Bernie Sanders often deals with objections to his presidential aspirations from all sides of the political spectrum, those on the Right who believe Sanders wants to turn America into some kind of Communist dictatorship, Centrist Democrats who label Bernie as racist, sexist and unable to win a general election, with people from the Left who suggest that he isn't progressive enough. However, one particular critique of Sanders is both extremely exaggerated and in some cases, a flat out lie.
Venture over to Twitter and read the tweets of people who use the '#NeverBernie' and '#StillWithHer' hashtags and you'll notice a similar theme: "Bernie Sanders cannot appeal to People of Colour".
It must be mentioned that Sanders does indeed have a problem marketing his message to groups of non-white Americans that he will need to win over in order to fulfill those aforementioned presidential aspirations, but this is a hurdle that Sanders should be able to conquer.
This particular critique of Sanders ranges from simply not having enough appeal to such voters because his policies won't help them in anyway - which, is the flat out lie - to being a literal white supremacist.
In actual fact, Sanders' policies will help non-white Americans immensely, should it be Medicare for All, a $15/hr minimum wage or Criminal Justice Reform. 17.2M Latino-Americans and 12.2M African-Americans had no insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act in 2015, Black-White wage gaps are at a higher level as of 2016 than they were in 1979, with black males earning 22% less than white males and black women earning 11.7% less than their white females counterparts and 3,200 American prisoners are serving life sentences for nonviolent crimes such as shoplifting, 65% of those are African-American.
You wouldn't know any of this should you decide to stumble into this deep dark hole of Twitter, however. Self-anointed defenders of the Democratic Party such as Sally Albright often throw around words like misogyny, racism and white supremacy when talking about the American Left in order to stifle any form of actual debate. Ragarork Lobster, Sally Albright, Candice Aiston, Dane Weeks, Marcus Johnson and Peter Daou, among many others, have never actually explained how Sanders and his supporters are what they claim, it's just something they've created and are now acting as if it's true. A 'strawman' is the correct terminology, I believe.
Venture over to Twitter and read the tweets of people who use the '#NeverBernie' and '#StillWithHer' hashtags and you'll notice a similar theme: "Bernie Sanders cannot appeal to People of Colour".
It must be mentioned that Sanders does indeed have a problem marketing his message to groups of non-white Americans that he will need to win over in order to fulfill those aforementioned presidential aspirations, but this is a hurdle that Sanders should be able to conquer.
This particular critique of Sanders ranges from simply not having enough appeal to such voters because his policies won't help them in anyway - which, is the flat out lie - to being a literal white supremacist.
In actual fact, Sanders' policies will help non-white Americans immensely, should it be Medicare for All, a $15/hr minimum wage or Criminal Justice Reform. 17.2M Latino-Americans and 12.2M African-Americans had no insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act in 2015, Black-White wage gaps are at a higher level as of 2016 than they were in 1979, with black males earning 22% less than white males and black women earning 11.7% less than their white females counterparts and 3,200 American prisoners are serving life sentences for nonviolent crimes such as shoplifting, 65% of those are African-American.
You wouldn't know any of this should you decide to stumble into this deep dark hole of Twitter, however. Self-anointed defenders of the Democratic Party such as Sally Albright often throw around words like misogyny, racism and white supremacy when talking about the American Left in order to stifle any form of actual debate. Ragarork Lobster, Sally Albright, Candice Aiston, Dane Weeks, Marcus Johnson and Peter Daou, among many others, have never actually explained how Sanders and his supporters are what they claim, it's just something they've created and are now acting as if it's true. A 'strawman' is the correct terminology, I believe.
In reality, Bernie Sanders is more of a popular figure among African-Americans than he is white Americans, 73-52%, as well as having a 58% approval rating with women, compared to 55% with men. Funnily enough, besides Democrats, Sanders approval rating of 73% among African-Americans is his highest and whites are the demographic in which he experiences his lowest poll numbers. Not too shabby for an apparent white supremacist.
Lastly, there's an extreme level of irony in claiming that a Sanders/Warren 2020 ticket is "too white" when you look at who Sanders ran against in 2016. Hillary Clinton and her eventual Vice Presidential pick, Tim Kaine. Two of the most corporate, morally bankrupt, plain vanilla Democrats there are.
If "whiteness" is something you consider when you decide who to vote for, why in the world would you vote for these two?
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