I guess I just don’t find it particularly surprising that Sanders is finally receiving a small bump from black voters. As he’s moving up in some national polls, it only makes sense he’d also see some movement within minority communities. I imagine his numbers with Latinos, Asians, and other minority groups have risen as well.
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20% sounds more significant to me than “1 out of 5”, but maybe that’s just me.
It’s spin, which they use only single digits. It’s never
2 out of 10, 20 out of a 100, or 200 out of a 1000. The lower number minimizes the contrast between the majority and the minority.
Makes sense. There’s obviously only so high any candidate in the Democratic contest could go without some increase in support from minorities. And honestly I don’t really expect him to match Hillary’s support among African-American voters in South Carolina, at least not in time for the primary there. It would be a pretty heavy lift to make enough progress with AA voters to win SC outright, even if his support among white voters and young voters remains strong (according to some analysis I read a while back, it looks like he’d need at least 40-something percent of AA voters to win in SC, which leaves him with a long way to go, and not much time to get there). But I do think it’s starting to look at least a bit more likely that he manages to get enough AA support to achieve an expectations-beating finish in SC that could help chip away at the conventional wisdom that he can only compete in states dominated by white liberals.
As far as what the chances are for any of those scenarios to actually come about, at the moment we just don’t have much data to go on. There was the one poll that showed Bernie’s support among AA voters in SC reaching about 20% (but that poll had an unusually large margin of error, 8 or 9% I think, which means that much of that “progress” among AA voters in SC might not even be real…plus the poll is a bit old at this point, and things could have changed in either direction by now). Apparently Bernie got about 1/3 of the (small) African-American vote in Iowa, which is approaching “respectable,” but, let’s face it, is still pretty lousy (and the argument that many voters hadn’t really tuned in yet obviously doesn’t apply there). New Hampshire, with an even smaller percentage of AA voters, probably won’t offer any real hint. So SC polls (and very soon, the actual vote), are definitely going to be the ones to watch.
That was not my intention. But I can see how it might work that way.
That part of your criticism strikes me as a little odd. Fractions are usually presented as, say 2/3, and not as 6/12 or 12/24, unless there is a specific reason to do so. That’s not political spin, it’s just conventional notation.
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You may want to check out @luckybastard77’s take on that (comment 25ish on here) and @PluckyInKY’s confirming reply to him. Who knows until the votes are cast; and the polls do seem to show at least some generational split (as do the endorsements: the mothers of Eric Garner, Jordan Davis and Trayvon Martin all support Hillary). But it’s very clear that at least a conspicuous minority of Bernie supporters, loudly asserting the perfection of their candidate and equally loudly misrepresenting the opposing candidate’s history, are doing their best to alienate potential supporters, and (I fear) doing more potential damage come November than the PUMAs ever did. Obviously not most here; but if I were a Sanders supporter, I’d be working hard to rein in my side’s, um, irrational exuberance.
BS… If Ben Jealous, Cornel West or any other black person want to endorse Sanders that fine. IMO democrats have 2 great candidates compare to what the republicans have put up they know it and media know its.
My problem come in when the liberal/progressive side claiming that this president haven’t accomplish anything which is LIE or he’s the worst in US history is bs. The black communities couldn’t tell you where or who is the leader of NAACP in their state/city. Until this president came in office. Secondly, this president did more to bring BLACK UE http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000001
https://twitter.com/DannyVinik/status/685462128988426240?ref_src=twsrc^tfw more black Americans have health insurance than anytime before: http://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/facts-and-features/fact-sheets/aca-working-african-american-community/index.html
Blacks graduation rate is up more Blacks are entering college. And as for drones Sanders or Clinton would be sending out the drones to.
I agree. Does the same apply on the other side? If so, maybe Hillary should tell Brock to put a sock in it. Having the founder of her Super-PAC blasting out stuff like “black lives don’t matter to Bernie” on Twitter, and then her campaign not even disavowing it, much less apologizing, has not exactly set a high standard of civility in this area.
Obviously not most here; If I were a Sanders supporter, I’d be working hard to rein in my side’s, um, irrational exuberance.
First of all, thank you for “obviously not most here.” That is exactly the kind of fairness that makes it easier to have these kinds of conversations without unnecessary acrimony (this is not sarcasm!). As to your point, I spend a fair amount of time and effort trying to do just that, but some of the tactics and rhetoric from the Clinton campaign, as well as some of the Hillary supporters out there (and I will also add, “not most here”) sure doesn’t make this task any easier.
