Full disclosure, I’m a Clinton supporter. If anyone wants to check my history, I’m not new here, so no need for the “welcoming” posts.
But while I support Clinton, and Obama before her, I am first and foremost a progressive. I would truly like to see an authentic movement of and for the underprivileged in this country. And unlike some, I don’t think that a movement like that is necessarily incompatible with electoral politics, or with presidential campaigns, as many have suggested. But whether such a movement is tied to a campaign or not, I would love to see it.
This week on Meet the Press, Bernie said the following:
Of the 25 states with the highest levels, 17 have held primaries so far — and Hillary Clinton has won 16 of those contests.
When asked why he thinks he's losing in those states, Sanders responded, "Well, because poor people don't vote. I mean, that's just a fact."
In an interview airing on NBC's "Meet the Press" this Sunday, Sanders described voter turnout among low-income Americans as "a sad reality of American society, and that's what we have to transform."
Sanders is right here. And if you go to the link and watch the video (MSNBC video won’t embed for me), you can see that he is being earnest and sincere in the way he talks about it. He is not being flippant.
That said, there’s something missing here. And it goes to the heart of the main failing with two major issues in Sanders’ campaign: He isn’t connecting with the poor people that are voting, and he isn’t connecting with the poor people who aren’t voting. And it isn’t the poor’s fault, and it isn’t the system’s fault.
I expect some defensiveness from Sanders’ supporters, but I do hope the remainder of this diary is taken in good faith. We are at the end of the campaign. Bernie supporters shouldn’t be reacting this defensively about this stuff, they should be learning lessons for how to win next time.
So with that said….
There are two major problems with what Bernie says here that need to be rectified for a movement like his revolution ever to work. The first point is about where Bernie is and isn’t succeeding, and the second point is about why.
1) Clinton is beating him in the poorest neighborhoods. It’s just true. Wherever we have demographic or precinct level data, it is true. Where Bernie is performing well in poorer areas, it is often in caucuses with low-turnout that make it hard for us to determine who is actually voting. Let me put it this way. In my city/state, DC, the poorest neighborhoods are going to vote overwhelmingly for Clinton. East of the Anacostia River, Trinidad, Northeast, etc. Bernie’s vote is likely to come from higher income young professionals in the gentrified parts of Northwest. In NYC, we know a lot about neighborhood breakdowns — Clinton won the Bronx solidly, she did well in all of the poorest parts of Brooklyn and Queens. Bernie won the parts of Brooklyn and Queens closest to Manhattan, the gentrifying parts. He won Green Point solidly, he won Astoria, he won Williamsburg. Look, you can quibble with exit poll data all you want, but anyone who is paying attention knows that in primary states, the rural south and the poorer areas of the cities are going overwhelmingly for Clinton. Bernie isn’t reaching the folks his campaign says are his natural constituency. And no, you’re not losing Brownsville in Brooklyn or West Baltimore on Tuesday because of “closed primaries”. I’m not trying be snarky about this, but if you don’t at least start by acknowledging that you’re losing the communities that the revolution is supposed to be for, you can’t have a successful movement.
2) The condescension in his statement on MTP is dripping so thick that it is soaking the floor of the studio. Yes, he does say that he is losing because poor people don’t vote. And his supporters will say that this is just obvious because poor people don’t vote and he is the obvious poor person’s candidate. But setting aside the fact that when they do vote, they mostly vote for Hillary — there is a horribly condescending and paternalistic attitude here. If you don’t see it, you may be part of the problem for why the campaign is losing these votes. It isn’t the job of poor people to turn out and vote for a candidate that thinks he represents their interests. It is the job of that candidate to listen to, reach out to, connect with, and earn the trust of those voters.
A lot of the Bernie supporters had a grand old time mocking Al Giordano’s tweets the other day, but this is what he means. This is what organizing people is all about. It isn’t the poor’s job to organize themselves for you. Your job is to go directly to them, on the ground, and listen to their stories and get the buy-in you need to be successful. It requires hard work in poorer communities, not on the internet.
When Obama ran in 2008 there was MAJOR skepticism about him, particularly in poorer areas. What he did was send volunteers to early states in particular and just have them organize neighborhoods and communities using classic Alinsky techniques. The volunteers would get a group of 8 or 10 people together in someone’s house and have people share their stories, their struggles, their priorities and what mattered to them. The volunteers were trained in organizing. They would listen. They would bring the information back to the campaign. They built outreach strategies around how to reach these people. And they built trust. This is organizing. This is how you get a disengaged population to vote for you. You don’t do it on twitter, you don’t do it on Reddit. You can’t do it from your coffee shop in the Mission District or your apartment in Columbia Heights. You can’t do it by designing graphics for t shirts, or designing memes for fighting with your friends on facebook. You have to get your hands dirty and work. And you have to be OK with that work being totally thankless for months. But most of all you have to be willing to listen to them and listen to them even if they tell you that no, Wall Street and the breakup of the banks or campaign finance aren’t the number one concern in their lives — gun violence is; or the availability of good jobs is; or the lack of supermarkets in their neighborhood is; or the fact that the parks in their communities aren’t safe is — And then when they tell you that, you can’t just get on the stump and keep lecturing about the issue that matters most to you. It’s your job to get them to see the day-in and day-out reality of their own lives in your campaign.
It is easy to say that your campaign to benefit the poorest Americans is failing because poor people don’t vote. It blames structural problems and let’s you off the hook as a campaign for your own failings.
But if you really care about building a movement, this quote from Sanders should be an eye-opener. It should trigger a discussion about what went wrong in this people’s campaign, and what the movement needs to do going forward. It is the movement’s job to get poor people engaged in it. If the movement or campaign does not recognize that as its core organizing principle from day one, that movement isn’t going anywhere.
I know that this isn’t going to be a popular diary with Sanders’ supporters. Although it isn’t meant to spike the football, it does bring up some painful things and it’s coming from a Clinton supporter so that makes it worse. But I’d urge folks not to be defensive. Let’s talk about what’s next. Let’s talk about what an authentic progressive movement (not just for the poor, but OF the poor) might look like. How can this be integrated into electoral politics without compromising it’s purpose? How can it effectively leverage online tools without distracting from the core need to do face-to-face organizing? I don’t have all the answers, but I think its a conversation that we should be starting as the Sanders campaign winds down. What’s next?