Why is Hillary Clinton crushing Bernie Sanders among minority voters?
Last edited Sun Jul 26, 2015, 02:06 AM - Edit history (1)
The latest poll of African Americans is: Hillary 82%, Sanders 6%, Webb 3%
I really don't understand why Hillary apparently has such overwhelming support from people of color?
Are there particular policy positions she has or actions she has taken in her career that would warrant such strong support? I'm really trying to understand.
It seems, fairly or not, Hillary is seen as being sympathetic to the needs of the African American community. Whereas Bernie is seen as old white Jewish guy from a pearly white rural state who cant possibly understand the plight of inner city black people. These perceptions will be hard to turn around by election day.
I'm just a bit confused. Throughout her political career, Hillary has held policy positions anathema to the black community. She supported the 1994 crime bill. She supported building more prisons, putting hundreds of thousands of more cops on the street, three-strikes policies, mandatory minimums, zero tolerance policies, and criminalizing marijuana. She supported expanding the War on Drugs throughout the 1990s and 2000s (including in her 2008 run). She opposed reforming the discrepancy in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine. She attacked Obama in 2008 for being "soft-on-crime" for opposing mandatory minimums. Hillary supported the 1996 welfare reforms that marginalized and demonized single women of color. She engaged in racist dog whistle politics in the 2008 primaries against Obama. She's been a consistent supporter of the death penalty which disproportionately marginalizes PoC. Clinton also said "All Lives Matter" instead of "Black Lives Matter" at a historical black church. She hasn't apologized or publicly expressed her regret for saying "All Lives Matter."
In 2008, HRC opposed giving undocumented immigrants diver's licenses, and favored a pathway to legal status over citizenship. In 2014, she felt that the central american refugee children should be sent home, when Bernie supported allowing them to stay. So again, I'm confused why she has high support among latinos.
I'm not someone who is dogmatically defending Bernie. I do think he fumbled in his response at the Netroots Nation, and I'm glad to see that he's learning how to package his record and views in a manner that resonates with people of color. He's learning how to properly frame these issues in the context of systemic and institutionalized racism, and white privilege. He's making his message and rhetoric more intersectional. He acknowledges racial oppression that occurs independently of class based oppression. He was the first one to say Sandra Bland's name, denounced Bland's arrest video, said the cop assaulted her, and said he doubted a white woman in America would be treated that way. But still, I understand why the #BlackLivesMatter interrupted him, and why people are continually pushing him, saying the has to earn the minority vote, he can't count on it, and if people think he's weak on race, he won't get PoC supporters. That's fair. We are in a state of emergency, and systemic white privilege and institutionalized anti-black racism, police brutality, etc., these are MAIN issues that need to be talked about.
What I'm surprised, however, is that while I feel BlackLivesMatter has every right to harshly criticize Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley, and others, why they haven't publicly blasted Hillary, or held her accountable for her views, given her horrible record on racial issues. I even saw some articles on Vox and Salon suggest that Hillary Clinton is a candidate who is "stronger" than Bernie than race, and she's perceived to be more friendly to the interests of African-Americans. I just find that hard to believe just because she talked about white privilege, mass incarceration (which she previously helped perpetuate with her policies), and other stuff. People say that Bernie has "earn" the vote of minorities, and I completely agree. But with 82% of blacks supporting Hillary, why doesn't she also have to "earn" the black vote? Why is she given it without much scrutiny? Why isn't BLM putting as much public pressure and holding her to as high of a standard as Bernie? I'm perfectly fine with #BernieSoBlack, and #RedifineProgressive, but I'm just confused why Hillary is given a free-pass, and why she's been largely above the fray. An inadvertent effect of these hashtags is that PoC who were previously unaware of Bernie may be turned off by him, but because Hillary hasn't been criticized as harshly, PoC may solidify their support for her.
I'm confused, because on racial justice, Hillary's record is much worse than Bernie's. Of course, it is condescending to PoC to talk about Bernie's civil rights record 50 years ago, but it's not as if he didn't advocate for racial justice throughout his career.
Bernie, who was a Civil Rights Activist in the 1960s to fight anti-black oppression. Bernie, who marched with MLK in 1963 and witnessed his "I Had a Dream" speech at the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom." Bernie who was a student organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Bernie who coordinated sit-ins against racially segregated housing at the University of Chicago. Bernie who got arrested for civil disobedience, protesting racially segregated schools in Chicago.
