Here's my perspective...

[Armstead]

I had been away from DU for a while and checked in out of curiosity early in the campaign. And it happened to be right around the time of the BLM protest.

I had been expecting the usual personal differences and primary spats between supporters of candidates, including some of the arguments about "socialism" and "corporate sell outs."

But what I was not expecting were the racial divisions because, as a long time fan of Bernie I know that social justice for all has always been at the top of his agenda. It's like, er, water and coffee go together.

And I was shocked and appalled at all of the outright statements and insinuations and distortions that Bernie is a racist, or racially insensitive or "has a problem with AAs." And describing his supporters as "racist white progressives" in those exact words.

Yeah, I got upset, and was shocked that this was being used as a wedge.

And I saw that same crap being spread and supported by the Clinton campaign, who started sending out surrogates to say, in effect "I support Clinton because Bernie is insensitive to AA's (Latinos, women)."

This campaign should have been about structural issues of concentration of wealth and power. Race is one aspect of that, but basically Clinton and Sanders are on the same side on issues of structural racism, despite the points of strength and weakness in that regard....Bernie's message of unifying to Lift Everyone Up is NOT the same as ignoring racial issues.

That was deflecting from the core issues of concentration of Wealth and Power, and seemed to me a lot like a mirror image what the GOP has been doing for years.