Markos' Op-Ed on The Hill about Sanders and Race has raised a storm here, as anyone who's being paying attention would've expected. As someone who has been an outspoken and often acerbic critic of attacks on Kos from the Left, as many here will eagerly attest, I have some comments.
I've read Markos article. The conclusion seems inescapable. Unlike his pieces here where he has taken a reasonable tone of advocacy, whether one agreed or disagreed with his opinions, the Hill essay is indisputably a factional hit piece, destructive and divisive in intent and dishonest in its arguments. It cynically mixes fact with unsubstantiated assertion in order to exploit the racial fissures that run through the Democratic Party as surely as they run the US society as a whole. In resorting to such tactics, Markos has taken a path that could potentially split the Democratic Coalition and give the White House as well as both Houses of Congress to the GOP in 2016.
Harsh words? Yes but in my view entirely merited. Disagree? Alright, lets begin at the beginning.
Two weekends ago, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) flopped on stage when confronted by Black Lives Matter protesters at a Netroots Nation presidential candidate forum.
Unable or unwilling to stray from his stump speech on economic matters, a testy Sanders demanded the moderator “take control” of the situation.
Sanders supporters and #BLM protesters waged battle on Twitter for days.
It was an unfortunate turn of events, one that exposed a racial rift between Sanders’s highly educated, white and mostly male supporters, and the younger, more diverse crowd fueling the fight against police brutality in communities of color.
No one I know would deny that it wasn't Sanders' finest hour but claiming that flame wars on twitter or even here on DKos expose "a racial rift between Sanders’s highly educated, white and mostly male supporters and the younger, more diverse crowd fueling the fight against police brutality" is nothing but partisan spin. Markos has absolutely no way of knowing the social, racial or economic character of twitterers much less whether they are representative Sanders' supporters. He simply asserts it.
So what basis does he have for his claim?
Progressive activists have engaged on issues of unequal justice, police militarization and violence against people of color with an intensity I’ve never previously witnessed. At Daily Kos, coverage of those issues is nearly guaranteed to receive viral hits and has driven the site’s record growth.
Nothing else comes close to capturing community interest, not even Donald Trump, even though our audience is predominantly white. Sanders was utterly unprepared to discuss the topic that animates today’s progressive activism.
Apparently, if it drives hits to his site that's all he needs to know. Of course he immediately undercuts his own position by admitting that the site's audience is predominately white rather than the "the younger, more diverse crowd fueling the fight against police brutality." He would have undercut himself even further had he not elided the fact that every straw poll at DKos thus far has shown participants favoring Sanders by as much as 2 to 1.
So according to Kos, his site must be dominated by "highly educated, white and mostly male" Sanders supporters who are, inexplicably, "engaged on issues of unequal justice, police militarization and violence against people of color with an intensity I’ve never previously witnessed."
Frankly, the rift here seems to be between Kos' argument and coherence.
It doesn't stop with self contradiction and incoherence though. The above passage is riddled with negative rhetorical tropes designed to prejudice the reader's perceptions. "Flopped", "unable or unwilling", "testy" are all deployed to frame Sanders as inept, incapable and erratic, a classic method of demagogues that Kos employs throughout his Op-Ed.
Like the more effective of demagogues, Kos takes pains to include some substantive points amongst the muck. Yet again he recites the challenges Sanders faces in appealing to a broad demographic of voters. It's the same song he's been singing here for months and completely legitimate as far as it goes. He even adds an acute observation:
You don’t have to be African-American to pick up on this energy, but it’s certainly true that having a diverse inner circle will best prepare you for the issues that motivate Democrats’ varied base. Republicans are the homogeneous ones, not us. But you wouldn’t know that from looking at Sanders’s team.
It might comes as a surprise to Markos, though I doubt it, to learn that this is a concern that is already under discussion within the ranks of Sanders supporters. Again a legitimate criticism and again one raised cynically as preparation for further demagogic assaults. In this instance he tips over from factional spin into outright falsification:
Clinton has always had great support among communities of color. Sanders doesn’t seem to even care, much less put real effort into attracting their support.
Really? Has Kos been asleep? Is he completely ignorant of Sanders long record of supporting the issue of vital concern to these constituencies? Or is that record not supposed to count in the context of his campaign? More to the point, is Kos unaware that following the fiasco at Netroots Nation that Sanders immediately began to reach out on the issue of racist policing, becoming the first candidate to draw attention to the false arrest and subsequent death in police custody of Sandra Bland? Is he ignorant of Sanders' keynote appearance and speech at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference?
Does this sound remotely like a candidate who doesn't "even care" or is uninterested in making the "real effort" to attract the support of people of color? Further, does this sound like a candidate that has turned"...a critical part of the Democratic base against him"?
If you still think I'm being too hard on Markos, consider the following gem from a postscript at the end of his hatchet job:
An earlier version of this post said Sanders had canceled an interview with activist Elon James White, a claim White says is not true. The author regrets the error.
I'm sure he does regret it, since it makes plain that he was so intent on dirtying up Sanders and his supporters that he couldn't bother with small things like accuracy and fact.
If this is the kind of thing we have to look forward to throughout the primary season, we have to consider the real possibility that the eventual nominee will face the 2016 election with a base fractured and demoralized by infighting. That's a recipe for disaster.