[Standard Disclaimer: This commenter wishes it to be known that in November he or she plans to vote for the Democratic nominee, whoever that turns out to be, and will encourage their fellow primary candidate supporters to do likewise.]
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Yes, that’s a very good point. A lot of the discussion of “the African-American vote” treats AA voters as if they were one undifferentiated group. As if there weren’t all the same factors of age, gender, income, geography, etc, that there are among the white population. It will be interesting to see if Bernie’s support among AA voters is strongest with young people and men, as it has been (so far) among white voters. And if so, just how much (if at all) he can make inroads into Hillary’s support among older African-Americans and AA women. This could have major consequences for the question of what Bernie’s “ceiling” might really be, and where that ceiling is compared to Hillary’s “floor” (her rock-solid support that won’t be moved short of truly extraordinary developments). The assumption up to this point (and probably still a pretty safe bet now) is that, among AA voters in general, his “ceiling” is destined to stay well short of her “floor.” We should get some strong hints in S.C., and the question will probably be more or less settled once the Super Tuesday results are in.
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I thought I’d already agreed with you about Brock; maybe it was someone else. And I know that you know that I know (that’s the lyric to some song spoof, isn’t it?) that you do indeed try to keep your side rational. And I try to do the same.
The one point I’d make there, though, is that it’s looked to me (admittedly through my Clintonite filter) that the rancor among Hillary supporters is more a reaction to a lot of pretty hateful misrepresentation of her positions and her past by too many Bernie folks. Certainly some just go too far in stereotyping Bernie and his supporters with cartoon versions of what he and they are. But I, who as you know am infuriatingly fair-minded, increasingly find myself fighting the impulse to go all @TFlick or @PluckyInKY on the asses of Bernie folks who clearly don’t know the first thing about her actual history and campaign platform, and are not simply passionate but actually venomous in their reactions to her. I honestly have seen very little that’s comparable from Hillary folks. Again, less so here; but I’d just ask you to check out @luckybastard77’s comment again about what’s happening on social media. It’s not just the fantasy of Hillary supporters that Sanders partisans are alienating in a way Clinton partisans are not.
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My two cents.
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Could well be, and if so I apologize for seeming repetitive, but I think the point stands. That comment set a very nasty tone, and stands unrefuted and unapologized for by the Clinton campaign. And together with things like Chelsea’s shark-jump, and Hillary’s declaration that single payer “will never, ever come to pass” (again, sorry if these are points I’ve raised before, I think they are still relevant) these kinds of things have the potential to make it much harder for Hillary to rally Bernie supporters to her side for the general election.
All I can tell you is that through a Sanderista filter, it can easily seem just the opposite. It’s a classic case of “punctuation.”
…A insults B, B insults A. A insults B, B insults A. A insults B, B insults A…
versus
…B insults A, A insults B. B insults A, A insults B. B insults A, A insults B…
Both of these could be taken from the same series, and who appears the aggressor depends on where you begin (the “…”) and the “punctuation.”
It may truly be the case that there are more obnoxious Bernie supporters out there on social media than obnoxious Hillary supporters, I don’t know. I don’t do Twitter, and rarely do my Facebook friends discuss politics on Facebook (and when we do, it’s almost always respectfully). So I don’t dismiss the purported difference as “fantasy,” and I kind of assume there’s at least a large kernel of truth there, but I do think it may be over-hyped. And that, having established it as part of a dismissive (if partially accurate) “Berniebro” meme, some Hillary supporters are flogging it for all it’s worth, spin-wise (which is fine I guess…just politics, after all). But even if that is the case, that doesn’t excuse those who really are fulfilling the stereotype – and believe me, if I could I would reach through the interwebs and give each and every one of them a good hard slap, I would! (Or at least a long, boring scolding lecture, which would probably be much worse.)
As far as here on TPM I would say that I don’t see all that much truly obnoxious Bernie-supporter-bashing or Hillary-supporter-bashing (or truly out-of-bounds personal viciousness toward the candidates) from most of the regulars here. I do see a pretty significant uptick in that sort of thing from a crop of mostly new participants, which then gets everyone else going. At least some of this looks like pretty classic trolling to me, and it surprises me to see some long-time posters here, who should know better, getting sucked into it and letting it affect their attitude toward all Bernie supporters or all Hillary supporters. And then surprises me more when I realize I’ve allowed myself to get sucked in too!
