she almost won — hell, raw demographic change, esp. in the Democratic Party, would made her (barely) the victor had she faced 2016’s electorate instead of 2008’s.
Omnes Omnibus
@Frank Bolton: Show me a scenario where a D. wins 60% of the white vote.
Frank Bolton
@Omnes Omnibus: I meant in the 2016 primary. Clinton won 60% of the white vote in the 2008 primary and 2/3rds (well, between 3/5ths and 2/3rds) of the Latino and Asian vote while not getting even 10% of the black vote.
If that’s the path 2016 Sanders treads or is forced to tread, he can win. It’ll be a long and grinding victory, but it’ll get him victory.
gwangung
@Omnes Omnibus: While also ignoring or not carrying the most loyal core of Democratic voters.
(Which then leads to the next question…why in God’s name would you want to do THAT????)
benw
@Frank Bolton:
Will you PLEASE stop talking about sex!? (sorry couldn’t help it)
Frank Bolton
@gwangung: Primary demographics don’t work like general elections, especially with how racially polarized the two parties are. If Clinton had squeaked out a win in the 2008 primary she’d be getting 90%+ of blacks in the general. Probably not Obama’s 65% turnout, but I’d expect her to do at least as well as Gore or Bill Clinton or Kerry. Similarly, despite Obama getting only a 1/3rd of Latinos and Asians in the primary he ended getting 60-65% of their vote in 2008’s general election and 73-75% of their vote in 2012’s.
Sanders shouldn’t want to do that, for the same reason why any candidate would rather have 80% of voters than 55%. However, it’s not like it’s the end of the world for Sanders if he completely tanks with the black vote and never recovers.
Which is why people shouldn’t be writing their death warrants for his campaign if he completely flubs South Carolina. They should only do it if he loses Nevada as well.
Mike J
i.imgur.com/BTqTHhj.gif
Omnes Omnibus
@gwangung: Exactly. The 40% of the white vote is a particular group of people. It’s me and my family and people like us.
Steeplejack
@Mike J:
Needs a trigger warning. Gave me a petit mal seizure.
Frank Bolton
@Omnes Omnibus: The 2008 white vote split along gender, education, and especially class. Obama did relatively poorly with working class whites in the 2008 primary. Not as poorly as he did with working class Latinos or Asians, but still pretty poorly.
If Clinton runs a playbook of social liberalism + economic centrism against Sanders’ social liberalism + economic liberalism, I’d expect her to, all other things being equal, get 40% of the 2016 Democratic primary white vote against Sanders.
Jordan Rules
Good on Senator Warren!
NotMax
So chilly and damp that am making a pan of baked apples, with a jury rigged recipe using what have on hand rather than some of what I would usually need..
ruemara
@Omnes Omnibus: Let me know when that’s what I said.
Amir Khalid
@Frank Bolton:
I guess you get to profess solidarity with fellow members of the underclass only for as long as you too are in the underclass. If you’re from an ex-underclass group and you still claim solidarity with its members, then I suppose you’re an excluded progressive.
@benw:
Bernie’s proposed solution for racism is to fight economic inequality. He says this despite knowing that racism exists separately from economic injustice, and is only partly related to it. Why doesn’t he also propose a strategy for fighting racism itself?
Frank Bolton
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t know what to tell you. Most human beings are selfish, tribal, and mean-spirited. In absence of an organizing political philosophy which tells them to behave otherwise (i.e. they’re a conservative, libertarian, American centrist, fascist, etc.) I’d expect most human beings to pull up the ladder for people not in their tribe. Even (especially even) if it requires both in-group and out-group members to continue to work together in order to climb the next step.
The leftist fantasy of a noble, martyred, enlightened underclass — no matter how you slice up or rearrange demographic — that after having tasted the lash of oppression vows to never again inflict it upon others is just that: a leftist fantasy. I fully expect American non-Hispanic whites to abandon common cause with leftists and other racial minorities around 2036. Much like I expect American gays to more-or-less abandon leftist causes and melt back into their natural demographics by around 2024, unless the GOP does something stupid like continuing to antagonize them.
amk
@Frank Bolton:
so, per your math, blacks, who are at 13% of the population, put the kenyan over all that big majorities of non-blacks?
