So, Sanders goes to an AA church, and they don't fall heads-over-heels for him

[sahel]

56. I suspect that he would if he were up against the Clintons in a presidential primary

after all, O'Malley had the same ability to garner black support at the local level but went nowhere with AA voters in a nationwide primary.

Its very difficult to build the sort of networks on the fly that the Clintons have had thirty-odd years to produce. Obama had the same problem trying to crack the Latino vote in the primary in 2008. Ironically Sanders is doing much better amongst Latinos than Obama did back then.

The interesting thing is that "Obama's Latino problem" garnered relatively little attention at the time, although "Obama's Jewish problem" generated innumerable op-eds, much the same as "Sanders' black problem" does now. The fact is that riffing off that old Brooklyn frisson is a good, cheap, controversy-baiting headline that generates a lot of clicks. Witness this place, for instance.