Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Bernie Sanders May Have Lost My Primary Vote

Bernie Sanders has a long way to go before I'll vote for him in the Kentucky Democratic Primary, and the reason why goes back to an interview with NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep in November 2014.

Well, here's what you got. What you got is an African-American president, and the African-American community is very, very proud that this country has overcome racism and voted for him for president. And that's kind of natural. You've got a situation where the Republican Party has been strongly anti-immigration, and you've got a Hispanic community which is looking to the Democrats for help. 
But that's not important. You should not be basing your politics based on your color. What you should be basing your politics on is, how is your family doing? ... In the last election, in state after state, you had an abysmally low vote for the Democrats among white, working-class people. And I think the reason for that is that the Democrats have not made it clear that they are prepared to stand with the working-class people of this country, take on the big money interests. I think the key issue that we have to focus on, and I know people are uncomfortable about talking about it, is the role of the billionaire class in American society.

It's bad enough when Republicans suggest that the reason black voters turned out for Obama was because he's black and not because of his campaign or his policies or, when we turned out in numbers to re-elect him in 2008, his record after four years.  After Bush in 2000-2008, I took a look at "how my family was doing" and flocked to vote for Barack Obama over John McCain.  Same thing in 2012, Mitt Romney was a joke.  Race had nothing to do with it.

When a person running for the Democratic nomination makes that suggestion, I'm vastly less inclined to vote for that person.

At this point we're rapidly running out of Dems who haven't said stupid or insulting things about black voters heading into 2016.

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