Amir Khalid
@Yatsuno:
People should be asking, is Bernie listening? Just as they should be asking the same question about Hillary or Jeb or Donald or Carly or anyone else out there. Because that listening to people’s concerns thing is no small matter when you’re running for president and putting together a policy agenda.
Frank Bolton
@amk: Blacks are not 13% of the population in Democratic primaries. They’re much higher. What’s more, they’re more evenly distributed among Democratic states. A lot of the Midwest and Northeast states have a 10-15% black population with almost no Latino or Asian population while also being a majority, if not supermajority, of Southern democratic primary voters.
Aside from being much larger proportionately, they also have much better turnout. 2012 black turnout (at least in the general election) was almost 20% higher than Asians and Latinos.
It’s definitely possible to win the Democratic primaries on the backs of blacks. But you can’t really do much worse than Obama did with non-blacks and expect to win. If by March 15th Sanders is only getting 15 percent of the black vote, 50 percent of the white vote, yet ‘only’ getting 3/5ths to 2/3rds of Asians/Latinos then Sanders may as well go home because it’s impossible for him to win unless Clinton has a heart attack or scandal.
amk
@Frank Bolton:
mittbot got more than 50% of white voters (men & women) and still lost. So sanders pandering to only white voters helps him how? Especially, given that the rw base (which is almost wholly white) is going to turn out in big numbers whoever is the clown they choose because of the kenyan.
Frank Bolton
@amk: I’m talking about the primary. And getting a majority, even a supermajority, of white voters won’t help him there unless he picks up Latinos + Asians or blacks. I am saying, however, that Sanders can tank with blacks and still win if he does strongly enough with other racial minorities. Which is, again, the path that 2008 Clinton took and almost won with.
As far as beyond the primary goes, let me ask you this: why did Obama do so poorly with whites, Asians, and Latinos in the 2008 primary yet perform slightly better with whites (4-5% better) in the general election and 30% better with Asians and Latinos in the general election?
Amir Khalid
@Frank Bolton:
If Bernie tanks with black Democrats, I’ll have to conclude he’s failing to reach out to an important bloc of voters, or at least failing to get through to them. And that raises questions about his viability.
Major Major Major Major
Husband took this eclipse pic with an iPhone held up to a spotting scope. Took a few hundred tries but he got it! imgur.com/qIi9BKx
Tommy
@Amir Khalid: I tend to be with Bernie here. I am about 28 miles from Ferguson, MO so I know things have changed. But Bernie isn’t going to change and his desire for those that have less having more seems to me to be a message that is kind of enough.
Amir Khalid
@Tommy:
This is supposed to be a good thing in a president?
Tommy
@Amir Khalid: I am not sure to be honest.
Steeplejack
@Major Major Major Major:
Cool!
Tommy
@Steeplejack: Yeah give the husband the award for trying, trying, and trying again. If at first you don’t succeed you keep trying and then this, a great pic.
Amir Khalid
@Tommy:
No, it is not enough. Racism is more than economic inequality. When you’re on the business end of it, it’s about others using their superior social, political and economic leverage to keep you at a disadvantage. Racism in America will not end when Americans of colour are as affluent as white Americans. There are such people of colour, and they still suffer racism on a daily basis.
Bernie’s attitude condescends to those who live with that reality.
Tommy
@Amir Khalid: Well whatever. I tend to fall into the Bernie camp on this and feel no matter what I do and say I can’t win. I hate racism. I can differ to many on this topic but I dislike, hate actually, when being told how I’d deal with it isn’t correct. That is IMHO what we are seeing with Bernie and Black Lives Matter and I hate it.
