Vermont electorate is 95% white

[brentspeak]

And if there's any "statistic" or "number" which can be cited as to why Bernie Sanders should be the next President of the United States, it's that.

Consider:

Would anyone disagree that, historically, a typical, garden-variety politician cynically caters only to those few big-money individuals and entities who can bankroll their elections, and will pander to those segments of the electorate whose votes they need to get/retain into office?

And that, historically, a typical garden-variety politician will likewise outright ignore those individuals whose money won't go his way and will similarly ignore -- or even be hostile to -- those segments of the electorate whose votes he doesn't need?

And is it agreed that if every single black, hispanic, and other minority member of Vermont's electorate were to have voted against Sanders in all his Congressional elections, it would not have made a bit of difference to his getting into office?

And yet, though Sanders has never needed Vermont's minority votes, he has spent his entire Congressional career with as sterling a record on civil rights as there is.

This type of politician is a dying breed in this nation: someone who actually gives a damn about everyone, regardless if they can help him get into office or not.

If there's a better measure of a candidate's fitness for the highest office in the land, I'd like to hear it.

[peacebird]

1. Amazing as it seems to some, there are white progressives who really care about others.....

Some of us have fought for equal rights for all, some of us have worked for justice for people of color, some of us believe we are all equal in worth. Bernie does too.

[Snotcicles]

3. Sometimes people do things because it's the right thing to do.

Hopefully those of us who were brought up that way, can spot another from a mile away.

[DesertFlower]

8. i agree. nt

[Reter]

2. Why is it overwhelmingly liberal then?

You would think that any place in America with a white population of 95% would be Tea Bag City.

[Snotcicles]

4. Bernie evolved them. nt

[SunSeeker]

12. VT was a liberal bastion way before Bernie. Why do you think Bernie moved there from Brooklyn?nt

[cherokeeprogressive]

13. I don't know... some here would say GUNZ lol.

[SunSeeker]

14. Vermonters do love their GUNZ but I don't think that's why he moved there.

However, that is probably the reason he voted against the Brady Act.

[cherokeeprogressive]

15. I was being totally facetious. n/t

[SunSeeker]

17. I know. nt

[jfern]

22. Not exactly

Until 1992, Vermont had voted Democratic once. and Leahy is still the only Democrat ever elected Senator from Vermont.

[cali]

25. Vermont was the first state to outlaw slavery. it was Senator Aiken

who said (to paraphrase) that we should declare victory in Vietnam and get out. It was Vermont Senator Ralph Flanders who took the lead against McCarthy. Vermont Senator Stafford was an early leader in the environmental movement. Both the Stafford Act and Stafford loans are named for him.

I could go on. In any case, Vermont has long been socially liberal and an environmentalist haven. We have come late to economic justice

[SunSeeker]

28. It has been a liberal refuge since the 1960s.

Starting in the early 1960s, liberals fleeing cities in NY and Mass tended to settle there (as opposed to NH, which attracted conservatives with its low taxes), resulting in Vermont electing its first Democratic governor in 100 years in 1963. That attracted even more liberals. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/01/new-vermont-is-liberal-but-old-vermont-is-still-there/

Bernie left Brooklyn for Vermont in 1968. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders

[jfern]

29. But it voted Republican

Ford won it by 11 points, winning every county, and he lost.

[SunSeeker]

31. Red rural areas had yet to be overwhelmed by all the Dems in the cities like Burlington.

But eventually they were. Ford would be a Dem in today's world.

[cali]

20. bullshit Bernie evolved us.

[sibelian]

27. Well, you might think that if you suppose that white people are somehow inherently right wing.

But a cursory glance over the history of the world demonstrates a somewhat different picture and white Americans are no exception.

This idea that white people are inherently right wing is actually something of a Republicanism.

[RoccoR5955]

5. I am sure that when Bernie was a kid in Brooklyn

he saw the plight of people of color, and decided that it was worth fighting for. I know the neighborhood that he lived in, and it is a very mixed area (at least it was 40 or more years ago, and Bernie is only a little older than I am).
He fought when he was in college in Chicago, and has not stopped.

And I would be so proud if a Brooklyn boy got the presidency. It's about time, as far as I'm concerned!

[DesertFlower]

7. i'm almost 74. we lived in ridgewood, queens --

2 blocks from the brooklyn border. when i was a kid mom and i would take the bus to go downtown (fulton st.) shopping. the bus went through the african american neighborhoods. i remember my mom saying "colored people (that's what they were called back then) want the same thing for their families as white people do."

[peacebird]

26. : )

Your mom & mine said the same thing, and the same way.....

[Doctor_J]

6. Conservatives (at Fox Nation and at DU) don't believe white men can care about civil rights

here they want so desperately to have a woman president that theyre willing to lie about a really good man, just to make their conservatism and cultism bearable.

[Art_from_Ark]

9. It gets really tiresome, doesn' it?

[moondust]

10. Good point.

With demographics like that there would be virtually no political pressure on him to pander or do anything else to support minorities in order to win their votes. If anything, there could be some eye-rolling or even pressure on him to simply ignore minority issues and spend all his time working for the big majority.

He did it anyway, and that shows a lot of character.

Recommended.

[cali]

21. actually there is.

Most people really don't have a clue about Vermont.

[musiclawyer]

11. No super black majority black congressperson should ever run for POTUS

They are disqualified because they don't understand the issues of white or brown America!

That's the logic spewed from the MSM


And it's exposed as total bullshit with even a micro second of thought....

[restorefreedom]

16. as someone said upthread,

some people do the right thing because its the right thing

the kind of people we need as president.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

18. We've had presidents from states that have been openly HOSTILE to minorities....

Like this state:



Home of this guy:

[cali]

19. Vermont is an odd duck. yes, it's overwhelmingly white

But in 1988 it went for Jackson. In 2008 and 2012 it voted for Obama in greater percentages than any other state but Hawaii
Every county in Vermont voted for him. What does that say? It doesn't say that there isn't racism here. Of course there is, but it does say something.

[jfern]

23. Sanders endorsed Jackson in 1988

So that was definitely with his help.

[cali]

24. it would have gone for him anyways. Sanders wasn't a statewide figure.

We're you living here then?

[DCBob]

30. But why did Bernie choose to remain in Vermont for essentially his entire political career??

Vermont was already liberal before he even moved there. Vermont doesn't have serious social or economic problems like many other states. Seems to me if he really wanted to help solve America's biggest problems he should have tried to run for a political office in a state like New York. It seems he took the easy and safe path to a political career.

[brentspeak]

32. Does that even make sense?

Are members of Congress supposed to tramp from state-to-state after having served a term in one state? Has there ever even been a US senator who served in two different states? And what would be different if Sanders served as US senator elected in NY state? Do NY-elected senators have some special extra power to "solve America's biggest problems" that senators elected in Vermont don't?

Probably the most convoluted, manufactured criticism of Sanders I've seen on these boards thus far -- and that's saying a lot.