The Sanders Conundrum
Here's my unsolicited, and typically long-winded, assessment of the obstacles facing the Sanders revolution.
The Problem with Young People
They demonstrated yesterday, once again, that they simply don't vote.
Rallies and sharing Bernie memes on Instagram is fun. It's not fun (and requires advanced planning) to stand in line for 3 hours to vote on a Tuesday when you're scheduled to be working or in class or would rather be playing video games or just fucking around.
Also, young people are even more likely than older people to forego future rewards in favor of immediate payoffs.
Result = PS4 or the bar today is way more compelling on election day than graduating from college with no debt in 3 years with full healthcare benefits.
(Human nature is fucking maddening)
Sanders’ Flock is too Fringey
Sanders' more extremist supporters are a turn off and reflect poorly on the inclusiveness of the Sanders campaign:
Some of these folks are now saying that they'll vote for trump rather than Biden.
Those extreme voices don't reflect most Sanders supporters, of course.
But they are the loudest voices. And the kind of bullshit (deontological perspectives) those voices represent is a huge turnoff to less ideological voters who might otherwise be amenable to Sander's message.
Older Black Voters aren’t Feelin’ It
(the black people who actually vote - see point 1)
Their number 1 priority is deposing trump and they don't trust that Sanders can do it. I've seen this over and over again as I've talked to and observed people of color during this race. (I'm speaking in broad generalities, of course.)
It's not that black folks don't like Sanders, necessarily, or that they don't like his ideas. The issue, I think, is that black voters believe (correctly) that most progressives and moderates (to say nothing of conservatives) cannot be trusted to vote in a way, or otherwise support, anything that upends the status quo from which (they at least believe) they benefit.
(See, for example, white moderates' opposition to the civil rights movement.
Remember also that most white Americans *did not* vote for Obama's message of *Change* in 2008 or in 2012.)
Biden's civil rights record is shitty. Certainly as compared to Sanders.' But black voters know that white moderates don't care deeply about that.
White moderates care ultimately about holding on to what they've got (or perceive they've got) while maintaining their view of themselves as the sort of people who care about justice (whether or not that's actually true).
(This is a very human characteristic, by the way. We all edit our views of ourselves to reduce dissonance. It's not inherent to white folks specifically or any other group.)
I say again (and I can't emphasize this enough), Black people are interested in deposing trump.
Period.
All other concerns, while perhaps salient, are nevertheless, secondary. The calculus of who's best positioned to execute that all-too-necessary expulsion is a practical one. It's not ideological.
And from that perspective, Biden is the safer candidate.
He's obviously got no intention of upending the status quo. And as I've mentioned, Black voters understand, intrinsically, that moderate America cannot be trusted to vote for (climate, racial, economic) justice over what it perceives to be its own interest in the status quo.
So it would seem that Black voters believe that white moderates faced with a decision between Sanders' revolution on one hand, and trump's status-quo-ish-neo-fascism on the other, will choose trump. Or even stay home.
Who knows, they might be right 🤷🏾♂️
But it's a long race.
Postscript
I personally, like many of the highly educated progressives I know, am a Warren supporter. (We're among her far-too-small base.)
With Warren out of the race, I'll go back to being ambivalent. Especially given that the NJ primary is too late in the process to be relevant.
But I'll support, enthusiastically, whoever opposes trump in the general election even if that someone turns out to be my cat, Joey. (She's the absolute sweetest, btw.)