Applejinx
@Amir Khalid: Yeah. There are many things to do to keep this country out of the ditch and Bernie is loud and clear about some of them. He can’t be himself, Elizabeth Warren and Martin Luther King all at the same time, and if he thinks economics come first he’s not going to lie to you.
‘not lying to you’ is important. That’s what worries some of us about Hillary: we kind of figure she has to be manipulated into spinning the right way, otherwise it’ll be ‘best republican ever’ all over again and this is not the time for that. In particular, doubling down on neoliberal economics or taking an austerity tack would be fatal to this country at a time where half the world is in very serious trouble.
Bernie’s one big issue as a socialist is well timed, and while I agree with Warren that economics alone will not get you racial justice, I would point out that without the economics, justice alone will get you an appalling backlash and all gains will be lost in a hellmouth of desperate poor racist whites with shitloads of guns and anger taking it out on those ‘entitled uppity blacks’. I would be very frightened of trying to push justice first. It’s like the de-escalation thing mentioned: you have to take some of the economic heat off people so they can stop panicking and THEN teach them how wrong they’re being. That’s just my opinion, but there it is.
If Bernie gets spun by Hillbots (seizing any possible angle like the good but ungrounded politicians they are) as hostile to black interests that would be tragic and unjust. He’s looking to produce conditions under which the racial justice thing can really gain purchase, and he’s openly targeting enemies that are not ‘welfare blacks’ for people to focus on. Without attention to economic issues in the large scale, there’s people who will continue to be manipulated into thinking that opportunity is just about cutting taxes on rich and poor and then stamping out welfare blacks.
amk
@Frank Bolton:
Lemme see.
Hillary with majority whites and hispanics sans black votes lost. (“close to winning” is still not a win)
mittbot (and mccain) with majority whites sans black (and hispanics) lost.
Obama lost only older white males to hillary & mccain and older whites males & females to mittbot and yet cleaned their clocks in all other demographics and came out a clean winner all 3 times.
Mebbe sanders (and hillary) may learn from him.
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
As you said, economic equality alone won’t solve discrimination. There are plenty of examples of rich majorities denying rich minorities membership in country clubs, apartment co-ops, corporate boards and all sorts of organizations. It’s not just about money.
Jenny
@Applejinx: Bernie sure attracts a motley crew who like whitesplaining & patronizing the needs & concerns of blacks to blacks.
Luckily for Bernie he’s not dumb enough to state what you just posted.
Imagine telling any other group (gays, women, latinos, youth, civil libertarians, labor, environmentalists) their issues will have to wait until the white economic anxiety is pacified. As if they don’t already have enough privilege.
Amir Khalid
@Applejinx:
I’m not arguing that Bernie shouldn’t address economics as a factor in racism. Like Warren said, it’s not the only dimension to racism, and much (perhaps even most) of the time, it’s not the most important one either. It wasn’t any economic issue that made that cop shoot Michael Brown for no reason. Or that makes banks discriminate against people of colour who apply for housing loans.
When people who have been subjected to centuries of injustice want redress, can one really reply, “No, economic equality first!”? Should one argue that the delicate sensitivities of the powerful and unjust (or of those who identify with them) justify delaying such redress? Would such an answer make sense to the victims of the injustice?
My own take on Hilary is that she and Bernie are more or less in the same place policy-wise. There’s a reason they don’t attack each other there: there’s just not much to attack.
Now then, as to Hillary’s sincerity c.f. Bernie’s: How did you make that comparison? I myself believe that there are no saints in politics, not even Bernie; that you should take everything they say with at least a grain of salt.
“My candidate is more sincere than yours” spats between supporters are a distraction. If the agendas are good enough in themselves, and I reckon you can say this of both Hillary and Bernie, what really matters is, who is more likely to succeed in executing their agenda? My own hunch is that it’s Hillary.
amk
@Jenny:
Well said. Considering their ‘economic anxiety’ was created by the same folks who they keep voting for blindly in every election cycle and for every elected office.
