When Smearing Bernie Sanders, Reality Doesn’t Matter, Only the Narrative.
During the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, Bernie Sanders was narrowly defeated by the presumptive front runner, Hillary Clinton. One of the key reasons for Clinton’s victory was her strong support among African American voters and women, especially older ones. There is basically no doubt about. When polling began to bear this out, Hillary Clinton surrogate, Obama cabinet member, and now DNC chairman Tom Perez, advised the Clinton campaign to use her stronger support with African American voters as ‘evidence’ that Bernie Sanders was a candidate with only white supporters and suffering from a “voter of color problem” on his campaign. This smear turned out to be highly effective, as the establishment media picked it up and and ran with it, despite the fact that polling data did not bear this out. Poll after poll during the campaign (and ever since) has shown that voters of color (African American and Latino) have higher approval ratings for Bernie Sanders than do white voters.
Now Bernie Sanders is running again in the Democratic primary for 2020 in a field is totally different. Whereas in 2016, it was basically a two way race between Clinton and Sanders. now there are over a dozen candidates running and several other major potential candidates openly hinting at a run. Once again, the media has been working hard to portray Bernie as having a problem with voters of color despite very strong evidence to the contrary. In fact, Bernie Sanders is performing very well with voters of color considering the very crowded field.
Among officially declared candidates he is leading with African Americans voters and Latino voters. According to a recent poll, Sanders has support from roughly one-third of Latino voters, the strongest of any candidate. Sanders’ support among African American voters was around one-quarter, which puts him second only to former Vice President Joe Biden (who has 36% support), who has not officially entered the race yet.
In a poll that included 16 candidates, these numbers are very impressive. In fact, when compared to other candidates officially in the race, Bernie is beating has 2.5 times the support among Latino voters than the next candidates (Beto O’Rourke, 13%). He also has 2.5 times the support among African Americans voters than the next candidate (Kamala Harris, 11%). These numbers beg the question, why are there so many articles saying claiming that Bernie has a problem winning voters of color? And similarly, where aren’t there more articles asking why the other 16 candidates are having problems wooing voters of color? Logic dictates that if Sanders’ 25% support among African Americans is a sign of trouble, clear Cory Booker’s 8% is much more problematic. Or Harris’ 11%. Or Warren’s 4%. Or O’Rourke’s 6%. Or Buttigieg’s 1%. Good luck finding articles that ask that question.
It is also worth noting that Sanders’ overall support in the poll, which was 25%, was pretty consistent among all categories. He has support from 25% of men and 25% of women. He has support from 25% of African Americans and 33% of Latino voters. This should, in theory, dispel the myth that Sander’s support is overwhelmingly coming from male voters.
Sadly, the numbers seem irrelevant. The media and the establishment have their narrative and seem fully committed to it despite the lack of supporting evidence.
