We “card-carrying” democratic socialists needn’t feel discouraged and stay home as though voting were a substitute for community organizing.
We can consider what polling tells us for spotting organizing issues between elections.
Democratic socialist issues do need to poll over — way over — 8% with African-American voters to win many statewide or national elected offices.
Nate Silver wasn’t wrong about that conclusion. It’s useful, if hard-won, information.
Bernie won Kansas, apparently?
EDIT: Nebraska too, by the looks of it.
There’s an explanation of why Bernie is having problems with Minorities.
I think that article is a bit too academic, as if most voters are historians or social scientists. If Marx didn’t see any particular racial issues that needed to be addressed - but thought that equality was basically a good thing that would achieve itself - that would put him on about the same plane for racism as an average westerner today; about 100 years ahead of his time. I’m sure that within socialist groups that have been lots of disappointed racial minorities, but I imagine they would be disappoint to find out that socialists aren’t as progressive as they would hope, not that they are more racist than the rest of society.
I like what Sanders himself has to say on these equality issues. I appreciate that when he was criticized by Black Lives Matters protesters he responded by meeting with some representatives from BLM and adding a racial justice plank to his platform that addressed specific issues with hugely disproportionate effect on minorities.
But I feel like every time you hear about black voters not backing Sanders, you hear some white guy trying to 'splain why they should be. He marched with MLK, didn’t you know! They come across about as well as Albright did with her “special place in hell” comment on women who don’t vote for Clinton.
It’s not the band I hate, it’s their fans.
Hypothesis: Bernie is not going to do well with black conservatives for the same reasons he’s not going to do well with white conservatives. He’s going to struggle with black moderates for the same reasons he’s going to struggle with white moderates. The difference here is white conservatives don’t vote in the Democratic primary process. The entire black population is in the Democratic coalition. They will skew toward the middle compared to white Democrats. And Hillary is the absolute middle of the middle of the middle.
Thank you. I think that’s a crucial set of ideas to consider — some version of that article should be required basic orientation for DSA and Sanders campaign organizers.
We’ve known at least since 1968 or sooner that race and gender do not seem to reduce to economics as predicted by old timey leftist theory.
Plenty of #BlackLivesMatter activists tried to revive the issue with the Bernie bros months before the primaries really picked up momentum.
And yet . . . South Carolina still happened. It was like watching the Titanic hit the ice berg.
OTOH, there was an interview with the head of NGO assisting black folks in which he said how it was professionally costly to go against Hillary, and took a lot of guts to make a stand; it goes against a lot of incentives.
Rappers and academics are free to back Bernie, but community organisations are somewhat in thrall.
I think you’re onto something. One day we woke up and all the community-based organizations were talking about outcomes and branding. We need to get under the hood and retrofit some old school community organizing gears in there.
Early days, but Sanders looks like he’s doing better than he polled in MI.
(looks like a really big turnout, too?)
Ah - almost no results from Wayne County yet, so that’s probably why it looks good for Sanders.
Let’s just gloss over MS.
(OT;Rubio is a dead man walking)
Bernie wins Michigan! Amazing, considering he was down 20 points in polls. Nate Silver said he was 99% sure to lose Michigan lol
Yay! He’ll only net -10 or so tonight! What a huge victory!
Having a nice little party for one over there, in your fancy party hat?
It’s always a party with a beer hat on!
As a Michiganian who voted yesterday, I know I’m down to party!
(Ok, it’s maybe too soon in primary season to use that gif. There’s still a long way to go in this contest. But considering the “popular wisdom” said Bernie would lose my state and was all but out of the race, even a small victory feels like something to celebrate.)
::whompwhomp::
For the first time since I moved to this state, I voted in the Democratic primary. Because I finally had someone to vote for. Obviously, I wasn’t alone. Wonder how many people who will vote Republican in the fall voted in the Democratic primary this time in order to stick it to Clinton?
Yeah forget Nate Silver. He is 99% irrelevant at this point.
I’ve had it up to here with these lying, stupid predicting jerks who are trying to throw the race to their choice of candidate!
Bernie Sanders, the best kind of 1%
I don’t doubt Nate Silver’s stats prowess, but you can’t reliably predict the future from the past. Sun coming up tomorrow is a safe bet. Voting patterns, on the other hand, change drastically every decade or two and we act like they are written in stone.