Applejinx
@Jenny: Yeah, I know, it sounds terrible. I’m glad he’s not saying it. I’ll still say it: we can’t win by making the election about black lives mattering. Trump will win it, because too many people are Fox-programmed, monstrous, racist assholes.
DECADES of propaganda that has to be unwound before we can make progress. There’s a part of me that wants to put that front and center too.
But Fox and the Republicans executed the Southern Strategy for money. Power translates into money. The primary vector for this is making everybody poor but telling poor whites that lazy blacks are comparatively RICH. People are quite literally brainwashed into believing this stuff and you cannot talk redress without addressing the massive, carefully propagandized and heavily armed occupying army prepared to block any such redress because they ‘honestly’ think all black people are wealthy thieves getting government in their Medicare!
It’s like you’re saying ‘there’s injustice, therefore there should not be this injustice’. In logical terms I totally agree. In practical terms I’m asking, how is this enforced? What mechanisms prop this up so that black lives literally don’t matter and don’t even count as human in this country?
It’s not an accident. It was MADE to be this way on purpose by decades of concerted effort, calculated propaganda, and the purpose is not abstract. It wins power for rightwingers, and it makes money when you rabblerouse and do the ‘Fox News’ thing and show ‘monsters’. Every Willie Horton attack ad serves several purposes, and money’s at the bottom of a lot of it.
It produces a dangerous situation and a hell of a lot of difficulty unwinding it. I don’t believe for a moment that racial justice will go to sleep: too late for that now. But I’m a white Vermonter and if I get all engaged with it I’m co-opting, and frankly that movement does not need my help or permission or anything like that, nor does it need Bernie as a white knight. Let him focus on the part that both he and I think will take some of the heat off ALL the American electorate, and the less desperate people are in general, the more willing they’ll be to step away from the way they’ve been terrorized and propagandized.
I’m scared as hell that the popularity of Trump and open racist calls for persecution means, it’s electorally dangerous even to sympathize with #BLM. If so, that is disgraceful and a shame America will never live down. But THAT is the electorate we have to make vote for whichever Democrat is nominated. If it is a nation of racists both subtle and gross, they’re the ones who have to ELECT the person who’ll preside over them getting a damn clue.
In that dark vision I like the fact that Bernie can distract with a populist nonracial economic message that’s super hard to argue against (and offers a ‘villain’ that’s NOT BLACK PEOPLE, a big damn improvement)
Maybe I’m just too pragmatic. Someone check to see if I turned Kissinger while I slept.
AnonPhenom
Serious question.
It’s mid-November and the Republicans have settled on, I dunno, Speaker Steve Scalise. The choice prompts several establishment types (Peter King) to head towards the door. Some announce as Independents but some come knocking on the Dem door as Blue Dogs.
Your reaction is….
amk
@Applejinx:
If you believe that the racist rednecks are gonna vote for overwhelmingly sanders just because of his populist economic grandstanding, I got a bridge to sell you.
Applejinx
@amk: That’s wishlist stuff, but it’s hard to deny a lot of them are all riled up and you do find some of them going ‘it’s Trump or Sanders’. The concept there has nothing to do with racial justice and everything to do with ‘not a Washington insider/dynasty member’.
Elizabeth Warren would be awesome, but she’s not available, partly because she’s already in a position of power she’s not going to give up to become largely a figurehead.
satby
@Tommy: Consider (or “ponder”) that it’s not about you and what you think is right, but about the people who actually face and live with that discrimination and fear that a trip for groceries could be the last trip of your life.
The quotes from Warren @ top and Amir in answer to you are on point: economic fairness does nothing for the black person shot dead by a trigger happy cop or fearful gun nut because they were shopping at Wal-Mart or knocking on the wrong door after a car accident.
Applejinx
@satby: Then the question becomes, what are you going to do about it? Great example. What are you going to do about the racist gun nut, criminalize being a racist gun nut? They’re already stockpiling ammo for a race war, and expect to be criminalized.
I don’t think you can make justice arguments to an armed occupying aggressor prepping for a race war.
