Bernie Sanders and the Peter Principle

[F4lconF16]

215. Because they're scared.

I think there's a number of things that go into this.

First, we have to remember that many disenfranchised whites, and white men in particular, see Sanders as their chance to have issues fixed that have been affecting them. While those same things have tended to affect communities of color far more severely, the collapse of the predominantly white middle class is foremost in their minds. Note the particularly prevalent discussion of FDR as a liberal icon--despite the fact that his policies were very dominantly lifting up white men with less regard to non-economic issues.

When their hope is challenged, they tend to react defensively. When Sanders is associated with the term white supremacy (despite the fact that those words were a challenge to white liberal complacency and not so much a challenge to Sanders), they immediately react to protect that hope. Centering on PoC to them represents a movement away from their needs. Resistance to their candidate--of any sort--is resistance towards having their needs taken care of.

That happens to some degree to any privileged person when they are faced with losing that privilege. As PoC advocate for their equality, those in power are going to resist having the barrier between them broken. This isn't always a conscious decision to resist those demands for equality, but it invariably happens, even to those focused on being aware of their privilege.

Hence they attempt to push their candidate despite his flaws, using all manner of tactics, from the racially browbeating "He marched with MLK" to the diminishing "Economics and social issues are always linked", something any PoC has always known.

Then, of course, we have the openly racist white reactionaries that have always been around. They're the ones who scream, "Taze her." Unfortunately, the privileged tend to ignore that, resulting in the dynamic we saw after Seattle and in the behavior online.

Note that I'm not saying all of his supporters are white and male, just that the more reactionary voices tend to be found within that demographic.

Of course, I think you know all this already and the question of "why" was simply rhetorical