In 1984 and 1988, I supported an African-American presidential candidate...

[Ken Burch]

...who was falsely and relentlessly accused of not caring about antisemitism.

This year, I am supporting a Jewish presidential candidate who has been falsely and relentlessly accused of not caring about racism.

In both cases, the accusations are largely pushed by white Christian centrist party hacks who feel entitled to lecture candidates from historically oppressed communities about the evils of prejudice.

[monicaangela]

1. Great article Ken Burch

I see absolutely nothing wrong with presenting the truth. What was their reason for hiding it?

[bigwillq]

21. Congrats on 800 posts!

[monicaangela]

22. Wow, is it that many already?

I guess it's time for me to give it a rest. Thanks for the kudos bigwillq!

[JI7]

2. Jackson really did make an antisemiTic comment

[Ken Burch]

24. He said one word in private, one time.

At the same time, Ed Koch was saying "schvartze" all the time among friends and Reagan administration people were calling Arabs "sand n_____s" during cabinet meetings.

And twenty years before that, LBJ had had to be taught by his aides to at least say "negro".

[William769]

3. It's pretty damn strange who African American voters are voting for. Just saying. nt

[whatchamacallit]

4. I agree.

[Liberal Jesus Freak]

5. You're right.

It's pretty damn strange.

[Enthusiast]

20. Yooge plus one!

[Ken Burch]

6. You know perfectly well I am not attacking AA voters and never have.

None of us are.

We are talking about the power of white centrist propaganda...not about anything else.

propaganda messages, pounded in over and over and over and over again, can manipulate ANY voter in any direction.

That is why your campaign never ever let up on the "Bernie doesn't care about fighting racism" meme, even when we proved that it was a lie.

Enough already with the misdirection and the fauxrage.

[JI7]

7. if that was the case republicans would get a lot more black votes

[Ken Burch]

8. The main reason they don't is that the GOP is addicted to being the party of the white South.

They don't CARE about getting AA votes, because they still think they don't need them as long as they get the Bubbas with white sheet eye-hole tan lines on their faces.

[JI7]

9. Nikki Haley and Tim Scott also ?

[Ken Burch]

10. 1)they have a somewhat different attitude towards the Asian community

2) they are always open to a handful of tokens(so long as the tokens don't get "above their station" by running for president or anything-mind you, they probably hated Ben Carson just for being a neurosurgeon and proving their assumptions about AA intelligence wrong).

But they aren't willing to reach out to AA voters in a significant way, because they still think the GOP made its big breakthrough by kicking the freedom movement in the teeth in 1964.

There are a significant number of AA voters who could be persuaded to vote GOP, but that party doesn't see reaching out to them as worth pissing off the bubbas.

[JI7]

11. Tim Scott is black

[Ken Burch]

13. Which is why I listed him in point 2.

He is AA, but is a token. They aren't really interested in getting a ten or twenty Tim Scotts in Congress.

[JaneyVee]

14. Please, tell us more about this "white centrist propaganda".

[hack89]

15. So Black voters are more susceptible to propaganda than white voters?

interesting theory. Have you considered the alternative- that they are intelligent and aware voters that can decide without the guidance of some white progressive?

[Ken Burch]

16. I said ALL voters are equally susceptible. I didn't single out AA voters on that.

n/t.

[hack89]

17. But you will not consider that their choice was deliberate and informed?

because only the weak willed led astray by propaganda would reject Bernie? Is that how it works?

[Ken Burch]

18. Again, you are misrepresenting my argument.

Obviously there are some people in that community who thought HRC was the better candidate. What I'm saying is that Bernie has done nothing, on the merits, to be treated as anathema to the AA community.

And the repeated "Bernie doesn't care-Bernie is running a whites-only campaign" meme would inevitably have done massive and undeserved damage.

That's just how propaganda works...and it works with everybody.

[hack89]

19. I think that it is engrained in the black community to mistrust white politicians

who offer themselves up as the solution to all their problems. They have been betrayed so many times before. The notion that an obscure white politician from a small white state was going to be embraced with open arms in a very short time is pretty far fetched. They don't dislike Bernie as much as they are not going to support a total stranger that has not bothered to reach out to them until he needed their votes.

I don't think Bernie is running a whites only campaign. But he never bothered to understand what non-white votes wanted. He assumed a color blind platform of economic justice was good enough. But it is not.

[Ken Burch]

25. It would naturally be ingrained in POC communities to distrust ALL white politicians.

Hell, I distrust most white politicians on their commitment to fight against racism and I'M WHITE.

And we both know POC have plenty of reasons to distrust HRC, given her work building the white-supremacist DLC(it is always white-supremacist to argue that the Democratic Party should distance itself from POC and work to keep most POC out in the cold, as the DLC always did).

Bernie NEVER assumed a "color blind platform" on anything and he never dismissed the importance of fighting racism.

And he never offered himself up as the solution to all AA problems.

Those two false assertions about Bernie are nothing but HRC propaganda.

[hack89]

26. He misjudged the black vote somehow or another

Why is it so hard for you to accept that Bernie made a mistake?

[Ken Burch]

28. I didn't say Bernie made no mistakes. Neither would Bernie, for that matter.

I was one of the people pushing to get the criminal justice plank onto the website.

My point was that he rectified most of the mistakes within a month of entering the race and did not deserve anything like the demonization he got on this issue once he did rectify them.

And that, while it was and is legitimate for AA groups to push all Dem candidates to be stronger on fighting institutional racism, it was never valid for the HRC campaign to use this as a wedge issue, given that nobody involved in the DLC can claim any credibility or superiority on it...everyone who ever pushed for the Democratic Party to go "tough on crime" is implicated in the increase in institutional racism in the post-1981 era.

[hack89]

32. He did not rectify it according to how blacks are voting

They have decisively rejected him.

[amborin]

12. this is surely part of the answer:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511394710

they were planning this for years and saw a successful strategy and decided to copy it;

(not my original insight; was posted by someone else)

[kgnu_fan]

23. kick

[Faux pas]

27. I voted for Jesse both times too!

At that time, I was the only white person I know who did.

[Ken Burch]

30. Me and one other guy were the only white Jesse delegates from Southeast Alaska

at the state Dem convention in '84.

Got some of the dirtiest looks from some folks for wearing my Jesse button in Juneau that year.

[Faux pas]

33. Whoa!

That's seriously ballsy in Alaska at any time, let alone '84 . Lol I was being all 'brave' in SoCal.

[jwirr]

29. K&R

[Vattel]

31. huge rec