Here’s the deal:
1. McCain has called the GOP the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan.
2. Kornaki (MSNBC) has said that if Sanders won Iowa and NH it would “shock the world” and thus perhaps this may augur well for Sanders.
3. On Feb. 3rd on Morning Joe Sanders explained what he meant by using the word “revolution” and also what he meant by being a “Democratic Socialist”. On Feb. 2nd Mathews (whom I suspect knew exactly what Sanders meant by using the words “socialist” and “revolution”) handed warier-queen Clinton, self-defined progressive (yea right!) a softball with his scare tactics -— she loved it!. NOTE carefully: Obama did not run in 2008 as a progressive and if he had he would not have gotten past Wall Street: An African American progressive as potus? -— come now!!
4. Sanders essentially tied Clinton in Iowa no matter any spin by ANYBODY -— In context, it may as well had been a win. Now, let’s assume he does very well in NH.
OK, with the foregoing as background, here is my argument:
If a specific subset of the world is not shocked even if the whole world is shocked, Clinton’s firewall in South Carolina will stand firm. What is that subset? It is the South Carolina Democratic Primary Electorate (SCDPE). Why? Because it presents a unique circumstance which, I opine, has never ever occurred: If it is so that the SCDPE is 50% — 60% African American then for the very first time there exists a circumstance where, potentially, it is not immaterial and inconsequential to take African Americans for granted in a very high profile situation where their critical interests are very important to them.
Now, with reference to item 1 of the background, contrary to McCain’s view, African Americans are quite rational to have switched from Lincoln’s GOP to the Democratic party in opposition to Reagan’s GOP for what should be obvious reasons. That is, from the African American perspective and experience the GOP in Lincoln’s time is as the Democratic Party in Reagan’s time. The point is that in the earlier epoch, the GOP took them for granted. Now, the Democratic Party takes them for granted, particularly when an issue arises which is very critical to African Americans (when I say critical, I am referring to situations where they are presented with Hobson’s choice between dignity and sustenance, that is, where the attitude is, so where are they going to go?) and most definitely if it’s controversial among the Euro-American group, when the word “divisive” is used.
So, now we have the circumstance whereby progressive democrats should be sensitive to this fact (or, what should be a fact): South Carolina has to be to Sanders what Iowa was to Carter in 1972 and Obama in 2008, if he is to prevail. The question is: what is it, if anything, that Sanders can/will do to provide such a discombobulating shock to that subset of the world? After all, as delineated above, this is a unique (first time) occurrence in more than 240 years! Of course, this assumes that once the firewall experiences a sufficient cracking, if indeed it does, it continues to fissure to failure (where failure means that Sanders prevails).
Perhaps, the SCDPE should really challenge Sanders (and Clinton) on very substantive issues (meaning very important to them that the issues be seriously considered) for which to present policy positions. After all, a critical mass of the population has 240 plus years of “standing on the seashore trying to hold back the tide”. Indeed, if truth be told, a supposedly impossible strategy which none the less appears to have been applied pretty successful to date.
