After months of campaigning fiercely to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for the President of the United States, Senator Bernie Sanders, during a stump speech in Vallejo, California on Tuesday, spoke of his dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party as it relates to the party’s inability to win over White working-class voters. One could hardly miss his furious criticism of the party he seeks to lead and characterized as:
… a party which, incredibly, is allowing a Right-Wing extremist Republican Party to capture the votes of a majority of working people in this country
In an interview with the National Journal long before he launched his campaign for the presidency, the Senator is quoted to have said this:
"what is the largest voting bloc in America? Is it gay people? No. Is it African-Americans? No. Hispanics? No. What?" Answer: "White working-class people." Bring them back into the liberal fold, he figures, and you've got your revolution.
Devoted to this belief, the Senator has pursued a strategy to win over these White working-class voters, who are open to the message of the Republican Party, for the entirety of his now waning campaign.
What is startling about his pursuit is the sense that, despite what could be seen as a concerted effort to become more sensitive to the pernicious issue of racism, through many months of campaigning, Senator Sanders still exhibits a tendency to ignore the issue of race as a major determinant in the behavior of segments of our population. In an article published in March of this year, The Nation observed:
We should also acknowledge the extent to which Sanders has won whites by crafting a class-based appeal that minimizes, and sometimes even diminishes, the role that racism plays in creating American social and economic inequality. He has done so for his whole political career. Sanders is in some ways uniquely suited to be the Democrats’ white, working-class standard-bearer, because a career in 98 percent white Vermont has kept him on the right side of some issues that hurt Democrats with that group.
After he signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson is reported to have said:
"I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come."
Following the passage of the legislation, Democratic Governor George Wallace of Alabama, a segregationist, would spearhead a campaign which pulled Southern Whites out of the Democratic Party.
In the ensuing years, issues pertaining to welfare and the addressing of a legacy of societal discrimination of African Americans and other minorities through affirmative action policies have contributed to deep resentment by many White voters of the Democratic Party.
These conflicts, as well as others, have resulted in a large faction of White working-class voters, primarily defined as non-Hispanic Whites without a college degree, allying its interests with the Republican Party over those of Democrats.
Some have argued that these voters have stayed away from the Democratic Party, due to the party’s inability to address their bread and butter concerns. Issues of trade and closeness to Wall Street have been used as reasons why they have refused to back the Democratic Party.
Yet, White working-class voters have enthusiastically backed the policies of Republican presidents, from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, each in favor of trade and supporting the interests of the moneyed class for decades.
White working-class voters overwhelmingly sided with Mitt Romney over Barack Obama in 2012, the same Romney who spoke of pursuing trade deals, described corporations as people, and even portrayed a whole faction of working people as leeches looking for handouts from the federal government.
Truth be told, the racial suggestion of Romney’s 47 percent comment did more to pull these White working-class voters into the Romney camp than anything President Obama and Democrats could have offered in terms of saving the economy that their adopted party destroyed, creating jobs, saving the auto industry, providing healthcare, or protecting Medicare and Medicaid. In fact, in terms of the last item, Salon.com wrote in 2015:
What’s up with working-class whites? It’s a question that’s been asked for decades, and has been raised again recently in the discussion surrounding an Alec MacGillis piece examining Matt Bevin’s recent election gubernatorial win in Kentucky, which could leave many in Kentucky without Medicaid. Though there are many explanations for why working class whites vote Republican and many are certainly true, the overwhelming reason is rather simple: racism.
The Lexington Herald-Leader reported on the election and the White working-class population in Owsley County who voted to eradicate the law that had been providing them with sorely needed health care, in order to demonstrate their rejection of the nation’s African American President.
The 66 percent of Owsley County that gets health coverage through Medicaid now must reconcile itself with the 70 percent that voted for Republican Governor-elect Matt Bevin, who pledged to cut the state's Medicaid program and close the state-run Kynect health insurance exchange.
Owsley County Judge-Executive Cale Turner, a Democrat, said the election results didn't surprise him. His constituents wanted to express their opposition to Democratic President Barack Obama and what they perceive as "the liberal agenda" on social issues, Turner said.
"To be honest with you, a lot of folks in Owsley County went to the polls and voted against gay marriage and abortion, and as a result, I'm afraid they voted away their health insurance," Turner said. "Which was their right to do, I guess. But it's sad. Many people here signed up with Kynect, and it's helped them, it's been an absolute blessing."
The community's largest-circulation newspaper, the Three Forks Tradition in Beattyville, did not say much about Kynect ahead of the election. Instead, its editorials roasted Obama and Hillary Clinton, gay marriage, Islam, "liberal race peddlers," "liberal media," black criminals and "the radical Black Lives Matter movement
In this simplistic attack against the Democratic Party for what he sees as the party’s inability to win over White working-class voters, Senator Sanders either ignores or fails to see that many of these voters have hitched their wagons to the Republican Party despite the party’s embrace of Wall Street, trade policies, and money in politics. They have become members of the Republican Party because their desire for economic justice is subjugated in the interest of subverting the inalienable rights of Blacks, Hispanics, Women, Lesbians, Gays and Transgendered citizens in this nation.
One of the reasons why the Senator has done so badly with Black voters during the current primary season is due to a campaign based on winning this subset of voters. It goes without saying that the concern has nothing to do with the racial makeup of these voters, but, rather, what they have been voting against and have been in opposition to for generations.
The strategy begs the question of what would the Democratic Party have to relinquish in order to pull many of these Republican-friendly and racially biased voters back into its fold. This entire subject ultimately reveals why the Senator has been running such an ineffective campaign and ultimately reveals why he has been losing.