One newbie (supposed) Bernie supporter managed to derail and dominate an entire thread yesterday, with a bunch of Hillary supporters getting themselves all worked up into a lather, and then as they lashed out at Bernie and Bernie supporters, they of course drew fire from other Bernie supporters…and then we were off to the races, recriminations and hard feelings all the way around (other than the troll, or trollish new Bernie supporter, who seemed to be getting exactly what they wanted). And at some point I only have so much sympathy for folks (including myself at times!) who allow themselves to get sucked in by a simple garden-variety troll and allow that to ruin their day and sour their attitude toward everyone on the “other side.” (And just to be clear, I am only referring to the comment threads here, I realize the situation is quite different from people being relentlessly cyberbullied on their Twitter feeds or Facebook pages or whatever, which I certainly don’t think people should be expected to tolerate).
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I don’t know one way or the other wrt any campaign response to Brock, so I’m happy to take your word for it; if they didn’t slap him down, they certainly should have. On Chelsea’s “shark-jump,” we’ve already differed on just what she said (again, in her full comment she was clearly saying that starting from scratch left room for GOP mischief, not that Bernie wanted to take people’s health care away), but we agreed that she needs surrogacy training. On Hillary’s single-payer comment (and again, I haven’t heard that one, but I don’t doubt you), note that Krugman, who’d love single-payer in the ideal world, has said pretty much the same wrt changing this country’s complex system (specs on his argument available on request); also note, again, that “single-payer” and “universal coverage” are not synonyms, and she’s always, in word and deed, pushed for the latter. But most pertinent to this discussion, I’d have hoped you’d see the difference between energetically tackling an opponent’s policies, occasionally perhaps going over the line, and routinely misrepresenting and maligning her very being.
And this, again, isn’t just a matter of one’s partisan filter; the reason I keep referring you to luckybastard’s comment is that he’s describing the reactions of people who are explicitly not Hillary people, but who are becoming anti-Bernie people because of what they’re getting from (again, as always, some, but increasingly visible) Bernie people. It’s really not symmetrical.
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Yeah it’s not presented like that because fractions are presented using the lowest common denominator. Nothing to do with spin.
As I acknowledged, that may very well be the case, though we have nothing but anecdotes, and our own filtered perceptions, and political spin, to rely on. Asserting that it is definitely so, over and over, does nothing to prove the case, and kind of misses the point, IMHO. It’s not about what the exact proportions are, it’s that it’s unhelpful on both sides, no matter who is doing it. And what I’m seeing a lot of (through my Sanderista filter) is Hillary supporters using incivility on the other side to justify their own incivility, and vice versa. Real cases of cyberstalking should obviously be called out and dealt with. But when it comes to stuff like comment threads, I really don’t see how the recriminations and mutual escalation helps either candidate’s chances in the fall. It mostly just seems to serve an apparent need to posture, work up a good head of self-righteousness, and then vent in exactly the same kinds of ways that have so angered the venter when they see it coming from the “other side.”
As to the health care examples, my point wasn’t to re-litigate whether they might be considered technically correct, in the right context, under the right interpretation, my point was that if you wanted to design a way to push Bernie supporters away and keep some of them away in the general election, statements like that would be a pretty good way to go about it.
Not quite as good a way of destroying solidarity as Brock’s shark-jump-in-a-cesspool trick, of course, which (so far) is in a category all its own. (And yes, she never publicly called him out, disavowed the remark, or apologized that someone so closely connected to her campaign would make such a disgusting remark in the first place.) And the fact is, there has been nothing even remotely equivalent on the Bernie side. Bernie’s campaign has publicly scolded supporters who have crossed the line into cyberbullying, and pleaded with their supporters to heed the candidate’s example and remain civil, even though they have no real control over these supporters’ actions. And when a Bernie staffer made a snarky remark about “considering Hillary for VP,” (same as Bill C did toward Obama in 2008), Bernie quickly said it was wrong and apologized. Compare that to the sickening silence from Camp Hillary over Brock’s despicable remark, all the more troubling since in this case it’s one of her close supporters, over whom she presumably does hold sway. One might almost be tempted to say that in terms of beyond-the-pale remarks from close supporters, never apologized for, “it’s really not symmetrical.”
