Bernie Sanders
Related: About this forumHow Is Saying 'Poor People Don't Vote' Disparaging To Poor People?.....
Joy Reid just say that Bernie's comment is disparaging to poor people and I completely disagree with her.
What is disparaging to poor people is keeping them poor. They've been poor so long that they see no hope of ever climbing out of poverty. They believe that the deck is stacked against them and they've been demotivated to vote - because they believe their vote won't count. They lost confidence in the system. They have been made to lose self-respect.
Couple that with the voter suppression going on in this country and you get a block of Americans that don't vote. They can't afford the ID's required in some states. They can't get to the polls for lack of transportation. Polling places are shut down in their areas.
It is all this that is disparaging to poor people. Not Bernie stating the truth that 'Poor people don't vote'.
That is what Bernie's campaign is all about - lifting those that are poor, elderly, disabled, students, middle class and righting the wrongs with income inequality.
Hiraeth
(4,805 posts)in this rigged/broken system.
abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)astrophuss42
(290 posts)He was more of a wordsmith, but that would only give more material to distort. What I notice, though, is that there's a collective touchiness around the word poor in this country. Seems there's an outcry any time he mentions it, odd since so many people with lower incomes exist. Oh right, most are busy trying to eke out any semblance of a life while being actively kept from voting.
TexasBushwhacker
(20,165 posts)Saying "Poor people don't vote." is a shock to the system. Yes, there are people who are offended (there always are) but it also makes people think "He's right. What are we going to do about it?"
Baobab
(4,667 posts)and unfortunately, also kills a hell of a lot of people.
Look at the list here: http://williamblum.org/books/killing-hope/#toc
Autumn
(45,042 posts)They truth berns them.
bullimiami
(13,083 posts)It was his campaigns job to get his voters to the polls.
If he thought he has strong support among the poor he needed to turn them out.
The voter ID complaint is valid as is the fact that there are impediments to voting that impact the poor more strongly but I think it has been a fact in the past that you need extra effort to overcome those. It should have been expected.
So the complaint is weak. The fact is he has done well but not well enough to win.
TBF
(32,041 posts)and why exactly would you do that?
Do you think the voter sabotage and suppression are his fault? Do you think it is his fault that folks have given up?
bullimiami
(13,083 posts)To go back and say poor people don't vote and thats one of the reasons I didn't win is sad.
TBF
(32,041 posts)and they were restricted from voting for many reasons. Yes there are many who can't even get there due to work schedules and various other issues. But in the meantime please stop spreading false memes. The idea that young people are giving millions of dollars to Bernie & filling stadiums for Bernie, but then surprisingly have no idea they need to vote?? That's just BS and I think we know where those arguments are coming from.
jillan
(39,451 posts)very well and that hurt him? Or that the south is more conservative? IT IS! It's common knowledge that those are red states.
I know people around here took his words, twisted them to make it a racist statement.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)It's been 50 years since Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act -- the law prohibiting racial discrimination against voters.
But there is still a voting problem in the United States: Many people who live in poverty just aren't going to the polls.
Less than half of those who made under $20,000 voted in 2012. Meanwhile, voter participation for people who live in households with incomes of more than $75,000 was much higher at 77%.
It's clear that the system is leaving many people out -- especially the poor. So what is behind such dismal turnout among low-income voters?
http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/05/news/economy/poor-people-voting-rights/
Who Votes?
After studying 30 years of data at the state level, William Franko, Nathan Kelly and Christopher Witko could not find any year in which low-income voter turnout was higher than high-income voter turnout.7 Recent research by Benjamin Page, Larry Bartels, and Martin Gilens suggests that the super-rich members of the top 1 and .1 percent turned out to vote in 2008 at a whopping 99 percent. This compares to only 49 percent turnout for citizens earning less than $10,000.8 In midterm elections, the voting gap is even more pronounced. In 2010, only 26.7 percent of citizens earning less than $10,000 voted, while 61.6 percent of those making $150,000 voted.9 Voter turnout is heavily biased towards high-income voters.
http://www.demos.org/publication/why-voting-gap-matters
wendylaroux
(2,925 posts)what a bunch of lying snakes h supporters are.
stillwaiting
(3,795 posts)From the best solution for poor people is what the media excels at doing.
Hope she needs pills to fall asleep at night because the alternative would mean something far worse.
TBF
(32,041 posts)LiberalArkie
(15,708 posts)need to be constantly changed. That is how you end up with a city being 70% poor and an administration of all white and an all white police department.
In the south a poor family will get kicked out because they missed a rent payment. How to you change your voter registration to your truck?
And if you are poor in the south voting is one go the last things on your mind. Do you spend your last tank of gas to drive to the county seat to change your address or do you use it to find a job? Are you going to pay to get a new drivers license to prove who you are and to prove your address? If you are staying at a relatives house how do prove that is your address, the electric bill will be in someone elses name.
Nope the poor do not vote, not because they don't want to, but because they system does not want them to.