Bernie who publicly denounced police brutality. Bernie who backed Jesse Jackson's 1988 run for POTUS, who opposed the tough on crime policies of the 1990s, who opposed the 1996 welfare reform that marginalized poor women of color. Who continues to oppose mass incarceration, the war on drugs, police militarization, police brutality, the death penalty, etc. He wants to stop incarcerating people and building more jails, he wants to build more schools. He wants to stop locking up people for non-violent crimes, and wants to look at our drug laws. He wants to put body cameras on police. He opposes mandatory minimums. He supports community policing. I assume he's against three-strikes laws, stop-and-frisk. He voted YES on funding for alternative sentencing instead of more prisons. He supports rehabilitation over punitive measures. He wants to lower recidivism. He's against putting hundreds of thousands of cops on the street. He wants to decriminalize marijuana consumption, and is looking at legalization.
He was the first POTUS to say Sandra Bland's name, and directly addressed systemic racism, and acknowledged that beyond economic reforms, more had to be done to specifically address institutional factors behind anti-black racism. He condemned the Sandra Bland video, talked about how police harass, assault, and kill people of color. He's in the right on the issue.
I completely agree that in the campaign, Bernie has been tone-deaf on race, and has a tendency to pivot to the economy when confronted with issues on race. That's a problem. He needs to package his views and record much better, needs to articulate what he'll do going forward, and needs to know how to communicate with and connect to minority voters. He shouldn't expect the PoC vote just because white progressives bill him as the "progressive" candidate. He needs to earn minority votes, and he's improving his rhetoric and campaign speeches, and his outreach efforts to make his policy agenda inclusive. I just don't know what Hillary did to earn PoC votes though. Sure, Bernie is tone-deaf in talking, but he's solid on his record and policy proposals going forward, whereas Hillary isn't solid on her record. I think your record is absolutely relevant and should matter. Packaging a horrible record nicely, or ignoring it, is a problem in my view, and Hillary shouldn't get a free pass for that.
I just feel that while the criticism against Bernie was unwarranted, I'm disheartened that isn't being applied consistently to all the POTUS candidates. Jeb Bush earlier dismissed "BlackLivesMatter" as politically correct nonsense. Third Way corporatist DLC Dems helped perpetuate racial inequality, and the policies that are now undervaluing and killing black lives. The real enemies of justice are conservative Democrats and establishment Republicans, and while it's okay to criticize Bernie, I feel the brunt of blame should be on establishment Dems and Republicans. Hillary has been a DLC Third-Wayer up until 2015. If Martin O'Malley deserves blame for broken window policing in Baltimore, why shouldn't Hillary deserve criticism for her record?
Especially when Hillary has so much support among PoC, and is set to win the nomination and become the next POTUS, you would expect racial justice activists ask, "Is this really the person our communities should be supporting? The same person whose previous policies contributed to the state of emergency we're in? Should she be the standard bearer of our party and deserve our vote, when there are candidates with better, more consistent records, even if no candidate is perfect and we'll push the liberal candidates to be even better on race?"
Again, I'm saying all of this as person of color myself.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Lord! I bet he did not take it well.
This deserves a thread of it's own!
I remember reading something about Marian Wright Edelman's Children's Defense Fund and how a just-out-of-college Hillary went to hear her speak. When the speech concluded, Hillary went up to her and said "I want to work for you."
I read your post, Sancho, and the posts of a couple of others here too, and I find myself just astonished - "how on earth can anybody object to her candidacy? How on earth could anybody on our side of the aisle NOT want to vote for her?" I realize I'm probably inviting the inevitable avalanche of objections and protestations and even outrage against such an assertion, but whatever, I guess. 
And someone else here pointed out a couple of things that hadn't occurred to me:
1) Hillary has an intimate grasp of the issues that minorities face every day because SHE herself happens to BE one, as well (as a woman - especially one making her way in a man's arena). I actually identify with that, personally, myself, as a woman who broke into broadcasting during the 70s when THAT TOO was pretty exclusively a man's world.
And 2) I totally get how PoC would identify strongly (and favorably) with President Obama and probably would take it personally when his enemies keep going off on him and trying to hobble and negate and fault-find every damn thing he does! It's probably even read as a betrayal when some of his loudest and most strident critics, incomprehensibly, come from THIS side of the aisle. No wonder there's such a disconnect.
It's mighty frustrating, and not a little bit bewildering.
And loving my dog, too!
Hillary Clinton: 'Failure' to Help Syrian Rebels Led to the Rise of ISIS
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/hillary-clinton-failure-to-help-syrian-rebels-led-to-the-rise-of-isis/375832/
In an interview with me earlier this week, she used her sharpest language yet to describe the "failure" that resulted from the decision to keep the U.S. on the sidelines during the first phase of the Syrian uprising.
“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” Clinton said.
