Laurence Tribe, the Constitutional law prof at Harvard, has concerns about Bernie.

[Jarqui]

153. I think you are confusing what people are saying.

A lot of people have subsequently come out against the crime bill for it's part in unduly incarcerating people (among other things) - including blacks disproportionately. Hindsight is 20/20.

Before that bill was passed, Barnie railed against that part of the bill for that very reason on the floor of the House. He lobbied for money being spent on the military to instead be spent on children in poverty, for example, to help keep them out of jail by getting things like a decent education and he made the point that it was happening to blacks disproportionately.

When it came time to vote on the bill, the Violence Against Women Act and 10 year ban on assault weapons, among other things, were also on the table - as I've previously explained. So Bernie reluctantly went along with it as did the vast majority of Democrats including Joe Biden and including President Bill Clinton as he signed the bill into law. After they heard Bernie's concerns about this bill causing blacks to be disproportionately incarcerated, 73% of the black caucus in the House that day in 1994 voted for that Crime bill.

Then folks come along to suggest "Bernie must not like blacks because he voted for the 1994 Crime bill that helps to incarcerate more of them!" as if no other Democrats did or as if the Black Caucus didn't while not acknowledging Bernie's stated concern and the tortured choice he had to make: a trade-off that protected women and got assault weapons off the street but resulted in more poverty stricken people to wind up in jail - disproportionately blacks - as Bernie feared it would.

That would be a difficult decision for any of us. The majority of Democrats and 73% of black democrats went along with it.

That is what people are trying to point out. The criticism is unfair and has lost perspective through forgotten circumstances over time.