It would be so simple to be able to vote with a drivers license and the clerk at the voting place just ask you "what is your current address" and give you the ballot for that address.
But our system is still based on the free-white-land owning-male.
felix_numinous
(5,198 posts)and their not voting is because of no confidence in having any voice. What happens is that the only way the rich can rationalize denying goods and services to others is to BLAME and dehumanize them somehow.
Saying young people are too stupid, or poor people don't vote, or even blaming the millions of people who don't vote--ignores the obvious. People ARE smart enough to recognize it when the rich people are just helping themselves to the whole pie, and lying to them about this being a democracy.
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
lasttrip
(1,013 posts)Thanks for the post global1.
Peace.
LT
Jubilant18
(62 posts)I think if he had more time and fair msm coverage, his message would inspire more people of every income level to vote for him.
The MTP panel, except for Jose Belart-Diaz, attacked Bernie with glee. Chuck Todd's question was designed to give them the ammunition they needed to attack Bernie.
It's not going to stop me from supporting Bernie now and always. Go Bernie!
Ed Suspicious
(8,879 posts)QC
(26,371 posts)This is just more of the same.
The numbers bear out what he is saying. The less money people make, the less likely they are to vote. That's a fact.
But when one's campaign is all about slander and tone-policing, facts don't matter.
Califonz
(465 posts)Many poor people can't vote even if they wanted to.
Response to global1 (Original post)
watergatorman0123456 This message was self-deleted by its author.
Response to watergatorman0123456 (Reply #24)
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djean111
(14,255 posts)Easily ignored, but should be banned from the group, IMO.
djean111
(14,255 posts)supporting Hillary. A candidate who is a Third Way corporate 1% warmonger? - not going to happen.
And - bye!
Response to watergatorman0123456 (Reply #24)
watergatorman0123456 This message was self-deleted by its author.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)if you've been around DU for a year, that should be learned.
It makes talking in generalities hard, which is why much of DU turns into reductio ad anecdotum and unarguable personal opinion/preference.
silvershadow
(10,336 posts)deathrind
(1,786 posts)But that does not matter to some. Any opportunity real or imagined to bash Bernie is all that matters.
Just like yesterday with the conversation Rosario Dawson was involved in where the subject of bullying was discussed. Miss/Mrs Dawson mentioned Miss Lewinski in that conversation which was apropos since Miss Lewinski is a very vocal advocate for anti-bullying. However the context of that discussion was not relevant. Simply mentioning Miss Lewinski was all the reason needed for the generation of multiple threads disparaging Bernie claiming he had reach new lows in his campaign.
I have always believed the Democratic Party was a little more mature, level headed, informed of facts and open minded to listening to all points of views on issues. This primary season has caused me to readjust that belief. The comments I have read here on DU (from both Bernie and HRC supporters) have simply proven my belief untrue.
eridani
(51,907 posts)Apparently it's gotten worse since 1988.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/income-gap-at-the-polls-113997
Does this mean that Galbraith was right all along? Not exactly. The reason for the recent shift in the findings is not that the early studies were wrong, but that the preferences of voters and nonvoters are becoming increasingly divergent. In a paper published in 2007 and later expanded into a 2013 book, Who Votes Now, political scientists Jan Leighley and Jonathan Nagler found that wide gaps between voters and nonvoters have opened up when it comes to class-based issues. They argued further that the seeds of these differences were apparent in earlier data, but Wolfinger and Rosenstone overlooked the gaps by focusing on broad ideological labels (liberal or conservative) rather than specific policies. Voters, Leighley and Nagler found, are more economically conservative; whereas non-voters favor more robust unions and more government spending on things like health insurance and public schools
.
Other data collected on the national and state level support Leighley and Naglers thesis. A 2012 Pew survey found that likely voters were split 47 percent to 47 percent between Obama and Romney while non-voters preferred Obama 59 percent to 24 percent, a 35 point margin. A 2006 Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) study found that non-voters were more likely to support higher taxes and more government-funded services. They were also more likely to oppose Proposition 13 (a constitutional amendment which limits property taxes), dislike then -Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and support affordable housing.
It so happens that the gap between voters and non-voters breaks down strongly along class lines. In the 2012 election, 80.2 percent of those making more than $150,000 voted, while only 46.9 percent of those making less than $10,000 voted. This class bias, is so strong that in the three elections (2008, 2010 and 2012) I examined, there was only one instance of a poorer income bracket turning out at a higher rate than the bracket above them. (In the 2012 election, those making less than $10,000 were slightly more likely to vote than those making between $10,000 and $14,999.) On average, each bracket turned out to vote at a rate 3.7 percentage points higher than the bracket below it.
This class bias is a persistent feature of American voting: A study of 40 years of state-level data finds no instance in which there was not a class bias in the electorate favoring the richin other words, no instance in which poorer people in general turned out in higher rates than the rich. That being said, class bias has increased since 1988, just as wide gaps have opened up between the opinions of non-voters and those of voters.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Babel_17
(5,400 posts)Your second paragraph nails it, imo.