It’s a problem. I’m looking at the problem as it is and have a hard time seeing justice anywhere. Justice doesn’t come when you call. It’s manufactured from many things, among them economics.
amk
@satby:
And sanders meets this criteria how? The wingnutz have their own “outsider” crazies now in the form of trump, carson, carly etc. And even if these nutters flame out, the wingnutz will line up behind whatever ‘rino’ that comes through the process despite their whining. That’s their raison d’être.
Face it, sanders is dudebros’ dudebro. That’s why he will flame out.
amk
@amk:
oops, the above was for applejinx, not satby.
Applejinx
@amk: I don’t agree. And what do dudebros have to do with anything, ever? :D
Cervantes
@benw:
Good luck.
debbie
If only there could be a debate between Fiorina and Warren!
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
“Racism” and “things that will end” may be entirely separate categories.
Not even sure what this means.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
What made him think he could get away with it, I wonder.
satby
@Applejinx: Well, one of the things we don’t do is give a major political party a pass on their coded calls to racists or their policies that are actually racist. Even wingers go apeshit over being called “racist” now, because it’s been mainstreamed as a bad thing to be called. We need to keep pushing to make it a bad thing to BE, and though there has been progress, there’s been a lot of regression too.
debbie
@Cervantes:
As I recall, wasn’t Ferguson one of the towns that were found to get a significant portion of their funding from fines imposed for “quality of life” violations? And that most of those violations were assessed to African Americans?
Applejinx
@satby: No argument from me there. My concern is that the wingnuts are increasingly liable to adopt it as a sort of badge of honor. That’s regression for you. I’m not sure if open warfare has to get worse (I figure with open season on black people, open warfare IS HAPPENING and it’s just white people refusing to see it)
And I still want Bernie Sanders to direct people’s anger at plutocrats and the rich, because some of that anger would otherwise be directed at black people, unjustly. So I’m still down with Bernie’s choice of issues.
How’s the spokeswoman who was opening speeches for him with #BLM messaging, doing? She still there? She’s more appropriate to be sounding those calls. Bernie’s a socialist, he needs to stick to economic messages and be prepared to ACT in support of #BLM should he win.
Applejinx
@debbie: That’s all over the country. Again, with the forces of wealth, capitalism and privatization making conditions that are insanely bad for lower socioeconomic classes. I don’t think you can get out of such punishments by showing a white hide, though statistically it’ll affect black people far worse.
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: Yeah, good luck. The mainstream media isn’t the only group that grabs an early narrative that fits their preconceived notions and clings to it no matter what changes on the ground or how many facts are presented to the contrary.
Frank Bolton
@Amir Khalid: The primary electorate is not the same as the general electorate. Should I have concluded that Obama’s poor performance in the 2008 primary with Latinos and Asians meant that he would not be able to reach out to a key voting bloc?
If Clinton or Biden were offering substantially different policies from Bernie then I could see this. But… the centrist/establishment wing of the Democratic Party are not even offering quarter-loaf measures. I don’t think that their complete silence on both social and economic justice is preferable to Bernie’s rather clumsy pushing of economic justice only. For a bloc quick to point out that the economic leftists aren’t listening, they aren’t exactly doing anything other than bobbing their head and smiling.
‘
@Jenny:
Unfortunately, it’s true. The American Civil Rights movement would have been dead in the cradle had it not been for two decades of white prosperity.
Even 20 or so years from now, it’ll just shift from ‘soothing the economic neuroses of whites’ to ‘soothing the economic neuroses of whites and Latinos’. See my above comments on the selfishness of humans.
@amk:
This is a silly attitude to have. If a strategy fails, let’s just completely dismiss it. Let’s not analyze why it failed or what needs to be tweaked to make it work in the future, let’s just dismiss it out of hand.
If the 2008 contest had been run in 2016 and Obama and Hillary got the same margins, Hillary would have (barely) won due to brute shifts in demographics. This is why I think that re-analyzing Hillary’s strategy is worthy of more discussion. It recontextualizes what needs to be done.
