By now, just about everyone knows that Senator Sanders has explained why he is in such a hole on pledged delegates is because he got his clocked clean (from Thursday’s debate) in the Deep South which is the most conservative part of the country (interview with Larry Wilmore). Charles M. Blow, in this New York Times column, rightly takes him to task on those remarks. Himself a child of the Deep South, notes that most people would apply that term to his native Louisiana, and Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. He also notes that with the exception of Oklahoma, Sanders lost the South as a whole. Then he notes:
It also must be pointed out that there is a racial dimension to Sanders’ dismissal, however inadvertent it is.
Blow reminds us that in each of the Deep South states for which we have exit polls, a majority of the voters were Black, a key Democratic constituency (no exit polls for Lousiana), whereas the only state of his recent wins for which we have exit polls, Wisconsin, had less than 10% of primary voters who were Black.
As you read this column, you might, as I did, remember that Blow started with his newspaper doing graphics for data: he knows how to dig into data.
He quotes Nate Silver
“Clinton has won or is favored to win almost every state where the turnout demographics strongly resemble those of Democrats as a whole.”
And there is more data.
Of the 7 states that Sanders had recently won,
four haven’t voted for the Democratic candidate in a general election since they went for Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
The only Southern state that has had that long of a drought for Democrats is Oklahoma — yes, the one southern state that Sanders won.
As for the racial element, there is this paragraph:
It is true that blacks in general can be just as conservative as Republicans on some moral issues. But blacks tend to be quite liberal on the question of the size and role of the government. For instance, a 2012 Pew Research Center report found that “78 percent of blacks support government guarantees of food and shelter, compared with 52 percent of whites.” That position should have meshed well with Sanders’s expansive ideas.
So why didn’t they? Blow offers the following observation:
Sanders simply has to own the fact that he didn’t sell his message well in the South, and those voters never warmed to his vision or his ability to execute it.
But he still needs to embrace and excite those voters should he become the nominee. He would need them for his much-ballyhooed political revolution. They will have to show up and flip Senate and House seats as well as governorships and control of statehouses.
That includes not just the Deep South, but those states where Sanders lost in the South that are clearly swing states: NC, VA, and FL. Blow reminds us of their status as swing states, and I remind you that should the Democrats win those three a Republican cannot win. I also remind you that Obama won NC in 2008 and the other two both times.
Blow also talks about the need Sanders would have to motivate Blacks to turn out for him should he get the nomination. Might I suggest that having so far failed to really connect with that community, he might have as great a problem there as some Sanders supporters argue Clinton would in motivating his young and independent voters to turn out for her?
He also talks about how we have seen change, even in Deep South Louisiana, where since John Bel Edwards replaced Bobby Jindal we have seen an expansion of Medicaid covering hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom I would expect are themselves Black.
Blow then turns the language of Sanders back on him:
That’s how revolutions work: From the ground up, in unlikely places and against the odds. A revolution is not evidenced by your success in territory you already control, but in territory that you don’t.
But that is only a preface to his final paragraph, which I think should be directed not merely to Sanders and his campaign, but to all journalists dealing with them in the event they continue to press this lame excuse:
Sanders must abandon this “Deep South” talking point immediately. He’s better than this, and he should know better.
I hope he does. Somehow I have my doubts. And yes, he should know better.