2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Kos: A Black Man's take on NN/BLM dustup: "Black Folks No on Bernie? Really?" [View all]gollygee
(22,336 posts)Clinton seems to be making fewer mistakes right now, but she's made some whoppers in the past and has almost certainly hired people to help her with this, and that was wise. Sanders should do the same.
Of course, that's all just my opinion and I'm a wealthy middle-aged white woman. No pro on the voting patterns of African Americans. I have to rely on polls, but that information seems clear. Sanders has some work to do if he's going to attract African American voters. He might very well be better on race issues than she is, but he has to communicate that. If he doesn't talk about it, and pretty often, many African American voters might not have confidence in him. I am not sure why he isn't talking about it. Either he doesn't think he should have to, or he's afraid of scaring off white voters? I hope not the latter because that would make me switch to O'Malley. (I will vote for Clinton in the regular election if she gets the nomination, but I don't intend to vote for her in the primary.) If it's the former, he needs to re-think things because he won't win that way, even with my vote. I imagine there could be some other reason, like he's new to national elections and this didn't occur to him. He needs to step up his game in any case.
The person who wrote this appears to be one of the 21% of African Americans not supporting Clinton.
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/bernie-sanders/
On the Democratic side Hillary Clinton is dominant. She gets 64% to 14% for Bernie Sanders, 8% for Jim Webb, 5% for Lincoln Chafee, and 2% for Martin O'Malley. Clinton has 79% support from African Americans, is over 60% with liberals, moderates, men, women, younger voters, and seniors, and is over 50% with whites, Hispanics, and middle aged voters.