Incredible article by Darren Sands, “Black Lawmakers And Their Staffers Split On Bernie Sanders” (italics from source, bold added):
After the [CBC PAC] event, with her colleagues mostly gone, [Maxine] Waters walked out and wanted to know: Had her colleagues publicly chastised young voters for their naivete?
Some lawmakers had, onlookers told her. Her face dropped.
“You can’t do that,” she said. “That’s why I can’t stand behind them. Because I don’t want my young people to think I think that way.
On the generational split within the black community:
On Capitol Hill, four staffers told BuzzFeed News that they had sent Coates and Alexander’s essays to their bosses. ...
And Alexander’s essay was particularly piercing, three CBC lawmakers told BuzzFeed News. One lawmaker told BuzzFeed News that people had flooded his email with the articles by Alexander and Coates. “And most of them were young people.”
“I do think that there is a clear divide between the caucus and some of our constituents,” the lawmaker said. “I think a lot of them are upset with us. I think they saw what happened with the president — and I am a big supporter of him and will defend him to the end — but I think a lot of them think that we sold ourselves too cheap, particularly our young people.”
According to the lawmaker, it was clear that their young staffers and constituents wanted them to take the criticisms of Clinton seriously. “The younger generation has begun to look at us and they’re asking the question, Is Hillary really on my side? When my brother was put in jail for marijuana under her husband? Welfare was taken away, and so forth.”
And the attacks orchestrated by the Clinton camp are souring the mood with many:
But there is a growing sense among young CBC staffers that the attacks lobbed at Sanders are unseemly. In recent days, black lawmakers have called Sanders an “absentee” on issues important to black voters. On Wednesday — the day the endorsement was first reported — three aides said they had been asked to draft talking points for lawmakers on how to hit Sanders indirectly.
“It’s not stately,” a senior aide to a member of the CBC granted anonymity so that the aide could speak freely. “I’ll kiss the ring of whoever my party nominates, but right now I’m with Bernie and I’ve seen the behind the scenes efforts to discredit and suppress him. It’s not us and it’s not the way we should be approaching this.”
Interesting final tidbit:
“Obviously Bernie is appealing” to voters, Rep. Elijah Cummings told BuzzFeed News. “To raise $6 million is nothing to sneeze at. And you’re talking about people with a little bit of money. So he is appealing to a group of people who Hillary needs to pay attention to. While the polls show that she’s got some of the black vote, those ‘$34’ people probably fit into the same economic situation as many African Americans — and you still don’t know how many of those are African American.”
All the momentum is behind Bernie right now.
