Bernie Sanders' spoken-word album

Shatner to run for Canadian PM?

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The left has been battling cultural tone deafness for more than a 100 years. :smile:

It’s a battle worth winning — now more than ever.

“… Sanders continues to pick up less than 10 percent of black voters’ support. …”

Link: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/bernie-sanders-youre-no-barack-obama/

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Sanders absolutely needs to earn the votes of African Americans.

That being said, with the exception of the Green candidate, Jill Stein, no one else but Sanders has listened seriously to organizations such as BLM and changed his policy platforms in accordance with their discussions on these issues. Even then, he needs to earn their votes. Most other democrats just expect the black vote, at least Sanders has shown a willingness to engage with the community and work to address their specific issues rather than just assuming talking vaguely about economics will win them over.

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Agreed.

The good people at fivethirtyeight.com argue that more — much more — is needed to connect the campaign to African-American voters.

For those of us who support the Senator’s approach to democracy, the need is urgent.

“… [Sen. Sanders] needs to find a way to cut into Clinton’s support among African-Americans. Sanders is pulling in less than 10 percent of the black vote. Obama had about five times as much at this point. If Clinton continues to win 70 percent of the black vote, Sanders will likely get stopped in South Carolina. If, however, he can cut into that advantage, he could build a wave of momentum. …”

Link: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/this-is-how-bernie-sanders-could-win/

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Why does Clinton have that African-American support?

(Is there anything beyond name recognition as the highest profile Democrat?)

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I’d suspect it’s the same “I’ll hold my nose and vote for the establishment” candidate that’s true across many different communities…

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This interview with Cornel West about the new generation provides an explanation and suggests that the time is right for a strong new message:

“…There is not just a rekindling, but a re-invigoration taking place among the younger generation that enacts and enables prophetic fire. We’ve been in an ice age. If you go from the 1960s and 1970s — that’s my generation. But there was also an ice age called the neoliberal epoch, an ice age where it was no longer a beautiful thing to be on fire. It was a beautiful thing to have money. It was a beautiful thing to have status. It was a beautiful thing to have public reputation without a whole lot of commitment to social justice, whereas the younger generation is now catching the fire of the generation of the 1960s and 1970s. …”

Link: http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2015/08/19/cornel-west-the-fire-of-a-new-generation/?referrer=

Maybe Sen. Sanders will update his arts initiative by now cohosting an NWA movie screening? Or, better, invite Dre to cosponsor an arts fundraiser in LA with Peace Over Violence for gender violence prevention among WOC?

[quote=“lgoldberg, post:7, topic:64231”]
Link: Senator Sanders, You’re No Barack Obama | FiveThirtyEight
[/quote]I would certainly agree that Sanders needs more black support and support from POC in general. That’s not in dispute.

However, FiveThirtyEight (climate change denial fiasco) is increasingly losing their credibility on Sanders as time goes on.

For example, Nate Silver in his August 21st editorial on Sanders, claims they took a break from their usual Sanders bashing to make this very telling statement:

I’m pretty sure that Sanders can’t beat Clinton head-to-head — he’s losing to her badly now, after all —

Now, let’s take a look at that poll he linked to within his words “losing to her badly”:

This is a dramatic, steady climb for Sanders while Clinton is in a steady decline… This is not showing Sanders in the process of “losing badly” to her.

What Nate linked to isn’t a sign of a candidate that’s in the process of “losing badly” to Hillary Clinton. And, it really doesn’t look like Hillary Clinton is in the process of “winning” if steady trends are to mean anything in this world.

I could understand if Nate had said that Sanders is still far behind Clinton (which is true) and not gaining “enough” to some metric he provides evidence for. However, for him to link to that chart while making the dismissive statement that makes Sanders appear to be in the process of “losing badly” to Hillary is rather disingenuous.

Sanders is making rapid gains on Hillary week after week. If that is losing, then I hope Bernie Sanders continues to keep losing very badly indeed.

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[quote=“lgoldberg, post:12, topic:64231”]
This interview with Cornel West about the new generation provides an explanation and suggests that the time is right for a strong new message:
[/quote]Speaking of Cornel West:

//cdck-file-uploads-global.s3.dualstack.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/boingboing/original/3X/f/f/ff267290e1e10c170a6279c3ddad93dbf66d5f47.jpg

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Yes, Iowa and New Hampshire are looking better than expected. That’s good news. Let’s hope their GOTV builds momentum and manages to organize enough voters in South Carolina — esp. POC.