Frank Bolton
@Amir Khalid:
Someone who repeatedly tries to squirm out of taking a stand on controversial positions unless it’s a moot point or there’s a clear ‘winner’ can hardly be described as sincere. And it’s troubling, because there are a lot of gut-churning issues that the next Democratic President will have to deal with that need to be dealt with in a manner that has a short-term politically unpopular solution — deficit spending esp. WRT stimulus spending, household debt, so-called ‘entitlement reform’, climate change, water shortages, gun proliferation, abortion access, and of course overseas diplomatic and military policy.
HRC’s track record on this count is spotty, to say the least. See: Keystone, TPP, Iraq War, Syria, European austerity, chained CPI (yeah, thanks for decrying it two years after the fact), gay marriage…
amk
@Frank Bolton:
Nope, you are the one misreading both 2008 and 2012 voting patterns with the dubious assumption that ignoring the concerns of the most loyal dem base and chasing the precious ‘working class’ is the winning strategy. We will see shortly, won’t we?
Frank Bolton
@amk:
Why is it a dubious assumption? Do you have a demographic or empirical argument that refutes what I say?
Here’s my argument: HRC in 2008 got 49% of the delegates. Obama got 51% of the delegates. The composition of Obama’s victory margin was approximately 40% white, 95% black, 35% Asian and Latino. However, the lion’s share of the population growth, especially in the Democratic Party, the past two years has been with Asians and Latinos. Obama’s strategy probably would not have yielded him victory (though again, it’d be by a thin margin) had he gotten the same proportion in 2016 that he got in 2008.
Cervantes
@Frank Bolton:
You might want to re-word that.
Droll.
amk
here are the numbers from 2008 and 2012.
ropercenter.uconn.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/how-groups-voted-2008/
ropercenter.uconn.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/how-groups-voted-2012/
Unless you show me the latest voting demographic numbers that floats your boat, I would still say your claim is dubious.
Frank Bolton
@Cervantes:
I don’t think that I do. I have a very demographic-centered view of elections, and more broadly history. Analyzing Obama’s victories (and most post-LBJ election) as a consequence of brute, cynical demographic convergences has been pretty illuminating.
So what if it is?
benw
@Amir Khalid:
Sanders’ many proposals to directly and indirectly fight for racial justice.
@Cervantes:
Thanks.
Frank Bolton
@amk: I’m talking about the 2008 and 2016 primary elections, amk.
pewhispanic.org/2008/03/07/the-hispanic-vote-in-the-2008-democratic-presidential-primaries/
rooneycenter.nd.edu/assets/16534/huddy_carey2009pol_gender.pdf
Omnes Omnibus
@Frank Bolton: It isn’t 2008 anymore.
Frank Bolton
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s kind of my point. If HRC and Obama were somehow able to run the exact two campaigns (obviously impossible, I know) and got the same margins in 2016 that they got in 2008, she’d have won the primary. Just barely, but she only just barely lost the 2008 primary to begin with.
That’s the power of demographic change for you.
And this goes back to recontextualizing Sanders’ enduring problems with the black vote. It’s a problem and it’s a serious one. But even if he gets a Clinton 2008-esque margin of only 15%, he can still win. And ironically, Clinton 2008 provided the blueprint for this kind of trudging, tooth-and-nail victory.
Note: I’m not saying that he will win the Latino and Asian vote. Because right now, he’s also doing very poorly with those blocs. But if it’s December and he’s failing to make progress, he might want to reconsider his approach.
Joel
@Frank Bolton: the last sentence is your kicker, because antagonizing people outside of their tribe is pretty much the only unifying principle for the GOP.
“Predictions are hard, especially about the future”
Omnes Omnibus
@Frank Bolton: If your point is that there is a hypothetical path to victory in the primary without winning the AA vote, you may well be correct. I will just note that it is, first, unlikely to play out that way, and, second, probably a recipe for disaster in the general election if it did.
