TL/DR: Bernie won’t actually have a problem with AA/minority voters on the days of vote. The media is just saying that over and over hoping to make it true.
Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote – The Nation
Bernie will have the black vote when it matters and here’s why.
I know no one wants to talk about this really for fear of being misconstrued as implying that blacks as a voting block are ignorant. However, the root of Bernie’s problem with the black electorate at this stage is ironically a consequence of everything he’s trying to fight.
Blacks and most others frankly at this point haven’t on average looked into who to vote for yet because they know it’ll be a trivial decision to make and because they on average are too busy or disenfranchised to engage in what is at its point essentially the politico version of fantasy football.
At this point the election is a first world problem for the majority of those 61% of people that didn’t vote last time. For the moment, and only for the moment, most people have more pressing matters to attend to.
Not having the time to inform yourself of the reality of your choice in an upcoming vote is by definition a bigger problem the more disenfranchised your group is because then you have bigger and more real problems to deal with day to day expressly because of systemic racism or other forms of oppression.
When you are worried for example about being shot by the local police walking down the block to buy groceries, assuming you can even afford them, you’re not going to have a lot of time or inclination at first to wiki Bernie vs Clinton and their voting records. This does not make you stupid, it makes you human.
Sure it might be unwise as a group to disengage, but individually (and here is the critical part) this early, it’s essentially a waste of time. But again, be honest, this really isn’t as complicated an nuanced as the media (both mainstream and alternative) how long would it take anyone browsing to decide which is the candidate for them? We all want to sound smart, but really a choice like this takes no more than 30 minutes of searching.
There’s also the general impact of austerity measures especially in republican states on political awareness. Schools generally are in third world shape in this country and they only get worse in oppressed communities. But again, that doesn’t matter much in this specific context because of the internet and the penetration of smart phones into every level of society.
All this is in my opinion why there is this perception that Bernie isn’t doing well among minorities, blacks in particular. It’s ultimately an illusion.
This will all change the moment the primary begins because he’ll win Iowa and New Hampshire and the news will be forced to name him and the busier more distracted of the black electorate will, by virtue of it no longer being a first world problem, will inform themselves on their upcoming choice.
And when they quickly find that their choice is between a woman who accepts money from the private prison lobby and says whatever she thinks is expedient at the time, or a man who walked with King and was arrested fighting for the civil rights movement, who has not deviated from his message of equality and true progressivism in decades, they’ll make the intelligent, self serving, and compassionate choice.
See, the thing about low information voting is about the price in time of acquiring that information. The opportunity cost is the deciding factor here. As the day of the primary gets closer and closer in each state, a moment will be taken by each person who isn’t totally disconnected or prohibited from participation even indirectly, to confirm or deny what they already believe, and they’ll find Bernie’s revolution waiting for them, instead of SSDD not worth the wait inline come election day.
The issue of who to vote for in the primary will for each person stop being a waste of precious time. It then stops being a trivial day to day hobby horse race, and it starts being something real that matters today. And that only means millions of people discovering Bernie and coming to #FeelTheBern
I believe that essentially all it takes to turn the average black Hillary supporter into a Bernie Sanders’ supporter is 30 minutes on a smart phone and an open mind. Call me sappy or naive but I’m pretty sure open minds and smart phones are still ubiquitous in this country, no matter what the news tells us.
Also, primary voters are by definition more engaged than general election only voters, and engaged voters Google who they are voting for. Any progressive that shows up has a great chance of being behind Bernie than any of these polls can predict. Unless they are online, and the online polls show a landslide coming because there are no spoiler effects in play. It’s perfectly safe to vote Bernie. Indeed, given his performance (compared to Hillary) vs Trump and the other republicans, he’s the safer vote.
This election is defined by populism. That will include the dismissal of the main stream media by the electorate. The same anti establishment populism that caused this race to boil down to Trump vs Sanders also is present vs the six company news machine we all know by now has been lying to us for decades.
Mark my words, Bernie is essentially going to sweep the primaries barring outright election rigging.
Update: 2016-02-23 0517 AM
I’m not afraid of being called a racist as a result of my efforts to point out the value of Bernie’s candidacy to minority voters primary because I’m not a racist by any rational definition.
I’ve realized that the scolding by the neoliberal set for whites to get out of the race issue is a slick way to perpetuate the divide.
If a particular person hates me for defending their interests, that’s their right. I’m not doing it to earn praise. I’m doing it because it’s the right thing to do.
It’s not about them, it’s about me 🙂
I’m not going to preemptively give up in a misguided effort to avoid offending someone. This is the Internet. Just existing offends some people heh.
Now obviously I realize that blacks can and should be able to vote for whomever they please.
You’ll notice Bernie isn’t black. I’m not saying blacks should vote Sanders because they are black, I’m saying they should vote Sanders because his policies will disproportionately help the AA community.
He’s an even better idea for the AA community than he is for the country at large (and that is really saying something) and people voting against their own interests undermine the core argument for democracy.
If people can’t be trusted to make a superior (as defined by whatever objective metric you like) decision then they shouldn’t have decision making authority. That’s why we don’t vote on matters of science. Because we know taking a poll wouldn’t be a good way of making that type of decision.
Blacks in particular (but also to a lesser extent the electorate generally) voting against their own interests in this election when the choice is between an advocate of mass incarceration, a literal fascist, and someone who marched with MLK and was a civil rights pioneer, would be rather strong evidence that democracy might generally not objectively be a good idea after all.
I mean really, what more do you want? If you don’t have a scenario in mind that falsifies democracy then you’re a fanatic.