The Bernie Sanders Surge Appears To Be Over

Senator Sanders, You’re No Barack Obama

This Is How Bernie Sanders Could Win

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I don’t trust the credibility of those who continue to say that support from blacks and other people of color is low for Sanders. First of all, let’s take a look at Nate Silver (that’s linked above).

He also made this following bold claim earlier this month back on August 11th with his headline:

The Bernie Sanders Surge Appears To Be Over - link

Oh, really?

Um, this is all national polls as of literally yesterday:

Does this look like the death of Sanders’ steady climb and Hillary’s steady decline to you? Me neither. Also, please see below my response in this post to @lgoldberg where 5 days later a major, mainstream, national poll also shows that Sanders is continuing to make a steady, dramatic climb as of August 16th.

So, what else are the corporate media, pundits and establishment bean counters like Nate Silver getting drastically wrong?

Yeah, Nate Silver’s credibility surge appears to be over. This mainstream, national poll came about 5 days later after he made that bold claim.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/19/politics/cnn-orc-poll-democrats-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-joe-biden/index.html

Now, here’s my chart that shows where Sanders can be in that poll in a little over a month later IF the trend continues:

https://cdck-file-uploads-global.s3.dualstack.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/boingboing/optimized/3X/f/0/f0debd66feac206ca134a8836413d5b0915e8d4e_1_644x500.jpg
(Let’s also keep in mind that these polls results are skewed against Sanders due to the preponderance of cell phone users within his demographic among other factors)

And, here’s why I think some people react so weirdly to my chart even after reading my disclaimer at the bottom of it. That is, aside from some of Hillary’s minions who are simply terrified of that chart (and the hope it should give to Sanders’ supporters) and are driving trollies me on other parts of the Internet. What are these Hillary trollies afraid of, anyway? They keep saying Sanders has no chance of beating Hillary. You’d really, really think they’d have better things to do if that was the case.

"… Is the 2016 Democratic primary a sequel of 2008? The Bernie Sanders supporters filling up my email inbox think so.

Less than 24 hours after [fivethirtyeight.com] wrote that the Sanders surge had slowed, or even stopped, a poll came out showing Sanders with his first lead in any state (other than his home state of Vermont). That poll stirred a lot of responses (some kind and some not so kind). …

One poll is just one poll; it could be an outlier, or it could signal some shift in the race. We need more data to find out. But we have plenty of data to see a number of problems with comparing Sanders’s rise to President Obama’s toppling of Hillary Clinton in 2008. …"

Read more at link: Senator Sanders, You’re No Barack Obama | FiveThirtyEight


Nate Silver spoke truth to the Clinton campaign before almost anyone else. Organizing GOTV to POC — esp. in the south — should be the priority.


“… His [Sanders] ceiling is as high as his ability to gain among blacks and Latinos. Look at this latest YouGov poll that has a pretty decent sample among black voters. Sanders is currently getting … 4 percent. Should I say that one more time? 4 percent. You can’t win a Democratic nomination getting 4 percent of the black vote …”

Read more at link: This Is How Bernie Sanders Could Win | FiveThirtyEight

It’s not just one poll and it wasn’t an outlier. Just like with the climate change denial, Nate Silver FiveThirtyEight is going to have to admit they’ve screwed up on this one.

This is all the polls as of literally yesterday on the 21st:

(This is a close-up screenshot that shows Sanders very much still trending upwards at the same rate as before)

There is no stall in the surge for Sanders as Nate Silver has claimed was happening, nor in Hillary Clinton’s decline. Nate Silver clearly made yet another error on Bernie Sanders. Why are we still debating this fact?

Related?

“…It’s not just one poll and it wasn’t an outlier. Just like with the climate change denial, Nate Silver* is going to have to admit he’s screwed up on this one.”


I stand corrected on that. I will now revise to say that both Nate Silver and Harry Enten of FiveThirtyEight have made obvious errors against Sanders as I’ve shown above with facts and evidence (that includes Silver’s own link to polls).