Frank Bolton
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, don’t get me wrong. If I was Sanders or his campaign strategist, that kind of victory would be the last thing that I would advocate. Not just because it’d be by such a razor-thin margin that the slightest thing that went wrong would spell defeat, not just because it would be providing conservative pencil-sharpener fuckers a racial wedge, not just because it would delegitimize economic leftism, but also because the kind of campaign and Presidency Sanders says that he’s going to run would require full underclass solidarity.
The other downside to that strategy is… frankly, I have no idea why 2008 Clinton did so well with Latinos and Asians in the primary. Even naked racism fails to be a satisfying explanation, because the number of Latinos and Asians who voted in the Democratic Primary that said that race was somewhat or very important to their voting consideration was in the low 20s — though it was certainly higher than that of blacks and whites, it’s not enough to explain the gap. Thus even if Sanders decides to run the Clinton 2008 playbook, it’s not clear at all what would be needed to be done to get her margins with non-black racial minorities. The only sliver of a hint we got was that Obama did better with more privileged Asian-American groups (Japanese, Koreans) and Clinton did better with less privileged ones (Chinese, Vietnamese, Indians).
It’s the last resort of last resorts, needless to say.
Cervantes
@Frank Bolton:
Suit yourself.
But how about if I were to say the following?
See what I mean?
That’s nice but, still, maybe consider that re-wording.
Frank Bolton
@Cervantes: I’m open to suggestions.
Cervantes
@Frank Bolton:
Given whom you were talking to, I just found it amusing that you were asking for a “demographic or empirical argument” of any sort.
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: If your point is that the figures don’t add up to 100%, FB doesn’t need to re-word, you need to re-read. He didn’t say that was the breakdown of the vote total but rather Obama’s share of the primary vote within each of those groups.
Cervantes
@Frank Bolton:
OK. Maybe you could start with the following:
Maybe that does not use the language you want to use? Or maybe it puts the emphasis in the wrong place for your purposes? I don’t know — I presume you can fix it.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
Really? That’s what he said? Show me.
(I know that’s what he meant. That’s why re-thinking was not necessary; only re-wording.)
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: Never mind; I thought you were genuinely confused about what he meant, not just nitpicking how he expressed it. Carry on.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
Both. I could be both.
Didn’t think about that, did you?
kc
@Arclite:
I’m glad she doesn’t want to be president. I’d like to see her stay in the Senate and take care of business.
JimGod
@Frank Bolton: You’re doing the lords work with actual empirical evidence. I especially enjoy the people who pretend you’re talking about the general even after you’ve emphasized you’re talking about the primary for the 4th time.
The interesting thing is that, yes, Sanders should focus his message to all possible constituencies. But if ultimately black voters go with Hillary Rodham in spite of his best efforts, that’s not his fault, it’s just the way it is. Much like the way Clinton picked up Hispanic and Asian-Pacific Islander support in 2008, in spite of Obama campaigning to them. People need to be careful, voters vote for strange reasons all the time, it doesn’t mean therefore that that particular candidate is openly hostile to that group or doesn’t want their support.
groucho48
On an absolute scale, Sanders isn’t focusing enough on non-economic policies that would help minorities. But, are folks saying that Clinton’s policies are leaps and bounds better? I don’t think I even know what her policies on minorities are.
And, both Sanders and Clinton would get more than 90% of the black vote in an election. I also don’t see Hispanics embracing whichever Republican racist gets the nomination.
I’d be happy with either Sanders or Clinton as our candidate. I wouldn’t be happy is they lose because we got into a bitter struggle over who is a purer progressive or who is better with policies that help minorities when they probably are better than 90% in sync on most policies
Sanders HAS to win either Iowa or NH and probably needs to win both. So, he is focusing his speeches on policies that would appeal to voters in those states. Given his half century strong record on civil rights, I see no reason to think he would ignore their concerns if he won. I’d probably trust him on civil rights more than I would Clinton.