2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: I'm sitting with my black relatives, by the way I'm black and we aren't buying into Hillary's [View all]Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Last edited Sat Oct 17, 2015, 11:10 AM - Edit history (1)
obviously he's got to stop assuming they should choose him automatically.
Apparently up there in "white-flight"* Vermont it never occurred to him he'd have a genuine black problem, which is a joke on him; but by now, after so many clueless stumbles, he's probably paying good attention, especially to Black advisers. He also has to know by now that Black voting rates have been topping White.
I didn't realize until you said JUST how badly Liberty came across to Black observers. It was a surprise to me, really weird timing, going so early to a place like that. I assumed this "socialist Jew" must have picked them as representative of his polar opposites, reaching out to the children of America's premier troublemakers, and thought no more about it. You make clear that some feel his priorities were way out of order -- at best.
"What makes you think he is going to speak a different message to the center and independents from that he repeats to Black folks ... despite our frustration?" I don't. I have no idea what the messages will be, although, of course, some Blacks will also be centrists by nature. What I meant was just that like any politician he'll have to tailor his message to different groups in order to establish connections with them and that inevitably not all he says will please some of his early "enthusiasts."
Speaking of the South, when I first moved to Georgia and started meeting people, joining a garden club, etc., once in benign chat about current events some women commented that they'd never actually met a Jew, sort of in wondering acknowledgement of their insularity more than anything else, and a couple different times people mentioned to me that they'd never actually personally met a liberal. My husband's Jewish and we're both liberal, but I kind of doubt we were actually the first, just the first to say so. We moved here to be near our son and daughter-in-law, a Georgia girl, but we find ourselves living in one of the most conservative counties in the country. Nobody ever bothers to campaign here, and the only political ads I see are on cable talk shows.
* Referring to a commonly held image, not to any specific Vermonters.