Sanders hasn’t stalled. Again, I ask you… why are we still debating this obvious falsehood? All we have to do is look at the polls he linked to and watch their progression afterwards. His prediction was blatantly wrong. Sanders is still surging at the same rate as he’s been for months and he’s still doing so as of literally yesterday on the 21st.

The credibility of FiveThirtyEight has stalled when it comes to their persistent errors that work against Sanders (and reality). I don’t really blame them. Like many other establishment pundits, they simply don’t understand our 2015 grassroots dynamic that surrounds Sanders and it’s causing obvious cognitive dissonance as Sanders’ persistent gains on Hillary is proving the establishment wrong over time.

The corporate media and punditry is now provably wrong about Sanders. They bloviated (some might say propagated) repeatedly and vociferously that by now Sanders would be “dead in the water” and he was clearly a “flash in the pan”. Now, after Sanders’ sustained climb, I guess they’ll just slither under a rock of denial and hope some of us won’t notice that their credibility is shot to shit.

Why are progressives still listening to these people that still claim doom and gloom for Sanders after being so very wrong about him thus far?

Should we also listen to GW Bush’s advice and predictions on Iraq today? Makes just as much sense.


By the way, I’m willing to take some bets on Sanders here:

I’m willing to bet a ban via the mods, etc. – Anyone who is game, let me know and let’s discuss the conditions.

This [disconnect with African American constituents] isn’t going away. And Sanders isn’t being served by his increasingly strident online supporters, mostly white and male (some call them “bro-cialists” or “bro-gressives”), trolling his critics online. The tired online battling led to the amusing Twitter hastag #BernieSoBlack. Its organizer told Vox’s Dara Lind: “It seems like any time black people bring this up on Twitter, there’s just all these people who, I don’t know if they’re just sitting around searching his name on Twitter or something, they just come and get in your mentions and start harassing you, saying the same things over and over to you.”

Read more at link: http://www.salon.com/2015/07/20/bernie_sanders’_big_test_can_he_learn_from_his_netroots_nation_conflict_with_black_lives_matter_activists/

SALON: This [disconnect with African American constituents] isn’t going away.

Ok, why are you hitting reply to my post without responding to anything I mentioned within it?

Meanwhile, you’re linking to yet another article with flawed predictions.

That Salon article is a month old and the prediction was wrong. Since that article was published, Sanders’ campaign has connected with blacks and other people of color in very real, quantifiable ways. As time has goes on, the connection with his campaign and POC is getting increasingly more solid.

The true disconnect is between the media and reality.

SALON: And Sanders isn’t being served by his increasingly strident online supporters, mostly white and male (some call them “bro-cialists” or “bro-gressives”), driving trollies his critics online.

Gee, that’s strange. Maybe people that keep calling most of Sanders’ most strident online supporters who also critique some tactics of the BLM organization “white, male trollies” should actually look around social media first?

How about taking a look at this Facebook post with almost 7.5 MILLION views and many thousands of likes and look at who is at the very top of all the comments disparaging some of the BLM tactics while praising Bernie Sanders?

That’s strange. Shall we label all those people of color white, males trollies?

What about this small sampling of many thousands more from Twitter starting with the famous musician and activist Killer Mike?

https://twitter.com/OckyJ83/status/630225514641264640
https://twitter.com/Othniel4Prez/status/630240450130124800
https://twitter.com/SoftFirstTouch/status/630145815550361604

https://twitter.com/thisisnatols/status/630227842639396865
https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/630192031231549440
https://twitter.com/__savv/status/630222867217694720

https://twitter.com/4cHairChick/status/630256274676932612
https://twitter.com/YeaYouRite/status/630363932285399040
https://twitter.com/DEEPTHOUGHT1970/status/630250385366745088
https://twitter.com/KMKevinMartens/status/630283485752602625

And on and on…

I still very much support the Black Lives Matter movement overall, however, I’m also not going to pander and pretend some of our compatriots that tie themselves to the BLM organization haven’t made mistakes. And, those who treat the BLM movement like a child that can do no wrong should really practice some introspection on that node. I think that attitude is bordering on classic forms of racism itself.

Perhaps it’s time for some white progressives at Boing Boing along with some writers at Salon to stop pontificating from ivory towers while demonizing and mischaracterizing Sanders supporters — and instead actually start listening to ALL people of color instead of just those who are part of the most radical elements of the BLM organization?

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