From my perspective, Kamala Harris looks like one of the strongest candidates running to be the Democratic nominee for president; she’s a smart, charismatic woman of color with shrewd political instincts and a track record that can appeal to both progressives and centrists. Not surprisingly, she’s faced attacks from many directions and this video published today on Bernie Sanders’ YouTube channel suggests he might also be feeling nervous about Harris’ surge in the polls following her campaign announcement — particularly because of the threat she represents given his past difficulties winning black votes:
The video features black celebrities discussing their experiences with mental health issues and the sociological reasons that delayed their decision to finally seek help. Sanders does not appear in the video except as a logo; instead the focus is on de-stigmatizing mental health in communities of color and highlights some of the unique challenges caused by racism and systemic inequalities in our society. Sanders probably wrote video description text which makes reference to “our broken healthcare system”, a common refrain Sanders’ uses to promote moving towards a single-payer healthcare system by gradually expanding Medicare to cover larger segments of the population thus allowing the economy to absorb the shock of eliminating a highly-profitable but exploitative industry (colloquially known as “Medicare For All”); this time, however, Sanders leads with a point about racial disparity.
The main reason I see this as a potential response to Kamala Harris' campaign is because I don’t think Sanders has addressed racial issues so directly in past videos he's released (please post a link in the comments if I’m wrong about that). Some Sanders supporters argue that his reluctance to address racial issues more directly is just because he'd rather focus on issues that effect everyone while some of his detractors argue that he’s unwilling or unable to see past his perspective/privilege as a white man; I’ve actually made both of those arguments at different times over the past three years. But whatever you think about any of this, I hope we can all agree that if this video represents how candidates are going to campaign against each other in this primary we’ll all be a lot better off!