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Well, here’s where our respective filters will keep us from seeing things the same way (leaving aside the evidence from luckybastard and elsewhere). Because with the single exception of Brock’s inexcusable remark, everything else you cite is specifically policy-related, and utterly normal in primary politics; Clinton people aren’t impugning Bernie’s integrity the way his people routinely do hers. I’m sorry, and genuinely surprised, that you don’t see the distinction.
On your larger point, I wholeheartedly agree, as you know, that the sniping from both sides, when it gets beyond legitimate policy and strategy, does nobody any good; and I’m always relieved to see commenters here (you included) intervene with that reminder when things start to get too acrimonious. Fight the real enemy…in November.
I think you are misunderstanding my point there (or to put it another way, I failed to make it clear). I am not trying to say that Hilary’s loud, proud declaration (vow?) that single payer “will never, ever come to pass” is a personal attack on Bernie. Obviously it isn’t. What I am saying is that it is likely to unnecessarily alienate his supporters.
As far as Brock’s remark, yeah, it’s one of a kind (so far). But that kind of reminds me of the old joke about poor old Barnabas, who complains bitterly that once upon a time he built several great bridges, but they don’t call him Barnabas the Bridgebuilder, and once he slew two ferocious bears, but they don’t call him Barnabas the Bearslayer, and he “only fucked ONE goat, but now, forevermore, they’ll always call me Barney the Goatfucker!”
Now granted, you can’t unfuck a goat, but you can disavow and apologize when a prominent surrogate makes a despicable, racially-charged smear against your opponent – and the fact that her spokesman did disavow a planned Brock-attack on Bernie’s age, but they didn’t bother disavowing “black lives don’t matter to Bernie,” only adds to the impression that Hillary and her team made a conscious decision to let the racial one stand, in fact it’s pretty hard to imagine that they didn’t (I mean, how would that work – they meant to, but it just slipped their minds?).
Maybe you’re content to blow this off as “oh, well, it just happened once,” but I kinda doubt very many of your fellow Hillary supporters would be so forgiving if it was a close associate of Bernie who dipped into the pit of racially-charged mudslinging against Hillary. Perhaps you imagine otherwise.
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Well, it was hardly a vow. I found the quote online, and she was making the point that she didn’t want to risk what we have in the hope of getting something seen by many as unattainable:
Clinton has sought to cast Sanders’ plan as going backwards by repealing Obamacare – President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement – in order to pass single-payer.
To prove her point on Friday, Clinton asked Joan Hanna, a woman she met backstage here before a campaign event, to talk about how her daughter’s brain cancer and coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
“I want you to understand why I am fighting so hard for the Affordable Care Act. I don’t want it repealed. I don’t want us to be thrown back into a terrible, terrible national debate,” Clinton said as Hanna took the stage. “I don’t want us to end up in gridlock. People can’t wait. People who have health emergencies can’t wait for us to have a theoretical debate about some better idea that will never, ever come to pass.”
http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/29/politics/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-health-care/index.html
Not exactly a call to man the barricades against it; just another iteration of the idealist-vs.-pragmatist battle this campaign’s been about. (And one more time: “single-payer” and “universal coverage” are not synonymous.)
On the Brock thing, while I continue to agree, as I have since the day he said it, that it was inexcusable, let’s not go overboard on exactly what that was about. He was making a stupidly broad, snarky comment about the “America” ad, which I’m sure you’ll remember raised many eyebrows, obviously in the black community especially, for its complete absence of black people and almost-complete absence of any people of color at all. Some kind of shot was not unwarranted (indeed, the Sanders campaign was taking shots from all directions over it); but Brock’s was wildly over the line. But I’m perfectly comfortable saying it’s not the huge event you’re taking it for. Whereas every Sanders surrogate I see on tv – I think literally every one – manages to work insinuations about her trustworthiness and character into every appearance, even as they deny they’re doing it. Sorry, no comparison.
It’s that lowest common denominator thingy that math teachers were always on us about.
I agree there’s no comparison, just not the way you mean. I guess I’ll leave it there, since it seems like we’re mostly just repeating ourselves at this point.
Great debate tonight, I thought both candidates looked strong. Not to mention they both looked like adults, as opposed to the Republican Romper Room debates. I sure hope some independents / swing voters are watching these things.
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