Hakeem Jeffries, CBC Whip, had some faint praise for Senator Sanders yesterday:
"It’s good to have new friends but I would prefer to have true friends," Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters on a conference call with reporters convened to tout Clinton's record with the black community.
Influential African-American ministers in the South are coming through for their true friend, Hillary Clinton. From Goldie Taylor at the Daily Beast:
In addition to a flock of South Carolina elected officials, Clinton now counts the Congressional Black Caucus PAC and at least 28 prominent black preachers among her strongest supporters. Announced just ahead of the Iowa and New Hampshire contests, the former secretary of state unveiled a list of some of the most politically powerful pastors in the country—including Dr. Otis Moss Jr. and Dr. Raphael Warnock.
Moss and Warnock are particularly valuable ambassadors:
Both Moss and Warnock are camera-ready and have a proven record of turning out votes in hard-fought Democratic primaries at the local, state, and national levels. Warnock, who is senior pastor at Atlanta’s Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church situated in the center of The King Memorial site, was once rumored to be a potential U.S. Senate candidate in Georgia. Ahead of the 2012 mid-term elections, the 45-year-old co-led one of the largest voter registration drives the south has ever seen. Warnock, the son of a Savannah preacher who doubled as a junkman, is frequently featured on cable news and has emerged as a national voice on social justice issues.
Otis Moss Jr. is a theological giant whose storied activism dates back to the civil rights movement. He is the pastor of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio and a local health center at University Hospital bears his name. He also is the father of Otis Moss III, the pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ where President Obama and his family once worshipped. Moss, who was once co-pastor at Ebenezer, enjoyed a close and personal relationship with Dr. King. The late civil rights icon presided over Moss’s wedding to his wife Edwina over 50 years ago.
No signs yet of any defects in the firewall:
According to a Marist Poll released Feb. 5, the Clinton “firewall” has not cracked and she is leading Sanders by a hefty margin: 64-27 percent. And the most recent poll shows Clinton beating Sen. Bernie Sanders among black voters by a four-to-one margin.
Let me do the math for you: 37 point margin.
South Carolina House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford:
“He only really started talking about these issues,” Rep. Rutherford said of Sanders during an endorsement press call Wednesday afternoon. Clinton, Rutherford added, has been talking about these issues for the “last 40 years” while Sanders has only stepped up “in the last 40 days.”
Black pastors and elected officials, the black “Establishment”, are staying with what they take to be as familiarity and viability.
Ultimately, it appears that black pastors and elected officials—at least those who are supporting Clinton—are making the same bet in 2016 as many made in 1992, 1996, and 2008 (at least before President Obama sent shockwaves through the political establishment by winning Iowa). They are betting on familiarity and viability. After all, both Clinton and Sanders both broadly support the pastors’ basic approach to economics, justice, and individual rights.
Clinton is making her bet, too. She’s taking her black support, and doubling down.