Why Clinton Is Connecting With Black Voters—and Sanders Isn't

[rbrnmw]

BENNETTSVILLE, S.C.—Everyone agrees that African Americans are the pivotal demographic in Saturday’s South Carolina Democratic primary. But the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton campaigns are working to court that group in sharply divergent ways. It’s the difference between huge rallies and small gatherings. Upstate versus Pee Dee. Anecdote versus abstraction. Their approaches are as different as night and day—or, one might say, black and white.

Over the last few months, Sanders has incorporated a great deal about race into his stump speech. His discussion of racism in America is abstract—it deals with arrest rates and incarceration figures, wealth gaps and unemployment rates. Though Clinton is often described as a policy wonk and derided for her (very real) failures as a retail politician, she has cleverly chosen to focus more on concrete and personal stories as a means of addressing race, a strategy that was on display in the Palmetto State this week.

[NurseJackie]

1. Because Hillary is a better candidate (and a better choice) than Bernie ...

... in my opinion, and (apparently) in the opinion of a significant number of others as well.

[rbrnmw]

2. yep been talking to South Carolinian's all week

White men and younger white women skew heavily for Bernie, Hillary has older women and most AA's, millennial AA's are about 55/45 Clinton. That is just the people I talked to in Columbia.

[Matariki]

3. Sanders is getting more & more black intellectuals' support

He's suffered from a near year long media black out. That's changed.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/02/24/black-thinkers-bernie-sanders-theyve-studied-clintons-true-cost

http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2016/02/the_clinton_legacy_decimated_black_america_so_why_are_we_still_voting_for.html